unknown, it was never opened on the city plan. Now, what you can see here on the zoning map,
zoom in so you can actually see it. Again, this is the PUD, unit A, B, C, and D. This is all of
our property. This right here, this long, long line, is Wingo Hocking Heights. And I'll show you
the historical maps show that this was always supposed to come down here and come out to
Belfield Avenue. All of this was originally and historically owned by one individual back in the
1800s, and then multiple buildings were started to be built there. At some point in time,
and then multiple buildings were started to be built there. At some point in time, this large
parcel right here on Belfield Avenue was taken over by the land bank, and so that is owned by
the land bank. Everything else is privately owned, and again, the street you will see
cuts off about right here where I'm making it. It never cuts down to Belfield Avenue,
which again in in in the historical documentation it's unclear why why that never occurred
so here is a site photo standing on church lane it's one way going to the left here
this is wingo hawking heights heading up you can see a lot of other twins they're all twin homes
up and down Church Lane. All I did was I turned one direction down Church Lane and now up the
other direction. So a lot of twins, a lot of single families, all single family homes, and
that's what we're proposing. Now coming up here, this right here down at the far end, that's where
you'd be coming up from Church Lane. This here on the right is our existing home.
That is the existing home that still needs fixed up.
And then you can see one home here and a second home here, both very large stately homes on the opposite side.
This is Wingo Hawking Heights, and you can see there's a lot of parking up and down on the side.
And the day I was there, there happened to be also a lot of work trucks for one of the homes.
again this is the pardon me this is the existing house as it is currently
this is the house right adjacent to it at the very end of the road the road basically ends
right at this house's end there is another large property at the end of this that is separately
owned by another individual since the 80s where another home could be built. This is, I'm now
standing in the front yard basically of the where we'd be proposing the two new homes and this is
the home immediately across the street. Again you can see the state of Wingo Hawking, our property,
the subject property, is on the right. Again, this is sort of to show, and this is indicative
of other issues I'll go into, and I think the issues of opposition that the RCO had.
So we're proposing to completely fix this up, and we'd be building one home right here
and one home right there. Again, just kind of cycling through some of the other photos,
And this, again, is looking down towards Church Lane.
So, again, our hardship, which is clear and certainly not self-created, is that Wingo Hawking Heights is not a through street to Belfield Avenue and was never dedicated to the city and opened on the city plan.
I'm looking at the historical maps dating all the way back to 1895 here.
You can see this is our historical home. The garage was already there. Wingo Hocking Heights, for whatever reason, ends right around here, right somewhere in that property of the house next door to us. It does not hook down and finish off.
you can see again at some point in time it was renamed Nash Street before getting renamed back
to Wingo Hocking again at all times this is the 1910 Philadelphia Atlas map and now going up to
the 1942 Philadelphia land use maps you can see it's now called Wingo Hocking Heights there are
single family dwellings marked there. This large parcel at the end is the one that right now is
is vacant and has been vacant I believe forever but is is separately owned. This process this
parcel right here M3 is the one that the land bank owns. So again the road stops at around the T or
the S and does not hook down as it was always intended to do. And then again as you get up to
the 1962 land use maps, it was still intended to cut down. So at some point in time in history,
this road was just never finished down to Belfield and was never opened on the city map.
Again, if, and as the refusal shows, we meet all the requirements of the zoning code. The only
The only requirement we do not meet is for multifamily housing.
requirement we do not meet is for multi-family
And the reason we get that is because since this is not a public street, we cannot subdivide this large parcel into four separate parcels to have street frontage because you have to have street frontage on a public street for new subdivided lots.
Now, for zoning purposes, as part of the PUD, we have, you know, the four parcels right here, all of them sort of are grandfathered in on the public street frontage with the existing home.
So that that is the hardship we have. And that is something that we can't do anything about.
Now, I think notably, we did receive also preliminary streets approval from the streets department.
And we also went to the Planning Commission, whom we'll hear from soon, but they certainly
understood the issue we had and why we could do nothing about it.
And tellingly, the board might remember this, back in the summer of 2022, almost two years
ago, I was granted this exact same variance at 2309 Carpenter Street, where, for reasons that
were unable to be determined historically, the 2300 block of Montrose just was never opened
as a public street. For all other purposes, just like this one, it operated as a public street,
and you can see the zoning calendar number here and zoning permit was issued for a PUD
for six homes and again those six homes met all the requirements of the zoning code just as we
do here. The only issue was that we didn't have a publicly open street similarly to here. So we did
have a very robust public discussion and I spoke to at least one of the neighbors individually
and there was a lot of opposition although the opposition as you can see coming down here it
certainly was opposed. They did include a letter of explanation and this is really telling so I'll
take the time to go through it. What they were worried about mostly was the size of each property
and the amount of bedrooms and the square footage of each one. Again all of those are either not
zoning issues or we met the code requirements. The sizes of the rear and front yards, again,
we meet the code requirements for these new single-family homes in a single-family district.
The materials on the facade and the property matching are complementing the surrounding ones.
We made clear that we certainly intended to do so. And, you know, even from a selfish standpoint,
you know, the developer's not going to be able to sell, you know, two cheap-looking houses that
aren't built to the quality of the homes around them. The building of two homes right next to each
other with garages for parking, but they thought that extra parking was necessary because two-car
off-street parking wouldn't be sufficient. Again, we meet the code for one accessory parking space
off-street for each lot. Here, many of the neighbors park on the street and felt that
their parking would be impacted. There are also additional concerns, and you saw the sort of
state of the project, and I will openly state it before it even comes up, I'm assuming from
the community again. The property right now is in a sorry state. There was a prior developer
with whom my client was a silent partner and that developer unfortunately spent years and didn't get
anywhere and didn't do what he needed to do. My client bought him out of the project and is now
trying to do things the right way and get things finalized, fix up the large existing family house
and move these projects along so that you no longer see the overgrown weeds and the
the other issues that are already there um and you can see here they you know the rco expressly
stated very little confidence that this developer will keep his word about what is being proposed
in the stated timeline um so again it it's understood and i think justified where the
opposition was coming from and the neighbors they were also very concerned because wingo hawking was
never continued as it should have been. It was, I think this is one, so you can see right here
where it stops right at the end of the other house, the next house next to us. There was a lot
There was a lot of concern, you know, we will need to put in a new sewer line and a new water line and, you know, new utilities. And there was a lot of concern about how the construction of that would occur, where our construction vehicles would be, would we be blocking the entire street.
of concern, you know, we will need to put in.
um certainly we're going to have to meet and really exceed all the code requirements under
the building code to do so in this instance but these are very large properties we're able to
address the construction blockages because we can stage on this extremely large lot that we have
so i've already identified the hardship here a we have an extremely large property over 15 000
square feet that's awkwardly shaped sort of like an upside down state of Oklahoma. We have created
a PUD to try to address that because there were no interested buyers for the single lot for the
entire project. That's why we went forward with the PUD to try to put in additional single family
homes there. And, you know, again, it's the issue. I keep belaboring the point, but it's the issue of
Wingo Hawking Heights, for whatever reason, and the streets department couldn't determine it,
Planning Commission couldn't find it, we couldn't find it, why this street was never
formally opened on the public street. We would submit that the other two categories that we,
or criteria rather, that we have to confirm for a variance are that there's no detriment to
the neighborhood. Here, there certainly is no detriment where we're putting in
code-compliant single-family houses in a single-family housing neighborhood.
We're doing exactly what we'd be allowed to do by right, other than that single hardship
that we have with regard to Wingo Hawking Heights.
And finally, it is the least minimum variance because, again, we're asking for single-family
homes, which are, by definition, the least minimum variance that you can receive for
of property in order to build one in accordance with your owner's property rights under the laws
of Pennsylvania. And we would suggest that this actually also has significant precedence,
considering that not even two years ago, I received the exact same variance from the board
at that 2300 block of Montrose for the exact same reason that historically the road just wasn't
opened publicly on the city street, which is obviously not that unusual, but there's no
understanding or reason why. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have,
or I can call my client to adopt my testimony. Why don't you call your client? Thank you.
Moshe Arbiv, could you raise your hand?
hi Moshe you said Moshe Arbiv yes Moshe Arbiv should be A-R-B-I-V is the last name
Moshe Arbiv can you raise your virtual hand
and I don't see any hand raised with that name sir okay he's texting me that he's on
um i don't see him with his hand raised i mean i'm gonna search it
no i'm i'm sure you're right um he's been oh i see him now he's been allowed to speak
thank you very much sir could you please state your name is spelled for the stenographer
My name Moshe Arbiv.
Spell your name, please.
Moshe, M-O-S-H-E, Arbiv, A-R-B-I-V.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Please proceed, counsel.
Thank you. Mr. Arbiv, you are here on behalf of the owner, Kitab LLC, correct?
And did you hear all of the testimony that I already presented in this case?
And do you believe it to be true and correct to the best of your information, knowledge, and belief?
Yes, sir.
And would you adopt that testimony as your own?
Yes, sir.
Thank you very much, Mr. Arbiv.
With that board, I offer to myself or Mr. Arbiv to answer any questions that the board may have.
Questions from the board?
No, Mr. Chairman.
No, Chair.
Questions or comments from our attorney, Hillary Emerson?
Yes, just briefly, Mr. Whalen. So the refusal seems to indicate there are four dwelling units in three structures, but you referenced, I believe it was unit A is just the garage.
But you referenced, I believe it was unit A is just the garage.
Could you clarify that?
Because the refusal is, if that's the case, the refusal is not accurate.
So it is accurate.
So unit A, this was a garage.
You know, I can, I'm sorry for the quick scroll here, but this will be helpful.
So this is unit A kind of comes in right where this fence line is that you can see here. I hope you can see it on my screen. And these cars are not ours. They are the neighbor's cars.
So you can see there's an existing garage door here. This garage has existed. There has been an accessory dwelling unit in this garage for well over 100 years. You can see it's accessed from the stairs up here as well as this. You see the split right here. This is an adjoining property that's not ours.
um okay so so we had originally intended to just go ahead and demolish this garage however we
cannot do so because in in the time that it has been built um it has basically become one with
the adjoining structure and so there's a very large the entire bottom is open parking space
and the the area above is a prior non-conforming accessory dwelling unit that's been there for
since the 1800s okay all right so that's what the examiner is counting as the fourth unit
yes okay all right thank you for the clarification sorry questions or comments from the virtual
audience yes chair now we have six hands up the first one is olivia jane winter winters will be
allowed to speak good morning could you please state your name and spell for the court stenographer
Hi, I'm Olivia Jane Winters, and my name spelled out is O-L-I-V-I-A-J-A-N-E-W-I-N-T-E-R-S.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Please proceed.
so um i am uh my my husband and i own the property that if you're looking at the property
in question it's to the right our address is 5351 wingo hawking heights um we purchased our
property three and a half to four years ago and have historically renovated the entire property
um i just wanted to address some of the things that sean whalen has discussed with you as well as
I sent some evidence and a document over to you guys yesterday. I'd like to start with the
document that I sent over and then address some of the things that were inconsistent with what
Sean has stated before. So the first thing is regarding the history of our community.
I'm sorry for interrupting this, Winters. I actually have a copy of the document if you'd
like me to share it for the board. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Thank you. I don't have to. I just
thought it you might be better thank you um so this is actually i this first portion i grabbed
from the philadelphia historical commission it was a preservation recommendation that was submitted
in 2017 um so this was actually they're trying to turn this into the george t pearson thematic
district um so this was actually our neighborhood was built our little street was built um it was
commissioned by John T. Roberts in 1887. He had actually wanted to build five homes for he and
his children to live in. One of the homes has since been demolished in the past 140 years,
but the other four homes still remain. And the reason why this street is not showing up,
and I have discussed this actually with the City Planning Commission with Ian Hagerty,
we actually don't have a legal card and for this street and the reason why is because it was
designed to be a private street it is a private street and going back to actually what Sean had
stated we don't actually have public services our sewer main is actually private we do not
receive from the streets department any sort of maintenance on our street I can actually share
are some pictures. If we go back to Sean's pictures of our street, you can barely get up
our street. It is in such bad disrepair. And part of the reason why that is, is because the streets
department refuses to actually fix our street because they state that it is our responsibility
as the homeowners. And we're, we're trying to work on that right now because we can barely get
the homeowners and we're we're trying to work on that right now because we can barely get up our
own street um it's also not plowed at all and we rarely get trash pickup we actually have been in
an argument with the city about that for uh quite a number of years um so that actually kind of
addresses that issue it is indeed a private street it was intended as a private street and community
for a family. And since then, it is operated as one. So the three houses besides the property
in question are currently all resided in by their owners. We're all families with children.
And Moshi, for the past number of years that he has owned this, five years,
has completely disregarded the community, our feelings, and has frankly been incredibly
disrespectful in the way that he operates his property. I'd like to scroll down to the second
argument, which is the legal card. So you will be able to see that it is in fact a private street.
And I think the Philadelphia Planning Commission will attest to that as well. The property that
Sean mentioned that is on the right of my house was actually the former quarry. A woman does own
that. Her name is Linda. She has owned it since the 1980s. And it is undevelopable land right now.