mike can you put your name and address on the record
michael al-haddad address is
1000 west gerard avenue in philadelphia pa 19123
Thank you.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Now, I think Mr. Chin has a question for you.
Mr. Al-Haddad, you heard my testimony to the board.
I heard that it's true and correct, adopted as your own.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Does the board have any questions?
Was that Tom?
Okay. Planning Commission.
Good afternoon, board.
You've already been sworn in. Just put your name and address on the record, please.
Peter Bernard, PCPC, 1515 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19102.
And your position is?
This property is indicated for residential mixed use in the comprehensive plan.
The applicant is requesting zoning variances that may be eliminated if the request for the overuse of the property by having too many units included in the application.
Accordingly, we object to the granting of the variance.
How many units in total, Mr. Chin?
Two units.
This is a multifamily district, but again, with the overlay, we're about 38 square foot short on the lot size.
to meet the two unit by right. Okay, and you do have the 32nd Ward RCO in non-opposition?
That is correct. Okay, calendar, is there anyone else who wishes to testify?
No hands up, Madam Vice Chair. Thank you, Ms. Sunkit.
calendar number three nine three two six one five two zero fontaine street my vote is yes
my vote is yes yeah i'm gonna vote is yes
thank you is jim here
okay i guess you're done for the day mr jim thank you
good good evening have a nice evening calendar number 39335 2131 north 5th street the attorney
is isaac slepner
Hi, sir, can you put your name and address on the record?
Yes, good afternoon, Ms. Tenere and members of the board, everybody.
Isaac Slepner, S-L-E-P-N-E-R.
Isaac Slepner, S-L-E-P-N-E-R,
Matione Limited, 100 North Independence Mall West,
Suite 5A Northwest, Philadelphia PA, 19106.
I am counsel for the owner, property owner,
2131 North 5th Street, LLC.
Okay, and sir, do you swear or affirm
to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I do.
Do you also agree to waive and skip?
Yes, I do.
Thank you. You may proceed.
Okay. Good afternoon, everybody.
If I may, with me today is Menachem Schechter, who is the principal of 2131 North 5th Street, LLC.
And I'm sure he's around here somewhere and he can raise his hand.
But if I may, I would like to share our materials with the board and walk you through our items.
so without further ado i will uh begin so you should see on the screen before you that's a
table of contents but we'll just jump right in uh exhibit one is our notice of refusal it was um
issued on 10 23 19 refused for use as a two family and also minimum open area percentage
Exhibit two is, and I'll turn the screen too.
Will I? I'll try.
I'll turn the screen so we can, there we go.
Exhibit two is our zoning site plan and elevation and some site photos.
So as you can see, it would be a basement, three stories and roof deck type of property.
That's the site plan.
What is in the basement?
The basement, well, hang on. The floor plans will show you the basement. The basement is a storage room and like a living room type of area with a laundry room and the HVAC, a half bathroom.
This page shows our floor plans. The two units would be the basement and ground floor would be one unit with the ground floor having access out to the rear yard, and the second unit would be the second and third floors with access to the roof deck.
And you can see the site, the floor plans in front of you. And if you have any questions, we can come back to those. Exhibit four is our elevation front, rear and side elevations.
um you can see it's a pretty standard um three-story duplex exhibit five these are photos
now we're getting into site photos so the first photo is a photo of the site as it currently
appears it's that vacant lot the new construction to the right of it is 2129 north 5th that
driveway over there is 2133 North 5th. 2131 is that flat dirt lot that is straight ahead of the
camera. Second photo, and I'll turn the view back. Bear with me. Rotate. Go back. There we go.
That's a little bit closer up of our property. A little bit closer up of our property. Let's
twist it again. Here we go. There's our property. This is a view from across the street, so you can
see the surrounding properties. That's 2129, which is the new construction, 2131, which is ours,
which is vacant. 2133 is the driveway, and 2135 is the neighbor's house. They own both, 2135 and 33.
Exhibit 5B are more pictures of the surrounding neighborhood. So this is the view looking
northbound on Fifth Street, about mid-block, pretty much directly across the street from our
property. You can see there's a number of vacant, there's a number of occupied, there's some new
construction going on. Here's another view of new construction and vacant on the same 2100 block of
North Fifth. This is a shot from a little bit further south on Fifth Street, and you can see
there's a number of, again, new construction, existing construction, vacant, and some occupied
existing homes. Same shot looking northbound on Fifth Street, but from the other side of the
street. That's a close-up of the other side of 2129. I'm not sure why I took that, but just kind
of to show you the conditions, what's going on on the block. And that is a shot actually from our
property directly across the street so i i think that would be 21 30 or 21 28 north 5th that new
30 or 2128 North 5th, that new construction in that empty lot there.
construction in that empty
And there's another shot northbound.
That's from standing directly in front of our property.
Shot northbound on 5th.
And again, a shot across the street showing there's a new construction,
empty and occupied.
New construction and vacant along North 5th.
And some more homes and vacant on North 5th.
some more of the surrounding blocks. I took a lot of pictures that day. We were out there for a
while. And then that's just an angle looking at our property. It's the fence furthest to your right
and that's the neighbor's and then the other neighbor's house and driveway. And those are
our site photos. Okay, so as we go on to Exhibit 5C, 5C are the pictures of the orange
zoning notice taken on July 28th of 2020. There's photo one at our site, photo two and photo three.
Exhibit six, we did some research into surrounding properties and there's at least one other
multi-family on the block. 2160 North 5th was, this board granted a variance for a two-family
structure in 2018 to the owner of 2160 North 5th, and that is currently used as a two-family.
I believe it was finished construction at some point in late 2018. So that's the permit,
uh that's the use permit for 2160 and at some point 2159 north 5th which is at the corner of
5th and susquehanna also known as 444 446 west susquehanna also applied for a permit as a um
multi-family and that's the application that we found on file in the zoning archive and i believe
that was in i'd say the 90s or early 2000s uh that they did that it was in december of 2000
Exhibit 7 was the project information form that we filed at the time of filing our appeal.
This proposal again is for a two-family, a duplex. Exhibit 8 is the affidavit of service
from when we initially sent out notice to the neighbors per the code. That was in December.
December 12th of 19 was when it was notarized and our server signed it on December 11th of 19.
That includes our letter to the neighbors of December 11th, 19, notifying the neighbors of
a meeting of the RCO, NARA Square, in February and a copy of the notice of refusal and the
several hundred addresses that we mailed to in December. It's pages upon pages of addresses.
Exhibit nine is the RCO letter from February 12th of 2020.
Exhibit, I'm sorry. I have a question. The home next to where you would like to build,
is that a single family? The one, the new construction house? Yes. Yeah, the new construction,
I believe is a single family at 2129 North 5th.
And the older one, were they also on the garage parcel?
Is that single family?
I believe that's also a single family, yes.
And there's only one other on the block or in the area?
Well, let's put it this way.
There's one other on the block that we have a permit of.
um i wasn't i didn't i i didn't knock on doors um but i did i took photographs and i did notice
that there were some that had multiple multiple bells multiple uh mailboxes um in terms of what's
on record with the city um there's one and that's a 2160 that is a multi a multi-family
there are other multi-families actually i i have other clients in the immediate neighborhood that
are applying for variances for multifamily in the immediate blocks, one block north,
one and a half blocks west, one block south. So there are other multifamilies in the neighborhood
and there are other multifamilies that are coming up for variances and zoning board hearings in
the near future. So there are... The main opposition is the multifamily. I would...
Because the minimum open area is off by 5%. Tom, can you lend your expertise to this?
Can you lend your expertise to this?
He can reduce the number of units.
And make it a single family.
Well, that's what it would make it.
So how do you feel about that?
Well, that would be more of a question for my client.
Manaham, are you on here?
um there this is sharon saletta that would be by right so there would be no need to
grant a variance for single family
um okay thank you okay so it can speak he's been unmuted oh menachem are you there excuse me mr
Mr. Slepner, I apologize for interrupting again, but as the chair, I believe, noted,
there would still be an open area, dimensional variance required.
Correct.
Correct.
And again, that would be a question for my client.
You know, he's the owner.
I can, like I said, I'm just offering what, you know,
what I've discovered in terms of my research
and my travel to the property.
Is your client there?
Is he present?
Yes, I'm here.
The Norris Square Civic Association opposes this
and there's only one other multifamily in the area.
It doesn't matter how many applications are going to come before zoning.
This is an RSA 5 district.
So how do you feel about building a single family?
It's very hard to do a single family, especially if I want to lower the cost for rental.
I'm trying to bring down the cost of rental.
Around the corner and a few blocks down, actually, very, very close to the property,
There's lots of multifamily.
When I approached the RCO, they noted that the most important thing for them is for me to bring down the cost for neighbors to be able to come into the neighborhood to be there and stay there.
That's my main goal right here, is to bring the cost down.
If I build a single family, I'm sort of stuck and my hands are tied behind my back, and I won't be able to do that.
So I'm trying to do whatever I can to work with the RCO and to work with all the neighbors.
I believe we have some neighbors that are actually here with the Zoom.
That's actually, that can speak.
I'm sorry.
Could we swear him in and make sure we get his name and spelling on record?
Sir, name and address.
My name is Menachem Schechter. It's spelled M-E-N-A-C-H-E-M. Last name Schechter, S-C-H-E-C-H-T-E-R. Address is 10907 Lockhart Road.
And sir, do you swear or affirm to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
Thank you.
Do I understand there are other neighbors there?
Correct.
I do have a Pedro Martinez. You can unmute yourself.
Hi, how are you?
Good. Sir, can you put your name and address on the record?
Pedro Martinez, P-E-D-R-O-M-A-R-T-I-N-E-Z, 2140 North 5th Street.
Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
Thank you. You may proceed.
Yeah, hi. I moved on to this block recently, and unfortunately, there's a lot of empty lots and drugs and robberies.
My neighbor just got robbed last week, and I would love to see these lots developed.
and Mr. Schechter approached me
and explained what he wanted to do
and based on the cost of the lot
how he felt it would be best to have multifamily
I think it would be great to have more people