Street, LLC. I have German Yakubov with me as representative of the developer. So starting
Starting off and I will take everyone's time into consideration here.
This is a CMX 2 zoned property. It's at the corner of Belmont and Parkside.
The developer is seeking to use the space as 15 residential units with a commercial unit on the first floor.
So commercial mixed use as envisioned.
We're seeking to put a flagship commercial tenant on the first floor and 15 residential units above.
We have four refusals, density, number of units, the proposed height, as well as inadequate rear yard space and occupied area refusals.
Briefly, before I get into the meat of the application here, I'm just going to run through a history of the space, this space at the corner of Belmont and Parkside.
um we've got this uh ymca athletic field in the 1930s and 1940s was called the 44th and
parkside ballpark it was an athletic field and ballpark in west philly from 1903 to the early
the 1950s. It was built by the railroad. However, in 19-
It was built by the railroad.
However, in 1933, the Negro League team, the Philadelphia Stars, played their home games at this park, pardon me, from 1936 until 1952.
They were a Negro League team from Philadelphia.
They were founded in 1933, and they were around in one form or another until the league itself collapsed in 1952.
In 1936, they started playing at the ballpark at 44th and Parkside, and they played the majority of their home games there.
So in 1998, Philadelphia's West Parkside community established a historical marker at the corner, which is across the street from our property at 4306.
This recognizes the Negro League in Philadelphia, and specifically what occurred at the park on this spot.
17 years after placing the marker, the Memorial Park itself, the space around the marker, was opened.
That was in April of 2005.
This is relevant because the Business Association of West Parkside, whose support we have for this project,
brought together a large coalition of residents, businesses, city and state officials, Major League Baseball,
and the Phillies specifically to convert this space into a park for the community.
The memorial itself was a combination of both the park and also the mural across the street,
which is on the southwest corner of the intersection.
We have the parks in the southwest corner of the murals on the southeast corner.
The mural exists behind the lot that we're here talking about, 4306 Parkside Avenue.
Heretofore, that's been an empty lot, and the mural has been in plain view.
To build on this lot would necessitate covering up the wall, and therefore the mural, and
going into the project, the developer was clear with me that he intended to approach
the project with a desire to preserve the mural and was willing to incur significant
financial loss to do so.
The developer met with the Mural Arts, whose support we also have, and they determined
It will cost approximately $90,000 to move the mural across the street to the park itself.
This would encompass Mural Arts and the developer building a wall and effectively moving piecemeal and reapplying the mural to that wall.
The other side of the wall is the Philadelphia Discovery Charter School and the developers and talks with them, as well as the Philadelphia Horticultural Society to beautify and create a green wall on the other side of what will become the mural space.
Meeting with the neighbors, we learned that they value this mural. They don't want it gone. But in order to make the cost of moving and reapplying feasible, the developer tweaked the density on the space.
And so, that's what we're here for, those variances. So, specifically, moving on to the refusals, the first two are easier to deal with. They are the rear yard depth and the open area refusals.
The lot is irregular. It's not a square lot. It's triangular shaped, as you can see on here on Atlas. So the backyard is not able to be added. And if it is, it would cut significantly into the space for the actual units.
this generated both the open area and the rear yard refusals moving on to the to the other two
refusals we have height and density we're seeking I'll pull up our rendering we're seeking 15
residential one commercial unit as I said the lot is mostly in a multi-family neighborhood
and street. Let's see. What we think is relevant here is that while the property has a Parkside
address, only five feet actually front Parkside Avenue, the rest majority of the frontage faces
Belmont Avenue, which is a commercial and industrial corridor. Both Belmont and Parkside
are very wide 60-foot streets, and they have 20 feet wide sidewalks. While zoned CMX2,
This lot is adjoining multifamily zoning. We believe CMX3 zoning would have been more appropriate, but that's irrelevant. It would have allowed us to build what we're trying to build here.
As the commercial space on the first floor goes, we didn't think that a commercial store type of business would be viable here or an office would be viable as a commercial space.
We're seeking to build something more along the lines of the community style.
We're seeking to build something more along the lines of a community-style cafe with a retail area.
And the developer is foreseeing and working with the folks that are in support of us to build a coffee shop and retail space that will sell memorabilia and honor the park itself and the history of the league in Philadelphia.
you. All right, so moving on. So the issues of parking and trash, I'm just nipping them in the
bud. All the properties between 4264 and 4304 Parkside Ave have a private garage accessed by
a private driveway, which is on the screen right now. This wouldn't be infringed. In fact, as an
olive branch to the neighborhood. We are offering to repave the shared driveway as it's in rough
shape. The 30 neighbors this driveway serves have been trying to get the funds together piecemeal
to do this, but it's been difficult to do that, and the developer is going to handle that.
Moving on to the issue of trash.
We have it set up so that each floor of the building contains a trash chute.
So every floor of the building would have access to a waste room.
that waste room would empty directly into a first floor waste room accessible by commercial trash
pickup, which we would schedule for three to four times per week. The developer has been building in
this neighborhood and is on a mission to remediate light and improve the neighborhood. And this is
what they're focused on now.
All right, moving on
to our support letters.
Well, starting off, we already talked about this, but we met with the East Parkside
Residential Association on March 24th.
At that time, we felt the reception was kind of cold.
We attempted to work out a resolution for for the last few weeks,
and we believe we just made some headway today, and this was despite multiple neighbors stating
that they wished to meet again and attempt to find a compromise, and we're very happy that
they have reached out to us about trying to do that. We have spoken to and received emails from
many neighbors in the community who feel that the RCO wasn't in this decision representing their
interests and um there's been some emails back and forth the council uh men's rep was the council
person's rep was copied on that uh we also understand that the office of jamie got the a
are encouraging us to meet again with everybody and bring them in the into the discussion which
is something we support um but we feel it's appropriate to put our proofs here as we have
strong letters of support from the business association of west parkside and the mural arts
folks um as well as having some folks here on the line who wanted to voice their their support
okay there was a mention of an issue regarding uh the philadelphia gas works being overly taxed in
that area and we wanted to just get ahead of that and say this is going to be an all electrical
building and that won't be of concern and i'll just briefly bring up the letters of support
the first one is from the business association of west parkside it's an rco that's responsible
for facilitating not just the memorial park itself that we talked about uh and the mural
but also hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development in this part of the city and uh
it counts both councilman curtis jones as well as pa senator vincent hughes as members of that group
their letter states that they feel the project will not only improve the area but enhance the
visibility and recognition of the memorial nationally and therefore they wholeheartedly
appreciate and support the developer. You guys have that letter, so I'm not going to read the
whole thing. And then finally, we have support of the mural arts folks. Again, you guys have that
letter in your packet. The takeaway from that is they've lost dozens of murals over the years
because developers don't reach out to them and they just get built up upon. And so there has
seem to be a lot of internal support over there for Mr.
Yakubov and his company because of his attempts to figure out
how to actually preserve this mural, which is in line with
his build strategy in this part of the city. Anyway, that's
Anyway, that's sort of the end of my principal presentation. I'd like to call German Yakubov to speak regarding the development.
sort of the end of my principal presentation. I'd like to call
Thank you.
Mr. Yakubov has been allowed to speak.
Good morning or afternoon.
Good morning. Can you put your name and address on the record, sir, and spell your last name, and then I'll swear you in?
Sure. Dermon Yakubov, last name's Y-A-K-U-B-O-V, 614 South 4th Street, Unit 510, Philadelphia PA,
19147. Thank you. Do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
I pseudo affirm. I do so affirm. Okay. Mr. Consul? Good late morning, Mr. Yakubov. Did you hear my
presentation so far? I did, I did. Do you agree with everything I said and adopt it as your own
testimony? I do. All right. Is there anything you would like to add? Yeah, just, you know,
we've been in the neighborhood for about since 2015. We've redeveloped some of the historic
buildings that are currently on the block that have been blighted. We've converted them to
good use. We've rehabbed them. We have, you know, in our opinion, have been good neighbors
during Christmas. We do toy drives outside on this corner, turkey drives for Thanksgiving,
we donate to to a lot of the organizations in the neighborhood to you know we're not just kind of
building to leave this place we've we've made a significant investment in the community we're
currently rehabbing a body shop on Belmont Avenue and converting it into a 22 unit apartment building
and you know we we've we're very sensitive to this mural it means a lot to us and this is why
we reached out to the community as well as the councilwoman's office and the mural arts program
last year last summer actually last june i believe um and we've had several meetings um throughout
that time we've met with the artist david mcshane who uh created this mural and he created a new
mural that would go across the street so we've we've invested a lot of time and expense in in
this project um it's unfortunate when we met with the community um in march it wasn't as well
received uh as we would have loved it to be um but the the couple takeaways that we did get was um
that you know the driveway in the back was was an issue so we we kind of uh wanted to take care of
that also trash was an issue so we we're more than welcome more than fine with agreeing to a proviso
to have commercial trash pick up however many days that would make the community comfortable and we
want to continue having that conversation with the community to bring them on board and get their
support because ultimately you know i don't want angry neighbors i would i would like to do this
in partnership with with everybody and and uh have the least amount of upset people as possible uh
so that's that's kind of why we're we're here and you know trying to do everything we can to get
this thing built thank you very much joe do you have another witness i believe there is two there's
two members of the neighborhood um a make sure i i don't and mr carl wheeler and uh um and mr
salim um if they could raise their hands then the board can call them at their at their leisure
madam chair i have a miss lorraine gomez with her hand raised at this time i can allow her to speak
if you wish okay is that your witness mr it's it's not that not that i'm aware of um mine was
mr wheeler and mr salim is mr wheeler or mr saline there
getting a bit getting a bit confused because there's two people with the name of a german
yakubov off um off the lower hands and assets they raised their hands again
Could Mr. Wheeler raise his hand
if everyone else has lowered it?
Is this Mr. Wheeler?
It said raise my hand, so I'll just press it, right?
Okay, I can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Mr. Weaver, are you still available?
I apologize. We can move on to...
We can move on.
Okay, so we can't seem to connect with your witnesses, Mr. Consul.
We can't seem to connect with your witnesses, Mr. Consul.
Who else has their hand raised?
Hello?
Yes, sir.
What is your name?
Salim.
So, Mr. Consul, he's your witness, correct?
Can you put your name and address on the record and spell your last name, and then I will square you in?
okay how do i do that uh just speak the way you're speaking now okay my name is salim
last name lucas um i own the body shop no no no you're no spell your last name
okay lucas l-u-c-a-s okay and now your address uh 1224 if they don't mind avenue
okay and do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Yes. Okay now Mr. Consul will speak to you. Mr. Lucas, could you speak briefly to the board
about your opinion of this project? I'm in support of the project. I've been watching
Jeremy for like the last few years. He's been doing a lot of good things for the neighborhood,
building it up. I felt like it's going to bring good energy to the neighborhood. I feel like it's
going to help the other small businesses that's in the neighborhood, bringing new tenants to the
neighborhood. I'm just all the way around supporting the project. I went out to a couple
of the meetings with the neighbors, pretty much hearing what they had to say and what their
concerns was, and I watched Jeremy pretty much try to do everything in his power to make the
community happy. I feel like it's going to be something that's good for the neighborhood,
bringing new talent, new younger people, just all the way around the board. I feel like it's
going to be good for the community. Thank you very much. Briefly, Mr. Lucas,
could you explain to the board what you do? I'm sorry, I didn't ask you that originally.
All right. So I own a few different companies in the neighborhood. I own some repair facilities. I own a tow company. I own two daycares. I'm just actively involved in the neighborhood. I'm actually investing into the neighborhood as well. Just trying to bring the neighborhood back up to how it was pretty much back in the day. It was a really, really nice neighborhood.
and how long have you been active beautiful neighborhood how long have you been active
in the community mr lucas for like seven eight years um i invest all my money into the to the
neighborhood i'm like every time i get some extra money i'm buying houses i'm trying to fix them up
i'm working with the local businesses um i support like the senator the uh senator hughes
um curtis jones i'm just in the neighborhood i'm trying to like if you go back and you watch the
history of this neighborhood from like they have like websites like in the 1900s these these were
beautiful homes parks out it's like really really nice and the fact that someone's coming in and
wanting to bring it back to life and cleaning up and and investing their money i support it because
it's something that we need for this neighborhood thank you thank you okay you're welcome unless
mr wheels available that'll be it for my my witnesses is there a representative of the rco
present
madam chair i have a miss uh jihad ali with the hand raised i can allow them to speak if that is
okay i believe the rco rep was on on the call earlier and i don't believe it's it's jihad um
it was a brian oh i have mr brian harris with his hand raised i'll allow him to speak
okay allow him to speak can you hear me hello yes yes yes sir can you hear me i can thank you
okay can you put your name and address on the record and spell your last name and then i'll
swear you in thank you very much my name is brian harris h-a-r-r-i-s
your address 4286 parkside avenue philadelphia pennsylvania 19104
okay do you swear or affirm to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth
yes i do thank you
you may proceed thank you good morning madam chair my name is brian harris as i just stated a 30-year
I'm a resident of the Belmont Parkside area.
I'm also the RCO committee chair.
And I've talked to all my neighbors
and everyone within 250 feet of the development