yeah yes calendar number zero zero three one one oh one emily street continued
Next case, calendar number 1436-1446 West Nedro Avenue.
The attorney is Vern Anastasio.
Thank you.
good afternoon mr chairman members of the board good afternoon name and address for the record
please a verne anastasio 1315 walnut street suite 1006 philadelphia pa 19107 did i see you earlier
are you sworn in already okay do you also agree to waive the reading of the refusal and stipulate
to its accuracy? I do. Did you mail in the exhibit packet with proof of ownership, tax compliance,
refusal, referral, photos, and plans of the property five days in advance of this hearing,
and have you met with the RCO, and do you have a letter? Yes, to everything but a letter.
Okay, you may proceed. Thank you. May I share my screen? Absolutely. Thanks very much.
I don't see what I want to share, so hold on for one second.
I'm sorry about that.
There it is.
Okay, this is 1446 West Nedrow Avenue.
The application initially was for family dwelling.
I'm going to give you some procedural background so you know what brings us here today.
We were here before this board some time ago with this case.
We had already met with the RCO and followed all the protocol with the mailing.
it was very lightly attended and therefore Mr. Richardson from the council person's office
had asked that we return to the RCO and his office would facilitate that meeting that second RCO
meeting so we continued it it turned out that my office ended up having to set up the meeting
which we didn't mind we put together the flyer again we didn't mind to do that and at the council
members' office's request, we actually hand-delivered flyers, not stuffed in envelopes,
but hand-delivered flyers door-to-door to everyone on the list. Again, unfortunately,
the meeting was sparsely attended. So we presented. After the presentation,
in speaking with my client, we thought to make a good faith effort, we would reduce the number
of units that we would be asking from four to three, which is more in line with the other
corner across the street, the identical property, three-family dwelling. I had not heard from the
council member's office until a few hours ago yesterday, and I was told that they put out a
flyer asking folks to um uh call them there were calls made and that the uh the feedback was not
positive so that's where we are today we were never given it a chance to to talk to any of
the neighbors that said i want to walk you through the project and then lay out my case for why i
I believe we should be able to get the zoning relief.
So this is, again, 1446 West Nedrow.
The application was initially for a four-family dwelling.
This is the first level was going to be two one-bedroom apartments.
And now, of course, we're proposing that it would just be one large apartment on the lower level.
the first floor is one full spance with a common enclosed porch living room bedroom
and then we've got the top floor which is another full spance bedroom this is the property in
question. It has three separate entrances, one on the front and two on the side. This was
historically an apartment building. Then it became residence above with a doctor's office on one side
and an embroidery mail order business on the other side. And I'll show you the history of that.
Again, here's the light of the exterior.
Obviously, it is not a single-family home by any imagination.
We're using this structure here for trash.
for trash so that this will be one story storage room for trash all three units will have access
from the outside the property management team will then take the trash out and put it out on
the sidewalk. Here's the front of the property. We have
some interiors as well.
John Estella, did you go back to the picture of the front?
The front? Yeah.
Okay, I'm sorry. My eyes were playing tricks. It looked like 1444. All right, I see it. Thank you.
You're welcome.
There's some interior shots that I just want to be able to show you.
and then these are the office spaces on the side on the side now this is
drop ceiling
so that's where we are with this and there's a proof of posting
now here my cursor is is uh right over the subject property there was a property identical to it
over here it has since been torn down the property right next door 1444
1424 is just recently, as a couple months ago, is vacant and marked unsafe for human habitation.
1430 is a multifamily dwelling.
1428 is a duplex.
1426 is a two-family dwelling, all legal.
across the street we've got 1429 is a two-family dwelling and caddy corner over here
to the exact opposite corner 1501 is a has been a legal three-family dwelling since 1972
uh the build the folks who seem to have built the corners seem to be the same builder because
there's an identical property right back here which is right across the street this way uh
that is identical in layout and characteristics it's um here it is and here you could see it's
a it's residential above and commercial down on the lower floor and there's the front entrance
to that particular property obviously in much better shape so i guess the question is
it always is are there unique physical conditions to this particular property
to our particular property that make it uh compliance impracticable and i believe the
answer is yes here. The two side entrances with separate and unique spaces are in fact the unique
physical condition that creates the hardship. I'd like to be able to unshare this for a moment
because I want to share another document if I can.
1962, 1446, West Nedro.
It went from a home and a doctor's office.
So prior to 62, it was already two uses.
And then it became a home, a doctor's office, and a mail-ordered business.
And up until 2008, that's what it's always been.
I'm going to unshare this and go back to my exhibit.
In 2008, for whatever reason, the owner from which my client purchased the property put
an application in for a single-family dwelling, but then did no work, pulled no permits, and
but then did no work, pulled no permits and did no work to actually congeal the two commercial
did no work to actually…
spaces to the residential portion of the building. And then he treated it as kind of like a flop
house. People would come in and out and just for no rhyme or reason. And it's been a problem
on the block for a long time. Again, the property next door is falling down as well.
And so we believe that the history of the property, its historical uses, because even though the permit was actually put in for the single family, it was never used as a single family.
It was never physically converted as a single family.
The historic uses for a good part of, you know, 40, 50, 60 years has been multi, you know, multi-mixed use.
so we think it's uh it just makes sense uh to have the one unit per floor in this building
i want to get to that flyer because i think it's important and again i don't question
that folks call um i do question the method though that was used to elicit the community
concern and i'm going to get to that flyer
the flyer makes it sound like my client just bought a house a single house and now wants
to convert it and chop it up into apartments that's just not the case i've already offered
evidence of that if you read the flyer it it sounds like well this new owner just bought
this house and now he wants to convert it into a four-family dwelling well that's again that's
that's inconsistent with the facts. So I can understand why somebody would call who may not
be sophisticated enough to get online, but can read that and say, well, we don't want somebody
chopping up a house. You know, I get that, but that's not the case here. There's a history of
mixed uses on the block, as I told you. And I think there's a fatal flaw in this particular
method of trying to get input because it denied my client the opportunity to present a trash plan
to present a renovation plan or a lighting plan or a safety plan so i understand a council member
has absolutely every right to reach out to his or her constituents to get feedback but i think
in this particular case, it denied my client his right to address any concerns, and it circumvented
the actual code. And as a result, I'm asking that you grant the variance for no more than
three family dwelling. With that, I'm going to ask my client to raise his hands to be acknowledged.
your client's name is paul yes
yes paul hi paul hi how are you okay will you please state your name and address for the record
paul casuto 2550 ocean parkway brooklyn new york okay paul you're the owner of this property is
correct? Yes. So just let me spell your last name, please, and I'll swear you in. Sure. C-A-S-S-U-T-O.
Where from to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth? I do.
May I proceed, Mr. Chair? Please. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Casuto, did you hear my presentation to the
board today? Yes. And is it true and accurate to the best of your knowledge? Yes. Do you adopt it
as your own testimony if need be? Yes. And were you in attendance to the RCO meetings with me?
Yes. Okay. And were we prepared to present a trash, a comprehensive trash plan using the rear
section of the property for all tenants to access? Yes, most definitely. And were we prepared to put
the property management information on the property so that neighbors could call if there
were any issues with the property? Yes. Okay. And were we prepared to install lighting and cameras
along the entire perimeter of the property for safety? Yes. And upon securing your zoning use
permit where you prepared to pull any necessary and needed building permits to properly renovate
this property to its original grandeur. Yes. Thank you. I have no other questions.
Thank you. Questions from the board? No.
Questions from the board? No. Is there anyone else to testify
in this case? Please raise your hand. Chair, we have Mr. Charles Richardson.
Good afternoon, Mr. Richardson. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me?
Please identify yourself. You haven't been sworn in yet, correct? No, not today.
Charles Richardson from the Office of Councilwoman Cindy Bass, room 312 City Hall.
Where am I from to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Thank you, please proceed.
Okay, to address the questions about why we put out a flyer and methodology,
The statement or the actual flyer that Vern put out, Anastasio put out, was one that was
rather legalese.
The folks that live in that area are pretty much elderly.
They do not read those types of things.
They don't know how to get on to Zoom.
And the councilman was not comfortable with the fact that no one showed up to the meeting
and thought that we should do something different
to try to elicit some response.
We did get a very huge response.
And in actuality, even though Vern is saying
that they're not going to be cutting up the apartment
into four, they were originally going to be cutting it up
into four and with two on the bottom
and one on each of the additional floors.
So that is not the case, that was not the intent
that they were going to be doing.
All the amenities and everything else
that are concerned, the folks don't really care about that. They care more about the fact that
that is a very congested area already and that the density is very heavy in that area.
We've gotten 30 plus responses because of the fact that I've only counted the responses of the folks
that actually live within the 250 foot range. And even at that, I had to verify using Street List
and been verified, which is one of the apps that we use to verify people's addresses and
telephone numbers and things like that. So we made sure that we were very, very thorough in
vetting who it was that was voting. We only took one vote per household, even though there were
more people that were calling with regard to that. To be honest, there was one person that
lived outside of the 250-foot range that did vote for the project. But, you know, that, again,
is outside of the range that we were measuring as well. And a lot of the folks that live on that
block, on that specific block, and even those that live in some of the apartments are against
the conversion so uh the councilwoman is is opposed and uh hopes that you will vote to um
you know maintain the single family uh residence at that location and uh move it forward from there
mr chair i think yep the entire building as a single family residence that's it that's the
exact issue it's never been used as a single family resident let me let me get in let me
let me ask the question um okay the flyer that went out I have no problem with the way in which
you tried to reach uh your constituents I think it was a good good opportunity to to get people
to know what was going on there uh the only question I have is and I'm not being critical
the the flyer don't it indicates there were four units well in in actuality I did call the people
back after Mr. Anastasio had called and left the email stating that his client would reduce
it to three.
And I had to call the people back and let them know that it was three.
Because I was, again, and there was an email that I did send to Mr. Anastasio, and also
it should be in the record as well, where I let him know that I had to call the people
back to let them know it was three.
And they remained adamantly opposed to it.
That's where I wanted to get at.
I wanted to make sure that they're on the same page.
So I don't know.
Mr. Chairman, I have nothing further.
I mean, it's the property right across the street and right behind it that is built exactly the same are three families or one family and commercial.
This property has never been used as a single family home.
Despite whatever paperwork was filed in 2008, nothing on the inside congealed the innards of this property as a single-family house.
When you've got the next-door neighbor property literally falling down, dangerous to human habitation,
I would think that breathing new life into this property would be a high priority.
I would think that breathing new life into this property would be a high priority.
As far as density is concerned, there's several vacant lots in the immediate area, one right across the street.
And right next door, again, is an empty property.
So I don't necessarily see how my client would be able to bring this into compliance with any practicability.
let me let me ask this as a you may have i think you touched on it but i want to be clear
in the past the ground floor level was used as a was it a doctor's office on the left hand side
was a doctor's office on the right hand side was a mail order okay and that's from 1967
has your client pursued any sort of light commercial or a professional office for the
ground floor would you know if he has i don't believe so i i think it would be uh difficult to
fill we don't know that i'm just that's what this isn't right could be i mean it was once a doctor's
office and a mail order so there was a time when that ground floor wasn't used as a residence is