E-U-G-E-N-E last name is N as in Nancy
A-Y-D-O-V-I-C-H
We're in a firm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth
Yes I do
Thank you please proceed
So Eugene Chairman DeChica was inquiring
Your property obviously is 3860 Brown
The house next door is 3858 Brown correct?
uh yeah i guess yeah and um the chairman was noticed i'm sorry chair did you want to ask
the question you want me to ask the question well again it might it might be reflected in
the plan i got ahead of myself but maybe you can answer it does yes does your client's property
go party wall to party wall no uh so the house on the right there's a back it's a that was already
39th street um so there's a backyard in between and also between 3860 and 3858 brown there is a
three or four foot wide alley between the houses so essentially 3860 brown would be a completely
freestanding building okay thank you that that answers the question thank you thank you jean
i think that's what the chair was asking about um i'm going to continue walking through our
exhibits. So you've seen photos of 3860 Brown. And now I'm going to show some photos of the
surrounding properties and the surrounding block. So again, that's our property there,
the vacant, maybe the perspective isn't great. That large black SUV that's sitting there,
that's directly in front of our property. So you can see both surrounding properties,
3858 Brown and 7, I want to say it's 739 North 39th. I'm not, I don't exactly recall the address
offhand. This is a view eastward on Brown Street taken from standing directly across the street
and you can see a number of houses on either side. There are a couple of vacant lots as well
and down to the end of the block which is 38th. This is our side of brown taken just past ours.
I think I started at 3856. Brown is that red house right there and then moving on down the street you
can see some of them are clearly abandoned or otherwise not occupied. Exhibit 3C is our orange
signed photos, and I will turn that back so everybody can see those. All right, here we go.
Exhibit 3C, that is photo one of our orange poster notifying neighbors of this ZBA hearing,
and these were photographs taken again 14 days ago on 8-5-2020. That's our second signed photo,
again posted on a poll right up at the sidewalk. It's twisted. I can twist it back if anybody
needs or I can keep going on. And there should be a third at least one. There's another photo
of our orange poster again on a stake right at the edge of the property there.
Exhibit four is our project information form and this was filed. This was filed in
well, it'll say the date in a second, but I want to say this was filed in December. I may be a
little off. This was filed prior to the rescheduling of this hearing. It was filed in February,
February 13th of 2020. Nope. Sorry. That was my phone. I killed it. Exhibit five is our affidavit
of service. We sent notice, our office, an employee of our firm, Mattione, sent notice on
August 6th to the neighbors per the addresses sent to us by the planning
Commission and this is an affidavit of service of that notice that's exhibit
That's Exhibit. Exhibit A to that affidavit is our original letter of August 6th, at which Manitoba Civic Association had called a meeting for Friday, August 14th to hear this project as well as another project of my client on the same block.
Exhibit A to that affidavit is
and we gave notice of the hearing of the RCO meeting rather. I think we didn't have a rescheduled
hearing date before the ZBA yet at that time when we sent the notices, but we did have the
meeting set up with the RCO. These are all the people we noticed with that notice. Those are all
the CCs and here's a copy of our notice of refusal was in with the letter and all of the addresses
that were mailed um on that notice mailing which that's about two pages uh three pages i would say
that's about a hundred four pages four pages is five pages hold on i should not get ahead of
myself six pages it's a lot of pages it's a lot of addresses i would say it had to have been a good
150 addresses just by eyeballing it excuse me may i interrupt for a minute mr setner sure um we i
I just received an email from Andrew Goodman of the Councilwoman's office.
I'm just going to read it into the record.
Go ahead.
We have not seen an RCO letter for 3860 Brown Street, which is scheduled for this morning.
If a continuance is not given, please state for the record that our office opposes the application because it is poking a hole in a community-led remapping effort without true demonstration of hardship.
Quote, it doesn't fit our business model, unquote, should not be sufficient grounds for a variance.
So we ask for a denial for this reason.
That's it.
Ariane, could you just do me a favor, read the first couple lines about the RCO?
We have not seen an RCO letter for 3860 Brown Street, which is scheduled for this morning.
If a continuance is not given, please state for the record that our office opposes the application.
All right.
Understood.
Thank you.
thank you you're welcome um okay uh that is a piece of red paper and i am that would have
been where the rco letter would have gone had there been an rco letter we did have a meeting
with the rco and um i attended the meeting as did my client it was actually an in-person meeting
which i expressed my thoughts on this separately to planning um yesterday regarding the fact that
I'm not going to an in-person meeting of any RCO going forward, just due to virus protocols
and all, and I'm not going to get any deeper into that, but we did attend the meeting.
They held the meeting.
They did not issue us an RCO letter.
I don't know if the board received an RCO letter from Manchua Civic.
I did not receive a letter from Manchua Civic, nor did anybody in my office.
Did the board receive a letter?
If a letter was sent in, I can verify that I was not copied on it.
I see. Thank you.
So that would have been where we would have included an RCO letter had we received one.
Exhibit 7.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm scrolling up.
Technology is not my friend today.
Exhibit 7 is the deed in favor of 3858 Gerrard LLC from the sheriff recorded on March 29th of 19.
And that's the deed, realty transfer tax certificates. There's the legal description.
Exhibit 8 is city tax clearance on the property run for the owner 3858 Gerrard LLC for the specific
property going back to 1983. And as you can see, there's a zero balance. I have nothing
further. And I would like to call my client, Eugene Nadevich, who is a principal of 3858
Gerard LLC for testimony.
We already swore him in. So just you can ask him if he adopts your testimony.
All right. Eugene.
You heard all the testimony that I offered to the board today?
Yes, I did.
And would you adopt that testimony as though it were your own?
I would.
Thank you.
I guess my other question to you is, well, is there anyone else here that may have anything to offer?
May have anything to offer.
I'm going to ask.
I'm going to ask, I'll be asking that shortly.
I'll be asking that shortly.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no problem, just be sure.
All right, any questions from the board?
Anyone else who wishes to testify in this matter, if so, please raise your hand.
No hands up, Chair.
Okay, based on, Planning Commission, I'm sorry, Planning Commission.
Good morning, members of the board and Mr. Chairman. This property is zoned residential single family. The city's comprehensive plan recommends residential single family. The south side of the block has two-story rows, mostly single family, except for one Philadelphia Housing Authority multifamily building.
The north side of the block is mostly three-story rows that are primarily single family. We believe that this proposal is an overuse of the property and out of character with the block. Accordingly, we recommend the requested variance not be granted.
um based on what i heard in the letter that uh sharon to let us received it sounds to me and
correct me if i'm wrong as though the council member is saying in in lieu of the fact that
there was no letter if we vote they're asking us to deny this application but it also sounds to me
like there might be i could be i could be wrong an opportunity to have a further discussion with
the councilman's office and the RCO and granting a continuance. So my question to you, I guess,
Mr. Slepner is, would you and your client be amenable to continuing this case and having
follow-up conversation with the RCO? May I ask one question? Mr. Slepner, did they take a vote
at the RCO meeting and do you know what the result was if they did they did I don't recall
I'm going to check my notes uh bear bear bear with me um if you will I'm looking at my notes I
I'm sorry is that council president Clark's council president that's um council member
Jamie Gauthier. Thank you. Yeah. Mr. Goodman is her liaison, community liaison. I've met him a
number of times. He's a mensch. Anyway, I don't seem to have it in my notes, which is not like
me. Usually I'm good with notes. But with regard, Chair, to what you were saying about continuing
it, I certainly wouldn't have any opposition to continuing a conversation with the RCO.
And I don't think that my client would be.
Eugene, you still there or are you muted?
Chair, I do have someone here who wishes to testify.
Oh, let's hear that testimony first.
Yvonne West, you can unmute yourself and wait to be sworn in.
All right.
Good morning, Ms. West.
Please identify yourself for the record, name and address.
Spell your name for the stenographer.
Yvonne West, 830 North 38th Street.
We're in a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Please proceed.
Now, when we had our meeting on August the 14th with the community, the community opposed the variants.
It was 38 opposing the variants.
And we had a meeting also down at 33rd Street regarding the same matter, and I don't know what that count was, but I was told that the variance was opposed at that meeting.
Are you a member of the RCO board, or are you just a resident?
I'm just a resident of the community that attended these meetings.
Your voice counts. I just wanted to verify if you were a board member. Okay.
Anything else to add, Ms. West?
No, that's just it. I was one of those who opposed the variance and we were very vocal. I wanted to also say that two years ago, the community, more than 600 of the community members, we went through two years of establishing that only single family unit residents would be built in a Mantua area.
And we do not want to go back to, we do not want that to be not regarded because these were the wishes of the community on a whole.
okay thank you you're referencing a remapping okay is there anyone else who wishes to testify
Okay, thank you. You're referencing a remapping. Okay, is there anyone else?
in this matter please raise your hand if you haven't already done so chair um i believe that
my client has um some people with him and i don't know if they're uh physically in the same room
um i'm trying to get him to get them to raise their hands uh physically the room with me
could we get them on the record yeah
yes hello my name is william smith um i do a lot of work for gene i do his landscaping
mr smith mr smith excuse me you swear in the firm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing
but the truth yes your name again and address again my name is william smith
My address is 730 North DeKalb Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19104.
That's pretty far away from 38th and Brown, correct?
No, it's like a block and a half.
Block and a half?
I'm sorry.
The same church?
My geography's off.
I'm sorry.
The same church that we had the meeting in service their lawns, too.
I do landscaping in the neighborhood.
okay thank you and mr smith um did you want to offer your testimony with regard to this project
and why you um are in support of it um i'm actually in support of the things that
y'all do because you know you give out a lot of different jobs in the neighborhood to different
people he do like you know when you when you're dealing with
uh landscaping you're doing so much different things with houses and stuff like that
he'd give out a lot of different jobs like you know people bash him in these meetings
i don't know what for sometimes like like some people like try to make little points
but a lot of people that got voices it's not making any sense and we've got to do better than
that so i'm just here in support of eugene because i know eugene personally and i know he's a good
person and i know that some of these guys that i see they're working in his houses and stuff like
that they're not um you know i'm african-american they got mexicans they got these like different
races and things like that so i'm always here in support and then our neighborhood looks a lot
better than what it did before so i'm you know people talk about property value in texas and
stuff like that this is stuff i can't really i don't know you know i'm saying but i do know one
thing our neighborhood is not looking crazy and our kids have stuff sometimes he'll do a toy drive
or different things for the neighborhood i'm not opposed to that i'm not mad at that like you know
i can't be mad at the person that's doing stuff that we're not doing in our neighborhood as a
whole you know so you know i don't have no right with eugene i'm just here in support
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
Would you say you're in support of this
proposed project to 3860 Brown?
Yes, sir, of course.
Thank you.
Is anyone else there with you, Gene?
Feel free to speak up, introduce yourself to the board.
Yes, my name is Israel Williams.
I live at 3816
Haverford Avenue
I'm sorry say that again
3816 Haverford Avenue