you put this vote back until the end of the session so that i can review these plans
more closely i don't believe we've ever stamped nine pages can i check them to be sure that all
of those are necessary all right then we'll be in touch mr klein so this case will be a whole
final vote at the end of the session thank you thank you very much mr chair
Okay. MI-2020-000062-712 North 34th Street.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board.
Can everybody hear me?
Yes, we can.
All right.
Excellent.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board.
Isaac Slepner with Mattione Limited, 100 North Independence Mall, West Suite 5A, Northwest,
Philadelphia PA 19106. Here on behalf of the property owner of 712 North 35
Here on behalf of the property owner of 712 North 34th Street, and with me.
Mr. Slepner, please spell your last name for this.
Sure, that's Slepner. S is in Sam, L is in Larry, E is in Elvis, P is in Peter, N is in Norman, E is in Elvis, R is in Robert. Slepner.
You swear and affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
Yes, I do.
Thank you.
Before we begin on this case, this morning we had some confusion about a case at 1925 North 4th Street.
Michael Maddione says it may have been your case.
It was my case, and I reviewed that.
What had happened was that case was heard and a vote was taken of the board,
but I believe you had left the record open for me to get in touch with
council member Sanchez for a letter of approval or at least a voice vote of
approval. And I do have that letter today. I can,
it was emailed to the board and to Sharon Saleta earlier this morning,
but I can display it if you want.
Just hold on one second, Sharon, can we can, we can vote that now?
Okay. Let's do that.
and then we'll go on to your 712 North 34th.
So MI-2020-000044, 1925 North 4th Street.
My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
My vote is yes.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Sorry, Jim.
Mr. Slepman, proceed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
In any event, I represent the owner and developer
of 712 North 34th Street, and I would like to share our materials with the board at this moment in
time. Isaac, can I ask you a quick question here? Sure, go ahead. Have you emailed an exhibit packet
with the required documents, which are proof of ownership, proof of tax compliance, copy of their
refusal or referral, and photos and plans five days in advance of the hearing? Yes, we have.
Okay. And also, have you met with the RCO, and do you have a letter from them?
Yes, we have, and yes, we do.
Great. You may continue. Thanks.
Okay. Thank you. All right. Let me get back into the technology here. So, I am actually now going
to share my screen, and I'll walk through with everybody what we have.
I'm sorry, Jim. Can you check and see if he waves and steps?
Most certainly. Sorry about that. Isaac, do you agree to waive the reading of the refusal
and stipulate to its accuracy? Yes, I do. And yes, I do.
Thank you very much. All right. You're welcome. So going through here, we've got
the following. Well, first, we have the notice of refusal, which we just stipulated to.
Second, we've got Exhibit 2 is our site plan and I will turn that so everybody can see it.
It's a proposed three-story multi-family dwelling and at the top is our site plan. You can see this
is 712 north 34th. Going here towards this corner of 34th and Mantua, this kind of curved corner,
that's 714. That's an empty lot. And 710 is also an empty lot. This is a cross-section elevation.
This is kind of on the map, which I can enlarge a little bit, but it's basically there at the
at the, excuse me, the intersection of where 34th, Mantua, and Fairmount all intersect.
This is a photo of the intersection. This is a photo of our property, and I have further photos
of our property. I'm actually going to also bring up on my screen the, excuse me, the 712 North 34th
floor plans so the board can see what's um proposed to be built here and i have with me um
my client eugene natovich uh who will probably be able to charge the floor plans please sure
is that better i can i'll scroll through them
yes all right so well we'll start from the bottom of the page and work our way across so
So it's a proposed three-story, and I believe it's six-unit proposed, but my client will
be able to elaborate on that.
Eugene, are you on?
Can you unmute yourself?
Eugene.
Eugene you can unmute yourself and wait to be sworn in yep please identify yourself
uh full first name second first and last name and your address
Eugene Nidovich, 601 North 39, Philadelphia PA, 19104.
Your last name, please.
And as a Nancy, A-Y-D-O-V-I-C-H.
We're in a firm to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth?
Thank you. Please proceed.
Eugene, if you would, just describe to the board the layout of these apartments.
and how they're going to work in the space based on these plans.
So it's a three-story building with one unit on each side of the staircase.
The budget is going to be slightly raised.
It's going to be about five feet out of the ground,
but it's still a three-story building.
It's six units.
We are planning on having three to four low-income units
based on what we can get for the two to three market rate units.
that's pretty much it so Eugene when you say on either side of the staircase it
would they would be to right or left of the staircase or front and rear of the
staircase front and rear of the staircase gotcha what is the trash
removal plan so what we normally have we actually have our own private trash
pickup in addition to the city trash pickup so in addition to the once a week
from the city we have our own uh own maintenance guys going through all of our properties in the
entire area two additional times per week making sure that everything is clean so we essentially
get three trash pickups per week for each one of our buildings so where's it stored in the unit
um i guess it'll be in the back
well there's everyone all units have access
uh not through the building but given the fact that we literally have three trash pickups per
week we never have any trash issues with any of our units or any of our buildings in the entire
area what what are you showing in the basement i keep seeing offices go back to the basement i'm
sorry okay is there a bit a bit is that a apartment unit no it's a bi-level unit with the first floor
so the basement
well one of the things actually so we started playing around with the um
layout a little bit so since covid we actually had a huge number of people asking for uh units
with a separate office in them because a lot more people are working from home.
So we started trying to plan it out more in a way to be able to accommodate that
without charging a two-bedroom price.
You have pickup once a week for trash?
Three times a week.
Once a week is a city, two times through your company, correct?
But it's not just for this building.
We do that for every single building that we have in Mantua.
And anybody that knows any of our buildings in Mantua will attest that all of our buildings are always, without exception, very clean in the front.
Because we have so many properties in Mantua, we manage to have somebody driving around almost daily, making sure that everything is clean.
There's no debris.
There's no trash.
And it's always very well taken care of.
and so eugene back to these these plans you were saying so it's two each apartments on first second
and third floors correct yep yes okay and so are they they're multiple level apartments or they're
just they're each flat on each level uh second floor has two flat apartments third floor has
two flat apartments, and the first floor with a partial basement has two bi-level apartments.
I got you. Okay, thank you. All right, and you can see these are plans for the six apartments.
Were there any other questions about the plans?
The building is not at ground level. The building is raised five feet. So essentially, it's more of a half basement or a walkout basement than a full basement.
okay and there are no four apartments in the basement they'll bi-level with the
And there are no full apartments in the basement. They're bi-level with the first floor, which is five feet above.
first floor which is five feet above ground okay thank you
that letter you said from the RCO we do have a letter from the RCO chair and I
will be displaying that momentarily we're gonna go back over here to our
exhibit three which are our site photographs so this is a picture of
current situation at 712 North 34th. It's vacant. That tree is kind of overhanging
from either one side or the other. You can see there's a Philly bike share and Indigo station
right next to the site of this proposed building. Those posts are actually for a proposed bicycle
lane, or I'm sorry, for protected bicycle lane. It's not proposed. It exists. And you can see
To the right of our property is also another vacant lot, and to the left as well.
This is a little bit of a wider shot of 712 is roughly between these two white posts.
714 is where the bicycles are, and 710 is that vacant to the right of the white post there.
And this is, again, kind of the same wide shot.
This is a wider shot of the block.
Again, you can see between the two posts is where our property is, 710 over here with the bicycles, 714, and then around there on Mantua Avenue.
And that's the mural of Patti LaBelle right there, which will still be totally visible because this is a proposed project.
It's not attached to anything. It's got vacancies on both sides, empty lots on both sides.
Exhibit 3B is this is the rear alley of the houses on Fairmount Avenue heading east on Fairmount Avenue from, I'm sorry, heading west on Fairmount Avenue from 34th and the fence of the lot next door and the bicycle share.
This is 710 North 34th, again with the bicycles in front of it and again a wide shot of the block.
Bicycle share. There's our property again. There's the next door property with the bicycle
share in front of it. 3C are photos of our orange posters, which were posted at least
21 days ago. There's a first picture of one chained to the chain link fence. There's a
second one. It's a little bit wider shot of it chained to the chain link fence. There
is on the chain link fence. Exhibit four is our project information form, which was actually
produced and submitted back when we first filed this appeal in January of this year,
way before COVID started. But this was filed on January 22nd of 2020. Exhibit number five
is our service of mailed notices to the neighbors per the Philadelphia Zoning Code.
We originally served notice on March 10th, and this is a signed affidavit of service,
and it exhibits of that, which are our letter to the neighbors, and then our copy of our notice
of refusal, and then our copy of all the addresses that we noticed by mail. And as you can see,
there are many of them. It's a pretty dense neighborhood, so there are about 100. Submit 5B
is after COVID, we did it again, and we noticed everyone, all the neighbors, on September 25th.
So this is an affidavit of service attesting to that. And again, our letter dated September 24th,
same letter, notifying the neighbors, our notice of refusal, and our about 100 or so
addresses that were mass mailed with regard to that. Exhibit 6 is a letter from Mantua Civic
Association dated October 6th to you, Mr. Chair, and I guess by extension the rest of the board,
noting the RCO's position of support and the final vote of the meeting was actually 21 in
favor, four against. So it was an overwhelming support of my client and his project at this site.
Exhibit seven is a copy of the deed recorded April 5th, 18 in favor of Lena Holdings, LLC.
and my client Eugene Nadevich is the principal of Lena Holdings LLC again recorded in 2018
that's your deed and your real estate transfer tax certs that go along with the deed exhibit eight
real estate transfer tax certs that go along with the deed. Exhibit eight is we ran the tax records
for Lena Holdings LLC for this property. We were having some sort of trouble with the Department
of Revenue website certificate generator. We've been working on that and we can probably get our
hands on that. But as you can see, there's been zero tax balance going all the way back to 1988
on this property. And that's, those are my materials. I'll open it to questions.
Thank you. Any questions from the board? No. No. Anyone who would like to testify in this case,
if so, please raise your hand. No hands at this time. Thank you. Planning Commission.
Good afternoon, Chairman, members of the board, Ian Litwin with Planning Commission staff.
The Mantua neighborhood was remapped in 2017 according to the recommendations of the comprehensive plan and after significant community input.
This was mapped from RM1, family 5, single family in order to encourage development of single family homes.
This proposal is an overbill that is out of character with the goals of the comprehensive plan.
accordingly we are opposed to granting advance thank you I'm sorry mr. chair if
I may just one more moment if I may call my client to have him adopt the
testimony thank you Eugene you're there yep and Eugene you heard on all of the
testimony that I offered to the board today yes and was it true and correct
to the best of your knowledge yes it was and would you adopt that testimony as though you
had given it yourself yes thank you and i have nothing further for my client i just want to say
one more thing in terms of um the area being zoned for single family um yes it's zoned for single
family that's the one for variants and we had overwhelming community support i believe 20
19 or 20 votes for and only three or four against um we're one of the only low-income
housing builders in the area we don't use any funds we don't use any city tax dollars nothing
so in order for us to achieve having such a high number of low-income units we need that kind of
density and as rco shows we have overwhelming support from the community to do that we're not
asking for extra height. The only thing we're asking
for is just density of the
building.
MI-2020-000062