Local builders will be back before members of the Greater Bustleton Civic League next week with revised plans for two new homes on the 9600 block of Evans Street.
Emilio DiCicco and Vincenzo Ciocca want to tear down a small brick home at 9615 Evans St. and replace it with two houses they hope to sell for more than $400,000 each. They’re seeking league members’ support because they need a zoning variance to put up structures that will have just 50 feet of street frontage. Currently, 65 feet is required. The small home’s current frontage is 105 feet.
When they presented their plan to members late last month, a few neighbors turned out to oppose the idea. The league’s zoning officer, Carl Jadach, suggested the builders and the neighbors keep talking, so no vote was taken to support or oppose the partners’ proposal.
Last week, the partners met with league board members and then with neighbors to present modified plans.
“We presented our changes to the board that showed significant changes to the original plans,” he wrote in an email to the Northeast Times, “that includes height reduction from 38 feet originally proposed to 30.8 feet.”
He said each home would have 10-foot side yards. He said he hopes the community will back the plan.
On Friday, league president Jack O’Hara said board members also talked to the applicants, their lawyer and architect about some of the comments they’d heard from neighbors.
On Monday, neighbor Dorothy Eckes said she and her husband had hosted a meeting of the partners and five neighbors.
All those who attended the gathering were able to get across their points of view, Eckes said. She said one of the reasons she wanted the meeting was to promote harmony in the neighborhood.
There are a couple of ways to look at what the builders want to do, she said. It can be regarded as a unique situation that has to be judged on its own merits, or it is looked at as something people will just say they don’t want.
There’s a background for that latter opinion, she said. “A lot of detriment has been done by investors in the neighborhood,” she said. “So that’s where that’s coming from.”
“Dorothy did a great job letting me speak and making me understand the neighbors’ concerns and fears,” DiCicco stated in a Dec. 8 email to the Northeast Times. “Vince Ciocca and I really appreciated her effort to try and bring the surrounding neighbors together to have a private discussion and give everyone a chance to voice their opinion.”
In a Dec. 4 interview, DiCicco said he and his partner have gone to some expense to try to accommodate his neighbors. He was ready to have his zoning hearing, but to first meet with the league’s board and neighbors, he said, he asked the ZBA to continue the hearing. ••
