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Area Board of Zoning Appeals -September 2, 2009 <br />MR. BILL STENZ: I live at 1020 E. Colfax. Actually Steve and I are friends and I hope we still will be after <br />this. And I also happen to be president of the Northeast Neighborhood council. And I am in a pretty unique <br />situation on taking sides on this because I do know Steve and I also am a landlord and I rent an I U student and <br />I rent to a couple of IUSB students and young families that one of them might be going to school. But I don't <br />rent to these super houses that house five or six or seven students. Although I am surrounded by them also. <br />And in particular I've been successful against this same landlord that Steve is surrounded with to limit some of <br />these gross examples of student housing. And I'm not real sure I know, Chuclc and I have been working on <br />this, but about once a year I concentrate on what seems or appears to be a legally grandfathered house and it <br />takes time but when it's all done and said I've been able to prove that it was a false grandfathered and it's been <br />turned back into at least a smaller, maybe two people. I've suggested to Steve that maybe he should be <br />watching extra carefully these other houses because I'm not sure exactly how it goes but I think if you've got <br />a grandfathered house and you've got five students in one year and then three the next year, they hey you can <br />only have three the next year again. So I hate to say I'm against this because I know Steve but we do want our <br />neighborhood back and the only way we can do it is one at a time and I just hope that he has a vacant. There <br />so many, so many brand new student houses appearing that eventually some of these are going to be vacant <br />and we're seeing it already. We're already seeing student rentals that are vacant for periods of time and now <br />they're actually turning into weekend rentals because they can't find the long term $2,000 or $3,000 a month <br />time, five in a house, so if we can just do it one small step at a time, that's what we are trying to do. So if you <br />don't give a negative recommendation certainly no recommendation is better than a yes. Thank you. <br />REBUTTAL: <br />MR. KIMMEL: I take that back, Steve is not the last of the Mohicans, there's three of them left in this area I <br />guess. But he's the last one on St. Peter Street and nobody here lives on St. Peter Street as they refer to it as <br />party row. That's where he is. They may be around it. He's stuck in the middle of it. They talked about <br />things coming back and springing up, I think we showed you on that map the only thing springing up here is <br />more of the same. Apartments opened up two years ago. There's two new apartments. There's now a condo <br />complex that yet hasn't been approved but they're already starting to tear things down. I appreciate their <br />concerns. They are largely, there are some commonalities that everybody here shares and what I hear from <br />them and what you hear from them also is that, this situation is here, it's deeply entrenched and if's there one <br />person on Frances and one up on Almond versus how many yellow houses there, is it realistic to think it's <br />going to come back. Steve's been monitoring. He's been waiting for eight years. And the houses are full to <br />the brim maybe beyond what they even should be so there's to try and put the burden on him to go and <br />petition and keep an eye on every house in the block is just really unreasonable to ask for. I think that's all I <br />have. I know Steve has a few things that he wants to respond to. <br />MR. STEVE DRAGOVICH: I live at 616 N. St. Peter Street. As Jeff said I have been in the neighborhood <br />for eight years and I planned on making that my home and these new things are popping up. And I couldn't <br />agree with these ladies more that we have lost the neighborhood and I think what they said supports my case. <br />The neighborhood's gone. I mean in no time soon it's not going to turn back to single family, it's ridiculous <br />to think it will. And if that was the case then I don't see how these big apartment buildings on the corner ever <br />got approved. And if that was the plan of the Northeast Neighborhood Association then why would they give <br />their recommendation to approve those? Why would they approve the Madison Center building? It's clearly <br />contradictory to what they're claiming. I've done my time. I've cleaned the street. I've cleaned the alley. I <br />keep my property nicer than anyone in the area and I will continue to do that. I'm not going to have an animal <br />43 <br />