RE Attorney, Wrote BookS on PA Real Estate Law, Owns Massive Abandominium

[ArcticSplash]

Site: 1817 E YORK ST

The former textile factory, once owned by John Lomax (of LOMAX Carpet fame), also was a hosiery at one point, is owned by "York Street Property Development, LLC."

This building has become an issue since the seals have been broken, the site is massive and it will be a fire hazard this winter for EKNA residents. But that's neither here nor there. The interesting bit is the owners.

INTERESTING FACTOIDS:

• $40,000 in unpaid real estate taxes
• 2 tax liens (and 2011 is not paid either, which will mean 3 liens come April 2012)
• Law firm that owns the LLC is based in Mayfair and in Oxford Valley Mall
• The real estate attorney showing on the LLC has written two books on Phila. and PA real estate law (reference guide books), has served on landlord interest committees, etc.
• The building is in Kensington, right in the same area where Robert Coyle Sr., the infamous "Kensington Slumloard" committed one of the largest property frauds in Philadelphia history
• At one point, the owners approached the civic (EKNA) about redeveloping the property in 2009. Economy exploded and since then it's gone quiet
• The swiss-cheese entrances to the building haven't gone unnoticed by neighbors, or heroin junkies.
• Building poses a MAJOR fire hazard as this is a block-sized complex, and owner-occupied homes exist within 100 yards of the structure, and businesses are adjacent.

GOOGLE STREET VIEW OF BUILDING

HISTORICAL DOC SHOWING BUILDING USED BY JOHN LOMAX (LOMAX CARPETS)

Apparently in 2009 the owner was pursuing developing the factory into apartments, studios, & commercial space:

8199 Appl.No.: 192062 Zon. Class.: G-2 Gen 1817 E York St (Thru To Jasper Street And Boston Street) Applicant: Vincent Mancini Landmark Design Owner: Yml Realty Incorporated Darrell M. Zaslow, Esquire Number Of Permits:6 Permit For The Conversion Of An Existing Structure For Use As : Wing ‘A’- 55 Apartments; Wing ‘B’ - Eight ( Apartments; Wing ‘C’- Eighteen (18) Apartments And Five (5) Commercial Studio Apartments (Live/Work- Commercial Uses As Permitted In C-2 Commercial District); Wing ‘D’- Three (3) Commercial Spaces For Uses As Permitted In C-2 Commercial District And Common Area For Recycling/Trash; Erection Of Three (3) Exterior. Access Stairs, One (1) Accessibility Ramp, A Three (3) Story Stair Tower And Four Walk Up Stairs.

1515 Arch Street —18th Floor
Zoning Board

TRACEBACK OF THE BUILDING OWNERS:





WALDER ADDRESSES



ZASLOW ADDRESSES AND PHONE NUMBERS

Zaslow's website lists him as the attorney for the Homeowner’s Association of Philadelphia and board member / legal adviser of the Pennsylvania Residential Owner’s Association.

Getting all sorts of interesting, relevant and irrelevant information on Zaslow.
* He runs in the Philly bar association's 5K.
* He has two books out which seem to be compendiums of state real estate statutes.
* He patented an ornamental clock face design.

ZASLOW'S WEBSITE PROFILE:

Mr. Zaslow has represented HAPCO, the Homeowner’s Association of Philadelphia, for the last 32 years. HAPCO is the largest association of rental property owners in the state of Pennsylvania. Mr. Zaslow is also a board member and legal advisor to the Pennsylvania Residential Owner’s Association, PROA, representing real estate organizations from across the state. Mr. Zaslow is active on all levels of state and local government in matters relating to real estate law, and lectures on issues of Real Estate and Municipal Law. Mr. Zaslow is the former Solicitor for Bensalem Township, the largest second-class township in Pennsylvania, responsible for all law matters of the government. Mr. Zaslow is regularly consulted by local government attorneys and officials for insights and suggestions.

Mr. Zaslow is just as frequently called upon to represent average citizens experiencing difficulties with local government, including representation before township boards and land development commissions, and the various zoning boards of adjustment. In numerous cases well documented in the case books and newspapers of the region, Mr. Zaslow has achieved successful results in the Courts for various neighborhood groups and associations, protecting them from over- development in their neighborhoods, when the local governing body failed to follow appropriate rules and procedures.

Mr. Zaslow’s published works include Pennsylvania Municipal and Real Estate Law Source, now in its 8th edition, a compilation of Pennsylvania Law impacting upon local government, zoning, and land development. Mr. Zaslow's book is consulted regularly across the state of Pennsylvania by other attorneys who benefit from Mr. Zaslow’s concise presentation of Pennsylvania law on the subject.

By appointment of the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, and the Senate of the State of Pennsylvania, Mr. Zaslow has served on various civic boards and commissions. His most recent appointment (2004), together with 36 other attorneys with expertise in real property law, is to the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission Advisory Committee on Real Property Law, charged with consolidating and rewriting Pennsylvania Real Property Laws, and the State Government Advisory Subcommittee on Landlord Tenant Law. He also served by appointment to the Mayor’s Lead Paint Commission, the Philadelphia Lead Poisoning Task Force, the State of Pennsylvania Childhood Lead Poisoning Commission, and the Bensalem Township Home Rule Study Commission.

Mr. Zaslow is active in civic and community affairs, and has received commendations from both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Pennsylvania Senate for his efforts in furthering good government and successful community life.

SOURCE:
* Custody And Support Law Attorneys - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Walder And Zaslow, P.C.

[ArcticSplash]

By the way on StreetView you don't get a full appreciation for the size of the complex. It's actually 3 wings, the obvious one you can see at York & Jasper.

Switch to Satellite view and you can see that it's a U-shaped multistory structure with a center courtyard. Lots of square footage on the inside. Boston St. has occupied buildings all along that street, and businesses along Front/K where walls meet.

Normally I wouldn't get that excited about an abandominium since there's hundreds of them around, but this one seems a little unique that a dude who is an author of a reference guidebook on state and local property law happens to control this property, AND on BRT it's showing at least 3 tax liens and the LLC owes 40-thousand-dollars.


The least the LLC could do is to pay their tax bill and seal up the building to keep it from being a junkie motel. I mean that's the MINIMUM they could do.


Now... I know it's nearing the holidays and a lot of people will be out to lunch... but let's see if L&I has the balls to actually do something about this. There are ZERO L&I code violations showing in the Muni docket sheets against York St. Development, LLC.

[ArcticSplash]

Here we go. Collection of about 40 some odd pictures I just took.

The 4WD SUV (Page 6) has auto tags HBC-9944. Feel sorry if that was your car (front wheels are gone).

Photo Gallery

[ArcticSplash]

Ok one last picture. Revenue has been down all day I dunno what was up with that, but their site is back up.

I have to amend what I said in the first post. 2 tax liens, but come April 2012 it will be 3. It looks like they stopped paying taxes right after they gave up with their plans to develop the property and it's been racking it up ever since.


Maybe it's me, but the taxes seem kinda high.

[ArcticSplash]

1817 N YORK has been hit by L&I 3 times against YML before YML transferred the property over to "York Street Property Development Group". YML is definitely the monogram of the owner--a single guy (he's both the CEO and the Secretary, and this is a corporation registration, not an LLC).

That explains the $3 transfer showing up on OPA's website.

I created a geo-coded Google map just now of the addresses in just these L&I filings:
YML L&I LAWSUIT ACTIVITY

Design Owner: Yml Realty Incorporated Darrell M. Zaslow, Esquire

OK I have two interesting twists to this story. This is gonna be my longest post ever on f.us but it's a good one.


Think Robert Coyle Sr. - Part II. Except for brevity I'm gonna call this guy "YECH"


Twist 1 - Remember how I said Darrell Zaslow's principal partnership can't be confirmed (because I didn't pull a DUNS report)? I was thinking about this after an e-mail exchange with a reporter and I remember NEW KENZO said there's an NY investor. So I looked at Dan's post again.

Design Owner: Yml Realty Incorporated Darrell M. Zaslow, Esquire

A common tactic that bad people use is to hide behind lawyers in addition to hiding behind their special purpose entity LLCs. (Kinda like Enron)

Twist 2 - It's a good thing this place never got redeveloped by the people who approached EKNA. The guy who owns/operates YML REALTY is a SLUMLORD. "YECH".

He's in Brooklyn. So it looks like NEW KENZO wins the "Truthiness" award.



My first reaction is to start looking for L&I code violations. THERE ARE A LOT.

And it gets worse... a lot of these cases? DISMISSED. Why? Process server can't find him. Does the City give up trying to prosecute it? YES! I can't see but a couple of cases, looking at the addresses of the properties, where L&I has come back and tried again to serve this guy. In fact, a lot of these L&I violation cases are dismissed that way.



Is it sloppy legal work?




Hmm on this case with the same service address, they mailed a green card to Yech and Yech signed for it.

Is it this dude is good at avoiding the process server? Maybe he is... but tens of thousands of dollars of L&I violations never got served on the guy. Maybe the first years working at the Law Department haven't been told that when you get no process service, sometimes you might have to be aggressive?

There is only ONE single case out of this big pile where I see where the City Law Department was pretty aggressive at getting a default judgment. And in that case, Yech was concerned enough to scope out a lawyer. He picked none other than Kenneth Baritz, the Philly landlord's favorite attorney (because his office is steps away from the court).

In that case, Kenneth filed one continuance after another one. Then the court went ahead and entered a default judgment, Ken came back to ask for that judgement to be vacated, the judge agreed, and some more continuances, then finally Yech settled with L&I. Whoever was handling that case at the Law Department was a pretty patient fella.



Now, here's all the crap Yech has been doing as a Philly slumlord:

[Valley Twin]

You need to check the actual deed. OPA's site is incorrect. The sale price on 3/17/2009 was $730,000, not $3.

[ArcticSplash]

[ArcticSplash]

You need to check the actual deed. OPA's site is incorrect. The sale price on 3/17/2009 was $730,000, not $3.

Valley: Can you search this company.... YML REALTY? I've found tons of L&I suits in Muni Court. But I need some way to get a complete list of what these two companies own in the city:

"YML REALTY" and
"YML HOUSING"


They are registered as Pennsylvania corporate entities and I can find quite a number of addresses on BlockShopper, but not all the property that they own.

[ArcticSplash]

I've started a list of properties that YML REALTY holds. I wish I could search the BRT database by name, but for now I'm resorting to constructing the list based on deep Google searches of realty websites.

Dug up another 41 property tax liens.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...2WE9GQWc#gid=0

[Sharkfood]

From the first post:

•Law firm that owns the LLC is based in Mayfair and in Oxford Valley Mall

I see no evidence that the law firm owns the LLC, as opposed to just allowing its address to be used as a favor to the client, which is not uncommon.

[Sycamore]

From the first post:

•Law firm that owns the LLC is based in Mayfair and in Oxford Valley Mall

I see no evidence that the law firm owns the LLC, as opposed to just allowing its address to be used as a favor to the client, which is not uncommon.

Yep. Very common.

[ArcticSplash]

Yes I can't change the title of the thread. I've already busted past the lawyer masking the LLC yesterday and found the principal dudes.

They are two Hasidic Jewish brothers who live in Brooklyn. They once approached a civic here in my hood looking to renovate a factory, then they disappeared. They have not touched the property since and it's now a heroin-addict hotel.


I'm going through all their properties and looking at court records to tally how much they owe the city, how many people they've evicted and their names, and trying to find all the properties connected to them.

[ArcticSplash]

Ok I've put all my notes in one place that's easier to understand:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...lNWbFU2WE9GQWc



The nutshell: They defaulted on two MASSIVE mortgages, and one of them is for 728 MARKET ST in Center City, next to the Rite Aid. This building is what's caused their real estate empire to collapse and burn. 728 MARKET ST is now in foreclosure.

Why didn't this make the news?

[Sycamore]

Since you like research, here's a clue about finding the owners of businesses that may not need publicly disclose all of the members--sometimes the partnership/llc agreement is attached to the mortgage documents, which ARE public record.

We use a program called RealQuest.com that, for a fee, allows us to search by owners name countrywide. But, I have to enter a file number to get a search going, so I have to limit it's use.