You Gonna Use That?

A neighborhood debates how best to develop abandoned property.

by Andrew Thompson

Annals of gentrification

Michael T. Regan RIPE FOR DEVELOPMENT: This abandoned building, at Front and Norris, could have been the home of an architectural firm. Will NSCA make use of it? (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

A few years ago, Tim McDonald saw the abandoned bank under the El on the corner of Front and Norris streets and thought it would make a good home for his architectural firm, Onion Flats. The building's owners left in 1983 and, six years later, ownership was transferred to the Norris Square Civic Association (NSCA).

"I love old buildings and thought that would be a great space to renovate for our company and other companies," says McDonald, whose firm is headquartered in the Norris Square neighborhood. "That corner is so derelict. It just breeds, breeds, breeds drugs and prostitution. I wanted to change it and help change the corner."

McDonald approached NSCA's executive director, Patricia De Carlo. He says he offered to buy the building; De Carlo says he offered to pay what NSCA paid (which was nothing), and that she doesn't "give away property to private business folks." In any case, De Carlo declined, telling McDonald she was going to hold on to the property until she found a good use for it.

So far, NSCA hasn't: The bank still sits under the El, as boarded up and unused as the day McDonald made his offer, and is being considered for demolition.

"I don't expect them to be doing something with it for some time," McDonald says now.

De Carlo says she still has plans for the site.

Norris Square sits just west of the El between Berks Street and Lehigh Avenue, and at more than two-thirds Hispanic, is home to one of the highest concentrations of Latinos in the city. Twenty-five years ago, a group of women formed NSCA to clean up Norris Square park — the recreational centerpiece of the neighborhood — which had become a haven for crime and drugs. Among the founders was De Carlo, a Puerto Rico native and longtime attorney and activist. With the assistance of the community, NSCA transformed the park from "Needlepoint Park" into, well, the recreational centerpiece of the neighborhood.

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Since then, with De Carlo at the helm, NSCA evolved into a full-blown community development corporation, taking control of dozens of properties worth millions of dollars. The source of this land varies: Some comes from absentee owners who choose to donate or sell their properties for bargain basement prices (to get tax write-offs) rather than renovate them. Other land comes from the city's chest of repossessed properties: This was particularly true when John Street, an associate of De Carlo (she served on his mayoral transition team), was council president and mayor.

But instead of allowing someone to develop the land (as CDCs often do), NSCA has held on to much of it. Sometimes it uses the land to provide community services such as child care centers and low-income housing (amenities most private developers would have ignored). And sometimes, caught in the slow process of trying to do development on its own, it allows parcels ripe for renovation to languish.

People familiar with De Carlo typically say one of two things about her: that they love her, or that they love her but strongly disagree with her philosophy of how to manage NSCA's property. These critics would like to see her relinquish some land to those with the means (and will) to transform it.

Sitting in her office across from Norris Square park, De Carlo talks about the myriad projects NSCA has undertaken at the community's behest. The community wanted low-income housing, so a burned-out casket factory was turned into housing units available for $525 a month (and built by an ad-hoc construction company employing workers from the neighborhood). When residents wanted a bilingual child-care center, they got it. When they wanted a senior center, they got that, too.

"We go to the community and the residents and say, 'What are the next needs? What are your wants?'" she says, adding that her concern rests with the people who have long-term investments in the neighborhood outside of home values. "The folks who have lived here for over 20 years," she says, "they want to make this home."

De Carlo's dedication to caring for longtime residents, and her understanding that community growth doesn't just mean rising real estate prices, is widely admired in the neighborhood. But property management is another matter.

"There's no plan," says Victor Negron, who grew up in the area and helped start the Kensington West Neighborhood Association to fill in the gaps he felt NSCA left open. Negron offers the typical caveat before speaking about NSCA: "[NSCA] is a staple of this community and it's done a lot of good things," he says. But he wonders why the organization has continued to acquire land even as properties it owns sit in disrepair.

These days, De Carlo doesn't go without opposition from City Hall. Maria Quiñones-Sanchez, councilwoman from the 7th District, has often butted heads with De Carlo over how to develop the neighborhood. Quiñones-Sanchez tends to argue for greater private development and efficiency, while De Carlo — with her distrust of private entities, outsiders, and her fear that increased real estate prices will drive out longtime residents — prefers to keep properties in NSCA's name.

"The fact of the matter is that through public policy we can protect people with fixed incomes," says Quiñones-Sanchez. "This notion of us versus them, rich versus poor, are the politics of the past. We can have this fabulous neighborhood that is properly valued and protect people on fixed income. This notion of one or the other is not cool."

De Carlo, however, believes you can provide services or usher in development, but you can't do both. As Nathaniel Popkin observes in The Possible City: Exercises in Dreaming Philadelphia, her opposition to gentrification is vehement.

In 2004, the School District of Philadelphia decided to break up Kensington High School into three distinct entities. One of those entities was to be the Kensington High School for Creative and Performing Arts (Kensington CAPA). The school district planned to build it in the last remaining lot in the Kensington area big enough to support the $44 million project — a 7-acre plot of land on Front and Norris Streets, just south of Norris Square.

NSCA had bought the land in 2001 for $500,000, after the previous owner decided to give the civic association a discount (the appraised value was $3 million) to receive a tax break. NSCA proceeded to pay a reduced tax rate on the property.

When the school's developers approached NSCA to buy the land, however, De Carlo balked. She wanted to sell it at its new appraisal value of $3.2 million. The developers offered a lesser figure, and after years of stalemate, the lot sold for $2.3 million in September.

De Carlo defends playing hardball with the developers by saying, " [The developers] are getting $43 million. Why should we give them a break?" The revenue from the sale, she says, can go to fund (as-yet non-specific) plans for the renovation of St. Boniface — a five-building property NSCA owns and has considered turning into an employment or recreation center.

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But the money may not ultimately come out of the developers' pockets. "That extra money that the developers spend is going to come out of programming," says Quiñones-Sanchez. Since the school district and developers signed a contract for $44 million, the developers will likely cut something else out of the project.

Days after De Carlo said she had plans to turn the bank under the El into more affordable housing, her application for financing was denied.

"It's a whole new world [for De Carlo]," says Quiñones-Sanchez. She says the inauguration of the Nutter administration introduced a "data-driven" climate that expects plans and results, and that no CDCs — including NSCA — will be able to acquire land as easily as they can write the address on a slip of paper.

"[De Carlo] sent me a letter asking me for 20 properties, and it's a one-pager," says Quiñones-Sanchez. "And I said, 'Pat, this administration now wants a justification. What's the current value, what's the proposal, and what's the future value?'"

Land owned by CDCs will also no longer be allowed to violate zoning ordinances so easily, she says. But while City Hall can prevent groups like NSCA from acquiring city-owned land, and make sure the properties they do own are kept in working order, it can't do anything more — it can't make them sell, or develop. As long as NSCA's properties are clean and safe, they can remain under their current ownership.

(andrew.thompson@citypaper.net)