Parking authority boots tenants

The Philadelphia Parking Authority is playing landlord to about a dozen tenants at 1906 Sansom St. And, according to the tenants and their state representative, the city agency has played the role with about as much social grace as its reputation on the street.

In October, the PPA acquired the residential building along with a cluster of properties, including the neighboring Oliver H. Bair Funeral Home, to make way for a commercial project that stretches from Sansom Street through to Walnut Street, on the northwest corner of Rittenhouse Square.

Immediately upon snagging the building, the PPA issued eviction notices to the tenants, who then had 30 days (by Nov. 30) to vacate the building.

"It was shocking," said tenant Marianne Morris, who runs a technical writing and consulting business from her home. "We were led to believe we'd have plenty of notice, till spring. It was really scary."

A person living with AIDS, mothers and their children, and students readying for finals were some of the other tenants in the building that were put on alert.

"We all thought it was pretty unfair," said resident Timothy Boyle, a travel consultant who also works from home. "It's totally unrealistic and unfair to expect people to move with no notice."

A few neighbors ran into each other in the hall while collecting their mail and decided to organize to request more time, Boyle said. Though their yearly leases had given way to month-to-month leases, making the evictions legal, the residents still thought the timeframe unfair.

Boyle contacted State Rep. Babette Josephs, who he had met in an acting class the two had taken at the Wilma Theater. ("Politicians are acting all the time anyway, right?" Josephs said.)

Josephs worked with City Council President John Street's office to apply pressure to the PPA to offer the tenants more time. Josephs and the tenants also fired off letters to Mayor Ed Rendell.

"It's clearly inhumane to force people out of their homes in the middle of winter," Josephs said. "It's not rational, humane, and probably not even legal."

Josephs said she heard the PPA had no interest in managing apartments.

"If the Parking Authority didn't want to manage a building with tenants, then it should not have bought a building with tenants," Josephs said. Josephs' letter to the mayor, for some reason, was returned to sender, she said. However, the pressure from Josephs and Street's office managed to secure a stay for the tenants till Feb. 28, 1998.

In a Nov. 21 letter, the PPA granted the remaining 10 or so tenants (six or seven have moved) the extra time. It also offered that if tenants needed even more time, they should request it in writing and they would be considered on a case-by-case basis, according to Rendell spokesman Kevin Feeley.

Still, the letter from the PPA's executive director, Rina Cutler, was "a real back-biting" letter, that said it was "unfortunate" the situation couldn't be worked out without interference, Boyle said.

Through a spokesperson, Cutler has refused comment on the project underway on the 1900 blocks of Walnut and Sansom Streets. She did not return repeated telephone calls about the 1906 Sansom St. eviction. (Cutler also is not returning calls about the illegal parking going on in the vacant lot on the 1900 block of Walnut Street, said Rittenhouse Police Partnership President Ben Heinzen.)

In June, Cutler told City Paper the PPA was financing a $25 million garage and commercial business project on the northwest corner of Rittenhouse Square. The businesses then being considered to accompany the large garage would probably be a movie theater and a restaurant, said Cutler and Eric Seidman, a developer with Bala Cynwyd-based Moreland Investments.

Cutler has agreed to make a formal presentation of the project to the board of the Center City Residents' Association in mid-January, said CCRA zoning chair Judith Eden.

Josephs called the project "questionable" and said neighbors are getting increasingly hostile toward the developers and Cutler, who have offered no new information on the project. Moreland Investments' Seidman did not return calls at press time.

"I have many questions about the project itself," Josephs said. "I'm not so sure we need a huge parking structure on Rittenhouse Square and I'm not sure community groups will be behind it."

Community response could be a major factor in the project's development and zoning variances, since re-zoning rules that came into effect in the early '90s called for no more large-scale parking facilities south of Chestnut Street.

Other neighborhood concerns are curb cuts on Walnut Street (Cutler told CP in June that she wants access to the garage from Walnut), building height limits, and the size and owner of the proposed movie theater (the United Artists-run Sameric on Chestnut Street is not a favorite with neighbors).

"We'll be watching closely," Josephs said. "People will get more involved as the project becomes more real."

-John McCalla