July 21-27, 2005

cityspace

Imminent Domain

by Lee Norsworthy

During her childhood in West Oak Lane, April Hidouri never questioned the rows of hollowed-out buildings lining each dying block. But several years – and a dead-end job – later, Hidouri was sitting in her favorite Center City coffee shop when she envisioned her own neighbors chatting over a cup of hot chocolate beside crisply painted walls, with Miles and Mary J. humming in the background.

That very day, she called the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corporation, a community development organization that owns many neighborhood properties. In June 2003, OARC brought Hidouri to Ogontz and 72nd Avenue, the building she had once passed daily on her way to school. "It was run-down and infested," she recalls, "a black hole with no walls or ceilings." She made up her mind right away.

Today, Hidouri's Cornbread and Coffee — with its cozy furniture and floor-to-ceiling murals-- is just one of many thriving small businesses that line Ogontz Avenue in a rainbow of pristine awnings. Still, just across the street from Cornbread and Coffee, successive owners have left two adjacent properties to rot for more than 15 years and, one after another, refused to put them to use.

Because acquiring similar vacant properties has been one of OARC's greatest challenges, the organization has applied for status as an Urban Renewal Zone, which would allow the use eminent domain to acquire these elusive properties. While eminent domain has long been sanctioned to condemn "blighted" properties for the greater good, a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing its use for private economic development has both home and small business owners worried that no protection stands between their property rights and eviction.

OARC executive director Jack Kitchen maintains that, in the right hands, it is often the only way to wrestle away blighted properties that are magnets for crime and detriments to development. Kitchen, gazing at the clean and colorful Ogontz Avenue, shakes his head. "Silly things," he says, "shouldn't be obstructing our project." He does not care to sugarcoat OARC's aggressive stance on menacing properties. When one corner store refused to stop selling tobacco to minors, OARC bought the property and terminated the tenant's lease. Here, it is hard to find a soul who disapproves of OARC's work. "If you stay within the confines of the law, then you're welcome to stay," he says.

Already approved by City Council, the proposal still needs a nod from City Planning Commission and then the City Council Redevelopment Authority.