Party's Over

Don't even think about having any fun near Councilman Darrell Clarke's house.

by Andrew Thompson

[ noise pollution ]

Neal Santos STOP THE ROCK: Darrell Clarke's legislation would keep anything like the short-lived Fishtown Collective — founded by Will Sacksteder (left) and Victor Gennaro (right) — from opening in the neighborhood again.

In the long list of Philadelphia's turgid and ineffective agencies, the Department of Licenses & Inspections has always ranked among the most turgid and ineffective. Fair or not, it's the agency known for not doing much — and when it does, it's usually not what you wanted, or when you wanted it.

But Victor Gennaro and Will Sacksteder don't know L&I for its lethargy. They know L&I for its uncharacteristic swiftness on a mid-May weekend. On May 9, Gennaro and Sacksteder, both 20, held the inaugural event of the Fishtown Collective, a midsize venue inside an empty warehouse underneath the El on Front and Jefferson streets. It was three months in the making. They say L&I gave them a written go-ahead to have the event. (They didn't keep the letter; the L&I officials who would have had knowledge of such a letter didn't return calls seeking comment.)

"We sold 500 tickets that night," says Gennaro, a junior at Temple University with Sacksteder. "We had a hell of a night."

A block away, just west of Front Street on Jefferson, is Councilman Darrell Clarke's rowhome, and surrounding that rowhome are Clarke's constituents, who Clarke says complained about the nuisance of the Fishtown Collective — beer bottles, loud music, public urination. Gennaro says one resident approached him after the event with a long litany of complaints, including: "The councilman couldn't park his car."

By Monday, May 11, L&I had posted a "cease operations" notice on the warehouse. A couple of weeks later, Gennaro and Sacksteder went to Clarke's City Hall office. When Clarke came in, they stood up to introduce themselves. "I know who you are," Gennaro says Clarke bluntly told them. Clarke, they say, told them that they were "assaulting" and "terrorizing the neighborhood."

"He looked at us," says Gennaro, "and said, 'I am going to do everything in my power to make sure you never operate in this neighborhood again.'" Clarke denies saying anything of the sort. But regardless of what he said, that's exactly what he did.

On June 18, without fanfare or media attention, City Council unanimously passed a bill called the North Central Front Street Special District Controls, which Mayor Nutter later signed. Like other Special District Controls, the law prohibits certain developments without the approval of the Zoning Board of Adjustments — a board that rarely signs off on a proposal if a councilmember, like Clarke, dissents. In effect, the law gives Clarke veto power over what happens in his backyard. (This isn't Clarke's first experience with Special District Controls. In 2005, Clarke wrote the Girard Avenue Special District Controls, which bans new supermarkets and pharmacies from a commercial corridor bereft of either. )

HALF OFF DEPOT

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Clarke introduced his bill on May 14, five days after the Fishtown Collective hosted its show. It places heavy restrictions on a strip of Front Street right around the Fishtown Collective's location, and effectively neutralizes the possibility of anything but residences ever existing within the law's jurisdiction, between Girard and Oxford avenues. (There were already restrictions on bars, restaurants and other nightlife in place for much of Fishtown and Northern Liberties; this new law tightened those restrictions.)

In a telephone interview, Clarke says there is no connection between the Fishtown Collective and the new zoning rules, "because they weren't in compliance already" — meaning that he didn't need to change the rules to have the collective shut down. But the law doesn't just prevent Fishtown Collective from obtaining the proper permits to get back and running; it prevents anything like Fishtown Collective from ever opening in the area again.

While these restrictions apply onlyto a four-block stretch of Front Street, it's a potentially critical spot for the burgeoning arts movement in Fishtown and South Kensington. The El's underbelly, in all its darkness and abundance of vacancies, has long been a hot destination for undesirables, and it's tough to lure developers to build much underneath the thunder of the Frankford line. Clarke's restrictions cover everything from auto repair shops to bath houses, takeout shops to any establishment besides the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board selling alcohol — in other words, no bars. Even vending machines are banned. Most broadly, it prohibits the "entertainment of guests and patrons as a main use."

"We had absolutely no idea this was coming through," says Micah Hanson, who chairs the zoning committee of the Fishtown Neighbors Association (FNA). "And then we were notified, not through the councilman's office, but through the [New Kensington Community Development Corp.].

"You're using an elephant gun to swat a fly," Hanson adds. "You don't install this councilmanic privilege that changes the zoning of an area just because you have one building that's a problem."

Neighbors recall the Fishtown Collective show as a nuisance. "People pissed on my fence," says Rob, who wouldn't give his last name. Pointing at the ground next to him, he says, "Down there were beer bottles all over the place."Even though there were no recorded calls to the police that night, it's easy to imagine a few people out of 500 irritating the area's residents. But if the options left for under that section of the El are whittled down to factories (which no one builds anymore), offices and residences (neither of which anyone wants underneath a screaming train), what exactly is left to go there?

"Given where the El is, right over it, that in and of itself limits legitimate uses you can have there," says the FNA's Hanson, who is also an architect. "As much as we all focus on mixed use and commercial and condos and art galleries, at the same time, there are still people that make things, whether it's music or metal work or whatever, and I think that an area like that could go a lot of ways."

Of those, metal work is now the only legal possibility.

L &I says its swift crackdown on the Fishtown Collective was not unusual. The agency's nuisance task force, which handles these types of complaints, is run out of the Philadelphia Police Department, says spokesman Dominic Verdi. It responds to complaints more quickly, particularly when they center on a time-specific event — like 500 rowdy kids in an empty warehouse under the El.

Today, the Fishtown Collective is but a shell of its former self. On a Saturday in October, Gennaro and Sacksteder lead a City Paper reporter through the Collective's empty carcass, housed in a warehouse attached to the Chalmur Bag Factory, a company owned by Sacksteder's father. Chunks of the stage have been torn off and donated to artist friends for projects. Water has dripped down and soaked sections of the particle board. A banner hangs on one wall with the words "Fishtown Collective" written in urban bubble lettering.

Gennaro stands behind a makeshift box office set up in a room within the warehouse and recounts how much they spent. "The sad thing," says Sacksteder, "is we didn't even make back our initial costs."

Gennaro and Sacksteder offer indictments of bureaucratic absurdity, recount the fun of the night, and display the mostly empty warehouse with a mix of pride and defense. There's a feeling of, "You see? This is what could have been."

"Fishtown is being labeled as this up-and-coming arts community," says Gennaro, "and we just wanted to be a part of that."

Gennaro starts to speak, then stops — he has to wait until the roar of the El train passes.

(andrew.thompson@citypaper.net)