Undercut and Overgrown

Unless the city coughs up soon, thousands of vacant lots may go to seed this year.

by Anthony Campisi

SNOW VACANCY: New Kensington's Sandy Salzman fears that without funding, the neighborhood's vacant lots will look like this one, at Frankford Avenue and Letterly Street.

Neal Santos

[ weeds ]

To understand the difference an abandoned lot can make in its neighborhood, look no further than the 1900 block of East Cumberland Street in Kensington.

At one end is the vacant lot at Jasper and Cumberland, where the body of Nicole Piacentini, the second of three victims believed to have been killed by the "Kensington Strangler," was found. Since the horrific murder, community members have spruced up the site a bit. Before that it was a mess of garbage and high weeds which — tragically — blocked its interior from view.

On the other end of the block is another lot. This one, however, is landscaped and free of trash, with a few trees to give it character.

That's the stark contrast Sandy Salzman, executive director of the New Kensington Community Development Corp. (NKCDC), draws when talking about the importance of the Community LandCare program, a city-funded initiative that paid for neighborhood groups to clean up and maintain vacant lots throughout Philadelphia.

The program was cut this summer, and unless that funding is restored, Saltzman fears that some 2,600 vacant lots will soon look just like the one at Jasper Street. Already, hers and other community groups have laid off or soon will lay off dozens of workers responsible for maintaining these spaces. And while the city dangles the possibility that something is in the pipeline to replace that service, it looks like the thousands of lots will remain in limbo at least another year.

The Community LandCare program began with a simple idea: It's hard to spark an economic revitalization in a neighborhood full of trash-strewn dead zones with waist-high weeds. As Salzman puts it: "Who wants to move into a neighborhood that's scary?"

And so, in 1995, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), using a grant from the William Penn Foundation, paid NKCDC to clean key parcels of vacant land in its neighborhood. Under former Mayor John Street, the program got city funding, and expanded to other neighborhoods: By 2010, 15 community groups were cleaning about 2,600 lots throughout the city.

The immediate results — at least in terms of redevelopment — were often small, but they added up. Statistics from a companion vacant-lot cleanup program run by PHS using for-profit contractors are illustrative: About 10 percent of the parcels enrolled in that program over the years have been developed, and 250 were developed last year alone. Moreover, a PHS-commissioned study found that properties adjacent to lots maintained under that program had property values 37 percent higher than properties abutting blighted lots.

The maintenance also gave neighborhoods a sense of comfort and care. Salzman credits the Community LandCare program with helping spark a renaissance in the neighborhood NKCDC serves, including the ongoing transformation of East Kensington into a haven for artsy types and other newcomers. The group's $70,000 portion of the city's grant, Salzman says, was "big bang for a little buck."

But now everything's changed. The Nutter administration, in a round of budget cuts this summer, slashed funding for PHS programs, including Community LandCare, leaving PHS with just enough money to continue it through October. Since then, PHS and the neighborhood groups that relied on that funding had been holding out hope that somehow the money would reappear — but that hope has all but faded: The program's most ardent supporters are now conceding that even if funding were to be secured, it probably won't be until fiscal year 2012.

The cuts have already shuttered NKCDC's Garden Center, at Frankford and Berks, which sold plants and ran workshops. Salzman had to let all three of her LandCare staff members go. Some 80 seasonal workers have been or are likely about to be laid off by neighborhood organizations around the city, according to Bob Grossman, who heads the PHS Philadelphia Green program, which administers the LandCare money.

But, Grossman warns, the real effects won't be felt until the spring, when the snow melts, and the trash begins to pile up again — it'll mean "a dramatic change in all these neighborhoods," he says. Some lots along Frankford are already starting to accumulate garbage. Ironically, the budget cut comes at the same time that the city managing director's office is working on a blueprint to revamp the way the city deals with vacant land. The maintenance of vacant lots, officials say, will also be hashed out in that process.

But Nutter isn't making any promises: Mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald says only that it's too early in the budget process to talk about the fate of individual programs — too early for the city, maybe, but dangerously late for those hoping that money will reappear before next year's budget gets passed. Otherwise, says Grossman, "I don't see anything happening for the remainder of 2011."

(editorial@citypaper.net)