Grid Magazine July 2022 [#158]

PLUS

Putting the fish in Fishtown

p. 6

There’s a kinder alternative to rat poison p. 10 THE LAND ISSUE

The crimes against the Lenape people p. 14

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EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

publisher Alex Mulcahy director of operations Nic Esposito associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com copy editor Sophia D. Merow art director Michael Wohlberg writers Bernard Brown Nichole Currie Nic Esposito Constance Garcia-Barrio Starr Herr-Cardillo Claire Marie Porter Hannah Smith-Brubaker Lois Volta photographers Chris Baker Evens Troy Bynum illustrators Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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W

hen it comes to how the City manages public land, the deck is stacked.

When the City leased the Cobbs Creek Golf Course to the Cobbs Creek Foundation, a West Conshohocken-based nonprofit, for $1 for 30 years, there were no competing bids. There was no discussion about how people in the community might like to utilize the land. Instead, there was a deal made behind closed doors with the foundation. Public outreach was left to the foundation, whose efforts were laughable. They counted meetings — repeat meetings, even — with contractors as well as an event at a sneaker store in Ardmore, as their public outreach. It’s as comical as it is shameful. Nearby residents didn’t know the plans until they started hearing the thundering sound of 100-year-old trees falling to the ground at 7 a.m. Estimates are that the foundation cleared 100 acres of forest.

But those are only estimates, because no survey of the land was ever made public.

Parks & Rec abdicated that responsibility to the nonprofit, which claims they had that work done but never provided any proof.

The outreach for FDR Park was decidedly better — it’s hard to imagine anything worse — but still woefully inadequate. According to an open letter written by activists, nearly 80% of the respondents to the Parks & Rec survey were white, and only eight of 1,300 surveys were answered in a language other than English. But the ethnic and racial makeup of respondents probably did not matter much. Eight of the 12 stakeholders in the process were sports teams.

It appears the administration knew they wanted fields for the World Cup, so they asked for input from like-minded people.

In Cobbs Creek, an actual crime was committed when the foundation, a nonprofit, made an illegal campaign contribution to Councilmember Curtis Jones.

But there’s another potential crime linking Cobbs Creek, FDR Park and two other public lands, Edgely Field and Sedgley Woods.

As Bernard Brown reports in our cover story about Edgely, Philadelphia law prohibits converting outdoor park space from one use to another without following protocols, which include approval from the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Commission, a body that has not met since October 2019. The law says that if the commission were to grant its approval, City Council would then have to vote on it. None of this has happened for any of these projects.

Marc Davies, an attorney and former director of the Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance, a group threatened by the plans for a football stadium at Edgely, believes that replacing a grass field with artificial turf constitutes a change in use that would require such a process. He has launched Friends of Fairmount to protect public lands that are being stewarded privately, and to ensure that true community engagement happens.

The group’s website describes the danger this way: “The Fairmount Park Commission used to make all decisions about park lands in the City, but since the Commission disbanded [in 2010], these decisions have now become more political. With no or little counterbalance or alternative say in park matters, the City will continue to use their governmental overreach making decisions on behalf of the community without actually tapping into the community or soliciting proper feedback and engagement.”

Underscoring all of these anti-democratic decisions about land use is a cavalier attitude about urgent environmental matters. Climate change is upon us. We must be vigilant now.

a l e x m u l ca h y , Editor-in-Chief

I’d like to express a big thank you to Alexandra W. Jones, who served as Grid’s managing editor for the past four years. She’s a careful editor, enthusiastic collaborator and just an overall joy to be around.

I couldn’t have done these last four years without you, Alex, and I wouldn’t have wanted to.

I L LU S T R AT E D P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E ; O N T H E C OV E R : I S TO C K P H OTO ; C H R I S B A K E R E V E N S

Battling for Transparency

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by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

How do you find time to enjoy the fruits of your labor?

O

ne of the things that drew me to Germantown was the amount of space to plant things in the ground.

I’ve had my share of container gardens in concrete backyards that left me wanting to grow more plants. What I really wanted was enough space to grow my own food.

In a time when supply chains are causing so many food disruptions that parents can’t get formula, having a basic understanding of how food is grown is valuable. It takes an extraordinary amount of time to learn a new skill like gardening — not only to prepare the space, plant the seeds and tend the ground, but also to have the patience to make mistakes. The energy I pour in feels like an investment in knowledge and strength, and what it yields can be shared.

There is this dreamy version of my life where I get a plot of land in the mountains to have animals, grow my food, harvest, can and live off the land. How idyllic!

The beautiful truth is, sometimes our dreams can manifest in ways we didn’t see coming — right here in the present.

Nearly every inch of my small front and back yards has a function: the dirt is for plants, the porch is for people. The grass patch that was in my small front yard is now a home for corn, squash, green beans and sunflowers. There is also a partially shaded area that is perfect for growing strawberries and greens. I’ve also planted flowers that can be used for tea.

My backyard is big enough for a variety of vegetables and flowers. I have a small herb garden outside of my kitchen window where I grow enough herbs to last me through the year.

Over the past six years, I have figured out 4

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what food I can grow easily that my family will eat. With internet gardeners as my instructors, I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way. Just like any new skill, it takes determination and passion to get past the first few steps and really get into the swing of it.

By the time the first little seedlings are safe in their summer beds, hope and excitement start to grow as well.

It’s been a learning process and has taken a lot of trial and error. I’ve learned how to keep the weeds at bay, and how to cook and preserve the food that I grow.

After six solid growing seasons at this home, I am forming and integrating gardening and harvesting roots into my dayto-day life. I like to think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

I’ve had a hard time watching the weeds poke up. At times the commitment to the maintenance feels like a burden. When I’m

late cleaning up the yard I feel like I could be doing more, or that all of my hard work could go to waste. Then again, I’m just one person. Letting go of stigmas of perfectly manicured lawns feels appropriate for the times. Erasing beauty standards of what our lawns “should” look like will help us enjoy them as they are — with some room to grow. I’m proud of how I tend my little garden. Weeds and all.

For me, all of the maintenance stress is hype. As soon as I make the time to place the trowel in the soil, I come back to life and the dread of work vanishes. The labor itself feels as good as the tomatoes taste.

There are root systems that have been in my yard for years and years before I moved in. I respect that. I also love to watch how the newer perennials I’ve introduced have made a home for themselves. The waiting for the flower, then the fruit, then the ripening — it’s all worth the time it takes to develop.

My commitment to my outdoor space has been a sign of personal growth as well. The more I am patient with myself and enjoy the labor of my passions, the more beautiful the bloom. ◆ lois volta is a home life consultant, artist and founder of The Volta Way. Send questions to info@thevoltaway.com.

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Honoring Childhood * Connecting with Nature

We all live downstream.

So how do we keep that water clean? From fish to factories, swimmers to sewage, insects to instruments, learn how we've protected our water in the past—and the challenges we face tomorrow. sciencehistory.org/downstream Museum of the

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retail

Fishtown Seafood owner Bryan Szeliga shows off the products at his Fishtown store.

Fish & Town A seafood connoisseur brings a sustainable market to his community by claire marie porter

T

he modest belgrade street retail shop that houses Fishtown Seafood offers high-quality, mostly sashimi-grade seafood that is preserved at peak freshness using a super-freezer. The space also has an entire wall of seafood and culinary equipment, from fish spatulas to grapeseed oil.

“I want people to be successful with preparing their seafood at home,” says Bryan Szeliga, owner of Fishtown Seafood.

Seafood often scares people, he says, because of misconceptions around quality and sustainability — which, in the seafood world, is a “big black hole.” He’s trying to change that through consumer education and full transparency about his own methods. He refers to his standards as “thoughtfully sourced seafood,” which includes ensuring that there are no added chemicals 6 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

to preserve freshness while also not buying seafood that was flown by plane to his distributor. It’s a tall order, but one Szeliga accomplishes by partnering with True Fin, a Maine-based retailer that ensures their fishermen a floor price, so even if the market drops, which it often does, they have a guaranteed income.

“Seafood inherently has a lower carbon footprint,” he says, “so we’re doubling down on that.”

Which means, first and foremost, not buying any seafood shipped by plane, thus keeping the supply chain as short as possible.

He also sources via aquaculture, and though farm-raised seafood is relatively new, he believes it’s the future.

“That’s where feeding the planet is going to come from,” he says.

There is more quality control in aquacul-

ture, he adds, and things you can’t get from wild caught fish — such as consistency in size and fat content.

He doesn’t sell any seafood that has been treated with chemicals. Sodium tripolyphosphate is one that’s often added to fish and shrimp as a preservative, and carbon monoxide is added to commercial tuna to obscure its state of decomposition.

“Bryan is a dream client,” says Brigette Fuscia, a boxed sourcing supplier for Fishtown Seafood. “Both his product and philosophy are completely genuine and extremely thoughtful.”

Szeliga has worked with seafood for many years — attending culinary school, working with James Beard Award-winning chefs and third generation fishmongers. He’d been racking up his supply chain knowledge and expertise when he finally got his own shot at entrepreneurship in September 2021. After two and a half months of preparation he had a soft open on Christmas Eve, followed by a full-fledged launch in January.

Currently, the entire operation is run by Szeliga alone, but he is looking to ramp up business. His ultimate goal is to change the model on seafood distribution and have a positive impact on his immediate community.

Jonathan Sullivan, a neighbor and regular oyster customer, says his family eats a lot more seafood since Fishtown Seafood’s arrival, and also knows a lot more about it.

“I like knowing that I can support oyster farmers and fishers from New Jersey and the Northeast,” he says.

Sullivan and his family are among the more than 40 people who have attended Szeliga’s popular oyster shucking class, and are impressed by Szeliga’s oyster shell recycling program, which allows the used shells to return to the watershed to mitigate erosion and enrich oyster beds.

Szeliga currently works with nine womenowned businesses, a list he keeps posted on the board in the retail shop. From trash can selection to air purifiers to apparel, he carefully sifts through the sourcing options.

“Being a white male I am aware of my privileges,” he says. “I’m the owner and founder, and can’t change that — but I am actively trying to support woman-owned and locally owned businesses,” he says.

“I’m trying to do things better and differently,” says Szeliga. “There are a lot of things I could’ve compromised on, and sold more fish, but I’m just not doing it.” ◆ P HOTO BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

TYHEED

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J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 7

water

Bridge Over Troubled Water Nonprofit arts organizations team up to create a symphonic soundtrack inspired by Tacony Creek Park by bernard brown

T

raffic streams over the Adams Avenue Bridge in the video on the Tacony Creek Suite website. To the motorists, the creek and the park around it are simply something to cross, but the camera, as well as the music, focus on Tacony Creek Park, the corridor of flowing water and forest in the middle.

“Each song depicts some aspect of the creek,” says Professor Randy Gibson, the suite’s composer. “Wings of Eagles” deals with the bird life of the park. “‘Moment of Silence’ reflects the peacefulness — not death but life — surrounding the waters,” Gibson says. “‘Tacony Creek’ is a solo piano describing the creek itself. It’s more like a classical piece. It has the peacefulness and the turbulence.”

Gibson works a mile away from Tacony Creek, as the founder and a teacher at the 8 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

Gibson School of Music and Arts, but he had not spent much time in the park before being approached by Ambrose Liu, the founder and project director of the Olney Culture Lab, a program of CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia that partners with the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership (TTF) to connect residents of surrounding neighborhoods with the park.

“We partner a great deal, and we love to activate public spaces, like Tacony or Fisher Park,” says Liu. “We are bringing more awareness to the space and breaking down barriers and people’s anxieties to going into the space — breaking that fear that residents in Philadelphia might have of a space they deem unsafe.”

TTF and the Olney Culture Lab started with an oral history project. “We heard

fascinating stories from people who grew up near Tacony Creek Park,” says TTF executive director Julie Slavet. “We wanted to share those stories. We know people are connected to nature and want to talk about it. The neighborhoods have really changed a lot. We know that the people who lived around the park in 1970, they’re different people than who live there now. What we wanted to do was think of a way to connect people who had been there as kids to people who are there now.”

“The second phase entailed launching a photo competition,” Liu says, “which was the most democratic means of engaging professional and amateur artists and photographers. These days people have cameras on their phones so everyone’s a photographer.

It gives us access to more lay people who

Opposite: Eyes On Our Landscape Photo Contest first place adult winner, “Fall Time Delights”

by Aimee Nicole Grobe.

This page: Second place youth winner, “Flower Wheel”

by Gabriella Borges.

might not look at themselves as photographers, like ‘I’m not an artist, but I do take pictures when I go on bike rides.’”

Sunshine casts two shadows onto the bed of the creek in “Is It Too Much to Dream,” a photo taken by Gabriella Borges. One of the prize-winning youth photos of the Eyes on Our Landscape Photo Contest, Borges’ entry captures the feeling of the mind wandering while gazing into the creek. “Fall Time Delights,” the adult category first prize winner by Aimee Nicole Grobe, zooms in on a chipmunk poised at the edge of a log on the forest floor.

The contest, held every other year, started in 2019. The 2021 photo contest drew submissions from 75 photographers spanning the creek’s watershed, from the Montgomery County suburbs into North Philadelphia. First- and second-ranked photographers won cash prizes, and TTF worked with Olney Culture Lab to display the photographs at block parties, festivals and other neighborhood events.

We are bringing more awareness to the space and breaking down barriers and people’s anxieties to going into the space.”

— ambrose liu, founder and project director of Olney Culture Lab “Sometimes it’s hard not to see the negative aspects of Tacony Creek Park, the neglect, litter. These people really saw the beauty,” says TTF director Julie Slavet.

After organizing the first photo contest, TTF and Olney Culture Lab commissioned four works from professional artists: local drummer Malik Henry, poet Alicia Watson Mitchell, the Esperanza Academy Dance Ensemble and Gibson, who has performed “Tacony Creek Suite” at live events such as the TTF’s 2021 Harvest Festival.

“We ended up making a documentary of it. We filmed the ensemble performing the

suite, filled it out with footage [of the creek and an interview with Gibson]. It became a documentary,” Liu says.

Gibson says he hopes the suite will help people living and working near the park to see it in a new light. “It’s a whole different area when you cross the street and come into that realm. It’s like you’re somewhere else. You walk across the street and you’re back in reality. In any environment there is the good, bad, ugly, the aesthetics of life,” Gibson says. “Philadelphia has a lot to offer. It’s aesthetically beautiful, but you won’t hear that on the news.” ◆

You can view the documentary at olneyculturelab.org/tacony-creek-suite J ULY 20 22 G R I DP H ILLY.COM 9

urban naturalist

It Takes a Village Rat poison causes a slow, cruel death, and kills wildlife too. Better sanitation and upkeep of homes — easier said than done — controls rat populations effectively by bernard brown

O

n march 19, 2019, Mom, the redtailed hawk matriarch of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, disappeared. A post by Carolyn Sutton on the Franklin Hawkaholics Face� book page described how, over the previous weekend, Mom had been looking unwell, sitting listlessly on a branch and showing no interest in a dead rat delivered by her mate, T4 (“T” for tiercel, the word for a male hawk, and “4” because he was Mom’s fourth documented mate). In 2016, her previous mate, T3, had died of suspected rodenticide 10 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

poisoning. Mom’s body was never recovered, but the hawkaholics suspected that she had suffered the same fate.

The most commonly used rat poisons are slow-acting anticoagulants. The rats eat the bait but get sick gradually, eventually dying from internal bleeding. Older poisons like strychnine had the drawback of acting too quickly. Rats that saw others die soon after eating bait learned to avoid it. Anticoagulant poisons introduced in the mid-1900s killed more slowly but required rats to eat several doses to build up a lethal dose. The

“second-generation” anticoagulants now in use deliver a lethal but slow-acting dose in one feeding.

One major downside of the slower death is that rats can wander out into the open after eating the bait, where they can fall prey to pets such as dogs or to wild animals such as hawks. The slow action of the poisons leaves the rats able to eat even after they have ingested a fatal dose. That high load of poison can then be ingested by rat predators or scavengers.

Sutton draws a connection with the rats

I S TO C K P H OTO

A Cooper’s hawk dismembers a rat.

Garden beds at the Norris Square Neighborhood Project Raíces Garden with new development in the background on North 2nd Street near West Susquehanna Avenue.

Rodenticides, especially anticoagulants, are very nasty. The animal suffers slowly over a period of time. It’s a terrible way to die.”

— michael pars ons, biologist who studies wild rats abundant around the Rocky statue at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, fed by an endless supply of pretzel crumbs, ice cream drips, hotdog ends and other food waste dropped by tourists. “The area is full of rats,” Sutton says. “First thing in the morning, they’re running around in front of us. We could see rats behind the fountain near the statue. One ran practically right across our feet.” Sutton said that other hawk watchers had “noticed rats staggering around” near the statue, presumably poisoned in response to complaints from tourists.

“It’s not just the City,” Sutton says. “It’s the apartment buildings there. [At] every apartment building you can see the boxes [of rat P HOTO BY C H R IS BA K ER EV E N S

poison] all around the base. Even the Franklin Institute has the boxes … ” Researchers studying dead red-tailed hawks in New York City from 2012 to 2018 tested their livers for anticoagulant rodenticides. They found the poisons in 89% of the hawks. Forty-one percent of the hawks showed signs of internal bleeding, and 46% of the remainder still had high enough levels of the rodenticides to be diagnosed with anticoagulant poisoning. A similar study in New Jersey found the poisons in 81% of red-tailed hawks examined and 82% of great horned owls.

In California, where additional wild predators such as golden eagles, kit fox-

es, bobcats and mountain lions have been found killed by second-generation anticoagulants, a movement to limit the poisons resulted in a law, taking effect in 2021, that restricts their use. There are still exemptions for public health and agricultural facilities, but for the most part California pest control companies now need to reach for other tools in their efforts to control rats, such as mechanical traps or dry ice pellets (the carbon dioxide emitted by the pellets suffocates rats in their burrows).

Secondary poisoning might not be the only reason to hold off on using second-generation anticoagulants. “I will say from the rat perspective, actually we could even make it one step more complex,” says Michael Parsons, a biologist who studies wild rats. “Rodenticides, especially anticoagulants, are very nasty. The animal suffers slowly over a period of time. It’s a terrible way to die.”

A growing body of research shows that rats are intelligent creatures with social lives and empathy for others. For example, a 2011 study found that rats faced with the choice between eating all of a chocolate treat by themselves or liberating another rat, who J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 1 1

urban naturalist

would then also have access to the chocolate, often chose to free their companions.

Seeing rats as worthy of human sympathy might make humans think twice about how to control them.

Parsons says he still sees a place for rodenticides in rat control, but he urges people to try other methods first. “We shouldn’t be making them suffer,” Parsons says. “We should be changing our behavior.”

A garden confronts its unwelcome rat population A neighbor warned Tristan Fuentes to be careful of the rats in the Norris Square Neighborhood Project’s Raíces Garden, on North 2nd Street near West Susquehanna Avenue. According to Fuentes, the neighbor said “he came out to see a smaller dog with two rats that seemed to have defeated it.”

As long as you can upkeep your property, and you contain trash and food inside the home, you’re not gonna run into many rat issues.”

— jas on edinger, Philadelphia Department of Public Health sanitation supervisor Urban rats get credit for a variety of fantastic feats, some true, some fiction. Rats can chew through concrete and steel (not true). Rats can grow as large as cats (not true). Rats can fit through a hole the size of a quarter (true).

Rats are indeed tough animals; adult rats can typically fight off a cat, for example.

Dogs can and do kill rats, but rats tend to

run at the first hint of danger, casting some doubt on the tag team account.

Fuentes, the garden manager at the Norris Square Neighborhood Project, has seen plenty of rats since then, but none on the attack (in contrast to the local raccoons, which have helped themselves to the project’s chickens).

Nonetheless, the garden rats aren’t exact-

Norris Square Neighborhood Project operations manager Cesali Morales poses in front of garden beds at the Las Parcelas Garden in West Kensington; (right) Rat burrows at the Norris Square Neighborhood Project Las Parcelas Garden.

12 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

P HOTO G RAP HY BY CHRIS BAKE R EV E N S

ly welcome. Their presence poses a hurdle to renting out the space for events or using the outdoor kitchen, says Cesali Morales, the project’s operations manager. On a walk through Las Parcelas, she pointed out rat burrows under a shed and garden beds, as well as emerging from the edge of the lechonera (a pit for roasting pigs).

Morales is realistic about the chances of completely getting rid of the rats. “Although we are concerned about rats, we don’t have a massive strategy to eradicate the … rats, nor is it a possibility in our minds.” The plan is instead to focus on general garden maintenance that will also make it harder for the rats to make a living there.

The rats of Philadelphia are almost all brown rats (aka Norway rats, Rattus norvegicus). Actually originating in East Asia rather than Scandinavia, the rats spread west across Europe, reaching Britain in the 1700s and from there hitching rides in ships to the Americas. Along the way they mostly displaced the black rat (aka roof rat, Rattus rattus), which had been in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire and had reached the Americas in the first ships sailing across the Atlantic.

Brown rats tend to stay underground until nightfall, and they generally do their best to avoid humans, unlike the much smaller house mouse, which is more comfortable living indoors with people.

“I don’t wanna say they’re loaded with rats, but in the sewers there’s a high population,” says Jason Edinger, a sanitation supervisor for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health who deals with rat complaints. Sewers are constantly warm and moist, and humans feed the rats with what we flush or rinse down the drain.

People tend to see rats on the surface when they emerge to raid above-ground food sourc-

es such as kitchen waste in compost, feed left for other animals such as cats or chickens, and garbage. They can often be seen running to and from restaurant dumpsters or the trash cans in busy parks. Fuentes reported seeing rats near a dumpster in Norris Square (the neighborhood’s eponymous park).

“We share the same plate,” Edinger says.

“So basically they live in direct conjunction with man. So with all of our scraps and all of our buildings that we put up, we provide the food and the shelter for them.”

One of the garden’s neighbors, Myles Guevremont, is helping out as part of his own efforts to control the rodents in the Norris Square neighborhood. Guevremont, whose day job is as general manager of a local pest control company, placed snap traps in tamper-resistant boxes at the Norris Square Neighborhood Project gardens. He started by leaving the traps baited but unset so that the rats, which are cautious about anything new in their territory, could get used to them.

After a week he set all the traps on the same night. Since then he has continued to deploy snap traps as well as some rodenticide (rodent poison) near a chicken coop.

Guevremont says he is cautious about using rodenticides because of the potential to poison other animals by accident. “When I can I like to use snap traps or mechanical traps, but it can be impractical on a large scale because once it’s caught, it’s one rat until you reset it. With rodenticide you can kill 100 rats with the one box.”

There is a broad, long-standing consensus among rat experts and pest control professionals that changing behavior and rehabbing buildings is the best way to reduce rat populations near where people live.

“Rats are truly an indicator pest,” Guevremont says. “Their behavior and population sizes are an indicator of other issues.”

A study conducted in Baltimore from 1948 to 1950 found that improving sanitation, cleaning yards, and such building improvements as cementing basements, repairing floors and fixing plumbing effectively eliminated an urban block’s rat population.

“There is no magic bullet for it,” Edinger says. “As long as you can upkeep your property, and you contain trash and food inside the home, you’re not gonna run into many rat issues.”

Nonetheless, maintaining good sanitation and keeping up with physical repairs is easier said than done. Rats can find their way to

the surface through holes in basements that residents can’t afford to fix. The weight of trucks parking on sidewalks at a construction site can cause fissures in sewers that give rats access to new territory. Illegally dumped trash can feed rats even when a block’s residents contain their own waste.

“We receive about 3,000 complaints a year for people who are seeing rats either on their block or inside their house,” says Edinger. “They want us to come out and help with some type of remediation.”

“We try to respond within about 24 to 72 hours,” Edinger says. “Now what we’ll do is we’ll go out there since we’re reacting and apply some poison if we find rodent burrows. And we try to be mindful of the principles of what they call integrated pest management. We talk about sanitation.

We talk about exclusion. Integrated pest management is really just a fancy word for common sense pest control. So not only do we go there and try to remedy the situation.

We also try to educate people so that they don’t run into these problems in the future.”

In Norris Square, Guevremont is rolling out his own volunteer integrated pest management initiative for rats. “I really think the only option is to organize your community,” he says. “Unlike most other things we deal with in pest control, including mice, rats tend to prefer to live outdoors in burrows and have a wide range, so if I have a problem with rats on my property it’s almost certain the neighboring properties are having issues.”

Often a block’s rat problems can be traced to one food source, whether an open compost heap, pet food left out for stray cats, or uncontained trash. “We have neighbors who put their bags out on Tuesday, trash day is Thursday, and you can see by trash day rats have gnawed holes in the bags.”

Guevremont plans to go door to door with flyers about rat control and offer his assistance. “A lot of the time it takes small modifications.” Better trash cans can seal up food waste. Compost can be kept in elevated, closed containers that keep out rats.

Neighbors can work together to help those who might not have the capacity to make physical repairs that can exclude rats.

“We’re connected to people,” Edinger says, “and so that involves not only just doing your part, but sometimes getting involved in your neighbor’s business and helping and communicating with one another.” ◆ J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 13

city healing

Righting the Wrongs Politicians, nonprofits and tribal leaders are working to recognize the injustices and crimes colonists committed against the Lenape by constance garcia-barrio

I

14 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

Lenape Tribal Citizens gather at the “big tree” on a section of the Perkiomen Trail in Collegeville, PA.

People need to see that we are neighbors, doctors, lawyers or parents. We’re just like them.”

— donna fann-b oyle , founder of Coalition of Natives and Allies (CNA)

locked in solitary confinement, and given a white name and clothing. Teachers washed out children’s mouths with lye when they spoke their tribal language.

“Some schools sold Native children as laborers for $10 each,” Johnson says. “We feel the effects of boarding schools to this day, not only in the loss of our language and traditions, but in the trauma that our elders deal with on a daily basis due to their horrific treatment while forced to attend.”

About 6,000 children died at Indian

boarding schools, some estimates say.

“The true toll is yet to be determined, but we believe that the numbers could be much higher,” Johnson says. Recently, the remains of 10 Native children buried at Carlisle were returned to their families.

There is much to heal.

“This country was built on stolen land with stolen labor,” says Chris Rabb, 52, a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Rabb, whose district includes part of Philadelphia, is drafting a resolution

C I T I Z E N S O F T H E D E L AWA R E T R I B E O F I N D I A N S

n 1737, William Penn’s son Thomas and Penn’s secretary, James Logan — Logan Circle’s namesake — did one of the dirtiest deals in the country’s history. The Walking Purchase, specified that the Lenape Indians, whose homeland of Lenapehoking, stretched from the Chesapeake to New York, would sell Thomas Penn as much land as a man could cover in a day and a half on foot.

“Instead of one man walking, Penn hired three professional runners who traveled much farther than anticipated,” says Jeremy Johnson, 44, cultural education director of the Lenape Tribe of Indians, headquartered in Oklahoma’s Indian Territory since 1868.

“We lost 1,200 square miles of land.”

Pennsylvania’s colonial authorities teamed up with the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy to force the Lenape from their homeland. Five Lenape bands scattered to different states and Canada.

“It was the first of seven removals we endured,” Johnson says.

That diaspora took a grim toll. In addition to the trauma of uprooting, massacres and government-sponsored bounty killings decimated the Lenape and other peoples. Scholars estimate that the pre-Columbian Native population was as high as 18 million. By 1900, that number had dropped to 237,000, according to David Hacker and Michael R. Haines.

The removals exacted another price.

“Skills like making canoes fell by the wayside because we settled in places that lacked the waterways of our homeland,” Johnson says. Elders died, and knowledge of certain ceremonies with them, he notes.

In the 1800s and 1900s, government- and church-run boarding schools for Indian children compounded that loss. The schools strove to strip Native children of their culture in order to “kill the Indian, save the man,” as Richard Henry Pratt (1840-1924) said. Pratt headed the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

In more than 350 schools nationwide, Native children were often beaten, starved, raped,

for each legislative session to begin by acknowledging that Pennsylvanians reside on land where the Lenape lived for 12,000 years.

“For those of us who claim Pennsylvania as our home, we must acknowledge those who came before us,” Rabb says. “It’s the least we can do. We must also recognize the transgenerational harm that’s been done. It brings us one step closer to true equality of peoples in the U.S.” Rabb has had tough going. “You can only do so much when you’re in the [political] minority. I have no power structurally to make a bill come up for a vote, but I’ve begun a conversation about an issue that otherwise might not have been discussed.”

Land acknowledgement is a good starting point, says Johnson, noting that our language holds echoes of a Lenape legacy.

“Punxsutawney means ‘Mosquito Town,’” he says. “Tamaqua is ‘beaver.’ When people greet each other with ‘Hey!’ they don’t realize that it’s Lenape for ‘hello.’”

But the Lenape want more of a presence. “[Delaware Tribe] Chief KillsCrow and I are working to establish relationships with people and institutions in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which are part of our original homeland,” Johnson says.

That desire for deeper connection with Lenapehoking seems to have long standing.

Twenty-five years ago, the Churchville Nature Center (CNC) in lower Bucks County recreated a Lenape village as it would have been in the 1500s, just before colonists arrived.

“We introduce visitors, especially children, to the area’s Native heritage,” says Kirsten Becker, 57, CNC’s director. “School children get a hands-on experience. They grind corn with a mortar and pestle and make strings and ropes from natural material. When they gather wild edibles, they learn to leave some for animals and for seeds for next year. We incorporate the philosophy of living lightly on the land. Kids like the experience. It sparks their curiosity [about Native people].”

Collaboration between East Stroudsburg University (ESU) and the Delaware Tribe began in September 2018, says Margaret Ball, 61, ESU’s Vice President of Academic Affairs. “We hoped this partnership would provide education surrounding Native American culture, and eventually produce a scholarship for Native American students … to return to study on the land that their

tribe formerly inhabited,” Ball says, “and that’s exactly what happened.”

Johnson took part in ceremonies at the program’s beginning.

“I saw leaves on the ground that are represented in our beadwork,” he says. “Now I know where they come from. I was the first person in my family in 250 years to reach down and touch the waters of the Delaware [River].”

In July 2021, Ursinus College and the Perkiomen Valley School District partnered with the tribe on the Welcome Home Project, which honors Montgomery County’s Lenape legacy. The project included a land acknowledgement, meetings and suggestions such as tribe-recommended books for different programs. The Perkiomen Valley School District established a Lenape Arboretum on its grounds to recognize the area’s Native roots and encourage “wonder, exploration, relaxation, learning” and students’ stewardship of the environment.

Last October, the Columns Museum of the Pike County Historical Society in Milford, PA, opened a new permanent exhibit: “The Lenape, Original People, Reconciling the Past, Embracing the Future.” The exhibit traces the tribe’s history and grew from a five-year collaboration between the Lenape and the historical society.

Here at home, organizers, artists and land practitioners just held a program on land sovereignty and protection that included a Native panelist at Iglesias Garden, a Kensington community garden. The Climate Justice Initiative, a Mural Arts Philadelphia program, sponsored the event. “We want a more just future,” says Shari Hersh, 63, director of environmental justice at Mural Arts, “and that future must include indigenous voices.”

Controversy sometimes arises about Pennsylvania’s Indian legacy. Schools with “R*dsk*ns” as a sports mascots ridicule Native culture, says Donna Fann-Boyle, 63, of Choctaw-Cherokee ancestry and the founder of Coalition of Natives and Allies (CNA).

Begun in 2019, CNA works to eliminate these mascots and present Native American history accurately.

“Painting their faces red is a racist act that distorts students’ understanding,” Fann-Boyle says.

Research by sociologist Laurel R. Davis-Delano and her colleagues confirmed that the mascots “are psychologically detrimental to Native American students” and

“for non-Native persons … are associated with negative stereotypes of Native Americans.” That stereotyping fuels tension between Natives and non-Natives, Davis-Delano found. Yet, some schools cling to them.

For example, although Fann-Boyle has repeatedly told the Sayre Area School District in Bradford County and Bucks County’s Neshaminy School District that their mascots are racist, they continue to use them. The Neshaminy School District spent almost $500,000 in a court battle to defend “its right to keep a symbol that denigrates Indigenous Peoples,” Fann-Boyle says.

“They want to see us running around in headdresses, loincloths, and buckskins,” Fann-Boyle says. “People need to see that we are neighbors, doctors, lawyers or parents. We’re just like them.”

Representative Rabb has introduced legislation to ban such mascots.

Despite entrenched racism at some schools, others embrace respectful alliances with the Lenape.

“As a little boy living in Oklahoma, I always, always, heard about this place,” Chief KillsCrow said at a gathering at Ursinus.

“Now, being able to live it … and be a part of it [lets us] feel for the very first time like we belong somewhere.” ◆

RESOURCES ➤

Learn about the history and culture of the Lenape people at the following website: delawaretribe.org/culture-and-language

➤

Support efforts to end Native mascots by joining the Coalition of Natives and Allies.

Visit coalitionofnativesandallies.org to review their petitions.

➤

A nine-minute YouTube video, “Delaware Nation Documentary,” sketches the history of the Lenape. Visit youtube.com/user/ TheDelawareNation

➤

Read Anton Treuer’s “Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask,” Borealis Books, 2012. About $16 new, $8 used on thriftbooks.com.

There’s a version for young readers.

➤

Nicola I. Campbell’s “Shi-shi-etko,” a lovely picture book, deals with the days before a small Native American girl leaves her family for a boarding school, Groundwood books, 2005. For ages 4-7. About $17 new, $5 used from thriftbooks.com

➤

For more children’s books by and about Native Americans, see rebekahgienapp.com/native-americans

J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

Community gardener and jazz vocalist Jeannie Brooks tends to her plot at the Brewerytown Garden.

50 GARDENS PRESERVED — AND COUNTING The Neighborhood Gardens Trust hits a major milestone, but the work continues

16 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

owned and protected through Philadelphia Parks & Recreation’s Farm Philly program.

But, like many gardens in Philadelphia, the deeds for two lots were held by owners who had long abandoned them. This often proves disastrous for community gardens.

Two years ago, the privately owned lots were put up for sale. After an appeal from the Brewerytown Garden leadership, NGT was able to identify funding through the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development’s Greenways, Trails and Recreation Program, which was matched through the Brewerytown com-

munity’s fundraising to purchase those lots and permanently protect them.

“I think it’s beneficial to the garden because they get the benefits of being a Farm Philly garden,” explains NGT executive director Jenny Greenberg. “And there are other supports that come through NGT and Pennsylvania Horticultural Society that they’ll be able to access as well. So I think it’s a win-win.”

This situation was not unlike what NGT faced at the Growing Home Garden on the 700 block of Emily Street in South Philadelphia. The garden, organized by the non-

R O B C A R D I L LO

Y

ou’d think that after protecting 50 gardens, the process would get easier. But for the Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT), a nonprofit tasked with preserving gardens, securing each parcel of land is a unique challenge.

This spring NGT and members of Brewerytown Garden at 27th and Master streets celebrated the protection of some of the garden’s key lots. The Brewerytown Garden comprises six lots that were once vacant but are now critical community and growing space. Four of those lots were publicly

story by nic esposito

This work shapes land use and livability in Philadelphia neighborhoods for generations to come.

So the investment now has a very long-term impact.”

— jenny greenberg, executive director of Neighborhood Gardens Trust

profit immigrant and refugee organization SEAMAAC, serves more than 100 families primarily from Nepal, Bhutan and other South Asian countries. Just like in Brewerytown, NGT and the Growing Home Garden leadership faced a complicated land situation.

Some lots were protected through Parks & Recreation, and several parcels were privately held and tax delinquent. Although NGT and the gardeners were working diligently to acquire the land through the Land Bank, a developer was able to acquire one of the lots that was right in the middle of the garden.

NGT was able to work with the City and Councilmember Squilla’s office, however, to identify a nearby City-owned parcel of equal value and swap it with the developer. “This is an example of another situation where the real estate development activities happen so quickly within certain neighborhoods and real estate markets that the key is getting multiple stakeholders and partners on the same page and moving in the same direction and lifting up land protection as our shared priority,” says Greenberg of the process.

“What I feel very proud of is that NGT has been strategic and creative and nimble at finding the right solution at the fastest pace we can to the endless variety of challenging land tenure situations.”

One of those major challenges was covered extensively in Grid #153, February 2022. Back in the 1990s the Rendell administration made what is now widely viewed as a shortsighted and disastrous decision to sell more than 30,000 tax liened properties to U.S. Bank in exchange for a quick influx of cash for the beleaguered school district.

Since then, U.S. Bank and the law firm Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson have sold a majority of these properties primarily through sheriff’s sales, and scarcely 2,000 properties remain. Some of these properties, however, are in existing community garden spaces. Since they are tax liened

by a third party, they can’t be put into the Land Bank, which is necessary for NGT to acquire the land.

As we reported, U.S. Bank tax liened properties in the Cesar Andreú Iglesias Community Garden (known as the Iglesias Gardens) in North Philadelphia were in jeopardy. Leaders of the garden with NGT made an appeal to the Kenney administration to buy back the remaining liens to protect these gardens. Kenney administration spokespeople called the buyback of these liens “financially unrealistic,” but did state that the administration was willing to entertain purchase of individual lots — a piecemeal offer that Linebarger has refused on behalf of U.S. Bank.

The issue of the U.S. Bank tax liened properties persists, affecting lots like the ones in the Viola Street Community Garden in the East Parkside neighborhood, where gardeners have been growing vegetables for over 50 years. This prompted Councilmember Kendra Brooks in May to launch the “Restore Community Land” campaign, which, among many things, proposes allocating $10 million in Philadelphia’s 2023 City budget toward buying back the liens on 500 properties that house community garden space or established side yards as well as 475 properties that could be used for affordable housing. A May Philadelphia Inquirer article indicated that Linebarger was willing to entertain this deal, although the Kenney administration still balked at the price tag, stating that “the City has limited resources and dedicating $10 million to this would impact our ability to fund other priority projects.”

“I think that Linebarger’s past refusal to look at a subset of the liens was really an obstacle,” says Greenberg. “So I’m pleased that they are now willing to do that and I think that Councilmember Brooks’ leadership as well as other advocates like the Public Interest Law Center, Iglesias Gar-

dens, Soil Generation and PHS as well as other councilmembers like Jamie Gauthier have done a very strategic job of coming up with a list and sharing information to make sure that it’s inclusive of all of the community gardens, as well as many spaces that are being managed and stewarded by community members.”

Despite this newfound energy and leadership to find a solution to the U.S. Bank tax liened properties, lots throughout Philadelphia continue to be sold through sheriff’s sale at a rapid rate, and the assembling of a collection of lots owned by multiple entities continues to be a challenge. Councilmember Brooks’ leadership was critical, but Greenberg and NGT still see a need for the Kenney administration and future mayoral administrations to exert more control over the future of the land use. Piecemeal losses of land to speculators through things like online sheriff’s sales, where developers from other cities (or other countries) bid on properties, is exacerbating Philly’s land inequity.

“When the Neighborhood Gardens Association started in the 1980s, a lot of gardens just stayed under the radar without legal land tenure and did their thing since the imminent threat of being lost to development or real estate speculation was much less,” Greenberg explains, using NGT’s former name. “But when we relaunched in 2014 as the Neighborhood Gardens Trust with support from PHS, I was hired explicitly to meet the growing need and opportunity to expand protection to many more gardens that were in increasing jeopardy of being lost.”

Indeed, the Neighborhood Gardens Association, founded in 1980, saved 30 gardens over the course of 33 years. NGT has saved 20 since 2014. Their support has extended beyond land acquisition; they have invested, in partnership with PHS, over $1.2 million in garden infrastructure such as water lines, raised beds and picnic tables to amplify the community benefits of the preserved spaces.

NGT is currently working with an additional 20 gardens that they are looking to protect in the coming years, coordinating partners, the City, the State, donors and supporters to piece solutions together.

“I think we’ll be at it for a while,” Greenberg admits. “This work shapes land use and livability in Philadelphia neighborhoods for generations to come. So the investment now has a very long-term impact.” ◆ J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 17

ACTIVATING HOPE Meet the man trying to revamp empty lots into community spaces

M

story by nichole currie

elvin powell spends most of his days at a vibrant greenspace and community center in North Philadelphia, a backyard garden surrounded by tall walls filled with graffiti art. Community members gather at the outdoor venue for neighborhood events like concerts and art-inspired showcases.

“It was a converted gas station that was basically just an empty lot,” Powell said.

“And essentially we were brought in to figure out how we can make this into a community space.”

The site’s developers hired Powell in 2018 to transform the lot to suit community members’ needs. He did this while creating an organization called Sunflower Hill, named after the sloping hills that formed after the underground gas tanks were removed and now define the space with dense plantings of sunflowers and other flowers.

When the organization transformed into a nonprofit called Sunflower Philly, Powell became its executive director.

This successful site conversion is just the beginning for Powell. He has now begun a venture of revamping other empty lots in North Philadelphia to be hubs for art, gardens and community events.

Powell’s idea began when he and other team members were having one of their trash cleanups and noticed many other empty lots in the neighborhood that were collecting trash even though developers were purchasing these properties during the pandemic.

“There was just so much more development that was happening around the neighborhood that there was just too much to clean. There was a lot of construction waste and things like that [being dumped].”

Areas like North Philadelphia are not shy to development and sometimes, the wait for actual development to begin leaves buildings vacant and lots empty for months or even years. These properties eventually 18 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

collect trash and become eyesores for people living in the neighborhood.

In response, Sunflower Philly announced a Greenspace Advocacy Program in hopes of beautifying these spaces.

“We can start getting eyes on other projects as well,” Powell said. “So people in the neighborhood would be like, ‘Hey, I have multiple spots that I can go to and get connected to.’”

Powell wants to help neighbors revamp land for better public space needs, as he did for Sunflower Philly and a community garden on Uber Street in North Philadelphia.

“Our idea was to not only invest in their space but also try to help set the infrastructure for people to support it,” Powell said.

The Uber Street garden has been operated by sisters Agnes Domocase and Willamae McCullough for over 20 years. The two women financially supported the garden and its events for two decades. They provided all gardening equipment, paid for youth events, and purchased soil and snacks for neighborhood children.

But after the sisters reached retirement and were slammed with medical bills, they couldn’t afford to support the garden financially. That’s when Powell and Michael Frank, the executive director for Philly City Repair, stepped in. They helped the sisters apply for and successfully receive a grant to fund their work. Powell and Sunflower Philly volunteers occasionally work at the garden to add support.

“They got great small grants to help us,” Domocase says. “We are so grateful for Michael and Melvin. They come in with the kids and get a lot of work done in two days.”

Domocase and McCullough are now prepared to apply for their own grants after working with Powell. With this success, the Uber Street garden is now just one example of what Powell wants to see with empty lots in Philadelphia — but first, he has to actually get the land for the community to use.

Sunflower Philly executive director Melvin Powell poses in front of the Sunflower Philly stage and event space.

Getting the Land Because the Sunflower Philly project was successful, Powell looked into how likely other developers would be to allow community members to use their property temporarily. Unfortunately, that idea didn’t pan out when he realized the odds were low. Powell said that most privately-owned land in Philadelphia is either tax-delinquent or moving forward with development, and both scenarios pose major challenges for community groups to acquire these properties.

But Powell had another idea. He thought about looking into public land in the city, P HOTO BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS

Our idea was to not only invest in their space but also try to help set the infrastructure for people to support it.”

— melvin p owell , executive director of Sunflower Philly

especially properties owned by the City that have been sitting vacant for a long time. Powell envisioned helping community members acquire public land in their neighborhoods to operate as community gardens or community spaces.

This led him to research public land in North Philadelphia. Through his research, he found the Department of Public Property. This department manages buildings and structures where City employees work buying, selling, leasing, designing, constructing, renovating and maintaining City properties.

This was the land Powell was looking for.

Powell plans to approach City Council and the mayor’s office with the request to use land listed under the Department of Public Property. He envisions the City leasing empty lots for a maximum of five years, but in the future he hopes to evolve from temporary land use into ownership.

“We need to find City-owned lots because at the core, and how is it written in the code of Philadelphia, that is the land that citizens are entitled to use for public space and urban agriculture.” ◆ J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 9

A disc golfer tees off from the ninth hole at the Sedgley Disc Golf Course in East Fairmount Park.

‘IT’S LIKE A MAFIA’ Riding club relocation takes disc golfers by surprise

O

story by bernard brown

n october 11, 2021, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a worker in an excavator arrived at the Sedgley Woods disc golf course and began clearing a road along the boundary with the Strawberry Green driving range next door.

“On the first day of the destruction I happened to be on my lunch break in my car at Sedgley Woods, watching it and saying, ‘What in the world is going on here?’” The disc golfer (who requested anonymity to speak with Grid) had been playing at Sedgley Woods since the early 1990s. They worked nearby and would often take lunch breaks at the course.

With no advance signage or any apparent 20 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

safety measures such as fencing, the clearing work took the lunching disc golfer — along with everyone else playing on the crowded disc golf course that day — by surprise. “A lot of people had the day off, they were playing with their families, and this guy is literally snapping trees that have to be between 40 to 80 feet.”

The Friends of Sedgley Woods, the organization that manages the disc golf course, posted a message to their Facebook Page the next day asking disc golfers not to approach the contractors or contact Parks & Recreation. The Friends of Sedgley Woods has not responded to multiple attempts by Grid to seek comment.

The Sedgley Woods disc golf course dates back to the late 1970s, when the Fairmount Park Commission allowed the fledgling Philadelphia Frisbee Club to set up in East Fairmount Park, near the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. At the time it was the second disc golf course in the country, according to Matthew Halley, a disc golfer who wrote about the construction project on his personal blog.

The construction continued into November, resulting in a dirt road cutting through the course to the meadow as well as fencing around the meadow.

“This [meadow] is a piece of property that was a dump in the 1970s, literally a dump where they put the fill from the I-676 corridor,” Halley says. “At the time, remember that there was a fancy mansion there, the Cliffs.” In 1986 the Cliffs burned, with fire trucks unable to reach the blaze due to the soft ground. Today only a graffiti-festooned shell remains of the historic house. “Basically the Sedgely Woods friends group started P HOTO BY TROY BYNUM

taking care of it, planting shrubs, putting native plants into the meadow, planting trees around the meadow to make a buffer.”

“I started playing in the early ’80s,” says John DiSciascio, a past president of the Friends of Sedgley Woods. “Everything was terrible back there. Somehow we weathered the storm, and we like to think we had something to do with making that comeback. We weren’t the only ones, but we were part of it, blood, sweat, and tears.”

The course evolved into one of the most popular in the country, hosting 22,285 rounds of disc golf in 2021. The course originally consisted of 18 holes but after about 30 years expanded to include nine more holes wrapping around a four-acre meadow and the ruins of the Cliffs house, which dates back to the mid-1700s.

A restored meadow, “one of the rarest and most precious wildlife habitats in the city,” under threat In 2006 the Fairmount Park Commission used a $34,900 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to improve the bird habitat in and around the meadow. To date, 139 species of birds have been documented at the site.

A more extensive explanation for the project arrived on November 22 of last year, when the Friends group posted a map of the construction project to their Facebook page, along with a letter explaining that the work was intended to prepare the meadow to be the new home of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, and that although the project would be disruptive, the Friends would welcome the Riding Club.

The Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, famous as Black cowboys featured on This American Life and whose story inspired the 2020 movie “Concrete Cowboy,” are being displaced from their current site by new senior apartments built by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, forcing them to look for a new home.

Both of the Friends’ Facebook posts on the topic limited comments, and, according to the disc golfer who spoke with Grid about witnessing the groundbreaking, page administrators deleted other posts dealing with the construction project. This led them to create the Guardians of Sedgley Facebook page to advocate for the course.

They, along with Halley and other sources Grid has spoken with, have said that when

asked why the Friends group didn’t object to the construction project, board members of the group expressed fear that City Council President Darrell Clarke’s office could retaliate by taking the entire disc golf course.

“Everything was verbal, it’s like a mafia,” Halley says. “Because of the mafia tactics, everyone got super scared. No one wants to be the one who gets blamed for being the one who lost Sedgley.”

Clarke’s office declined to comment on the concerns about retaliation, with spokesperson Joa Grace saying they would not respond to anonymous allegations.

All the disc golfers Grid spoke with for this piece are unanimous in their sympathy for the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Grid.

“We have an attitude of, if it’s good for the cowboys, let’s welcome them,” says DiSciascio. “It’s unfortunate the way things went down, but we hope it’s a win-win for everybody.”

Halley questions the choice of the meadow for the riding club, pointing out the abundance of mowed grass spaces in Fairmount Park. “I think most folks (including myself ) agree that Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club needs a home, and it’s great to see the City investing in the urban cowboy culture,” Halley wrote in his blog post. “But, of all the places to install a new horse facility, why choose a site that requires destroying a restored meadow, one of the rarest and most precious wildlife habitats in the city?

Doing so would undo decades of hard work by local conservationists.”

According to a Parks & Recreation spokesperson, “the site was selected based on its proximity to the community served by the Fletcher Street stables.” They said that, “in 2021, the Cliffs Meadow was identified as a potential site for the Fletcher Street Stables, which was displaced from its longtime home in Strawberry Mansion.”

Grace, spokesperson for City Council President Darrell Clarke, says, “The Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club approached the Council President’s Office about this potential site for relocating the horses from the Riding Club, once their original site was used for the construction of multiple units of new, affordable housing for senior citizens in North Philadelphia — an important development that is complete and open for residents. The Urban Riding Club had originally used a portion of

this site in Fairmount Park years ago, and they brought it to our office’s attention.”

Grid obtained notes from a September 20, 2020 meeting involving riding club leadership, staff from Councilmember Clarke’s office, a lawyer from the Public Interest Law Center and leadership of the Philadelphia Land Bank. At the meeting, the attendees discussed preparations to move the riding club to a site owned by the City along railroad tracks north of Diamond Street. At the meeting Ellis Ferrell, president of the riding club, said that Councilmember Clarke had recently suggested the land behind the disc golf course as an alternative. Ferrell, who recalled riding there in the past, said that he thought the park location would be better than the Diamond Street parcel, with less car traffic and a more pleasant atmosphere for the children who ride with the club.

There was no mention in the meeting notes of the restored meadow habitat or a need to cut a road through the disc golf course.

Grace referred to the site as “unused,” saying, “The individuals using a portion of this public land for disc golf activities will still be able to engage in their activities. Now, however, this public site overall will be shared.”

It is unclear what the final product of the construction will be, or how much of the site will be occupied by a stables building versus grazing space for the horses. It is also unclear when the project will be completed. Since the fall, work has stalled, leaving weeds to sprout in the cleared earth of the access road.

According to a Parks & Recreation spokesperson, the project is still in its design phase and was unable to provide more information on what kind of structure would be built or when it would be finished.

Grid asked Parks & Recreation whether there were any plans to replace the meadow acreage that will be lost to the stables.

The spokesperson responded that the department has created 13 acres of meadow habitat elsewhere, and that horses coexist with meadow bird species at other sites in the city.

“We’re fans of the cowboys, and we will probably have a great relationship with them,” DiSciascio says. “We felt a little slighted that we were treated like we didn’t belong there. After all the hard work we put in there, we didn’t feel welcomed to the table to say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do, what do you think?’” ◆ J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 21

LOTS OF INVESTMENT

After almost a decade, the Philadelphia Land Bank still struggles to balance development and protecting green space story by starr herr-cardillo

W

hen a notice went up in 2015 announcing that a lot his mother had tended as a vegetable garden since the 1990s would soon be sold at sheriff’s sale, Michael Gonzalo Moran pulled together the bulk of his savings and outbid a developer. “I was using my life’s savings for one lot, while this individual was in the process of purchasing his fifth lot that day,” Moran explained.

“I’m bidding for a piece of my childhood.

That feeling is something that … can be traumatizing. People are losing a part of themselves.”

Suffice to say that the issues around land transfer and sovereignty strike close to home for Moran. Although his mother had made multiple attempts to legally secure the land with assistance from the Philadelphia Land Bank, she was repeatedly told she’d have to pay off a massive lien on the property.

This experience inspired Moran to not only fight for his mother’s lot, but also become a board member and gardener at the Cesar Andreú Iglesias Community Garden (aka Iglesias Gardens) at the corner of Arlington and North Lawrence streets in Kensington about five years ago. The gardens comprise an extensive network of green space and food-producing gardens, punctuated by bright, whimsical sculpture by local artist Cesar Viveros; a stage; a snack garden for horses from the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club; and even a temazcal, a type of pre-Hispanic indigenous sweat lodge.

“So much of this is intertwined with my own personal life,” Moran said, “this struggle that the Iglesias Gardens [is] experiencing as a collective is happening to individuals.”

22 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

For Moran, getting involved with Iglesias Gardens has provided another way to contribute to a community he’s been part of for over 30 years. “I remember this when it was a landfill,” Moran says, describing how the lots used to be full of scrap from abandoned houses. “It’s a beautiful sight for someone like me to see it for what it was, and what it has become.”

In 2018, Iglesias Gardens Co. was registered as a nonprofit. Some of the dozens of parcels comprising the garden have been secured as gardens and side lots; the rest are owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the Land Bank and private developers, and two are impacted by U.S. Bank liens. The group has been savvy at raising awareness of the gardens and their significance to the community through the press and connecting with other garden organizers.

After years of working with the Land Bank to secure ownership, Iglesias Gardens seems to be on track to secure the parcels that make up the core of the garden. But it’s been no small feat, and the amount of coordination required to stay in communication with City Councilmembers and regularly follow up

with the Land Bank isn’t always possible for smaller organizations with limited capacity.

The Philadelphia Land Bank passed unanimously as Bill No. 130156-A in 2013. It is one of the most significant pieces of land legislation ever passed in Philadelphia and emerged from input and support from an array of advocacy groups. Its mission is clear: to streamline the process of getting vacant and underutilized land into the hands of people who would put it to better use — be they gardeners and market farmers, neighbors tending side lots or housing developers — all with the goal of benefiting communities and improving neighborhoods while growing the City’s tax base.

But executing that mission over the past nine years has proven to be anything but simple. “[The Land Bank] started as a hopeful enterprise and a process in consensus building, at least from the advocacy standpoint,” says Amy Laura Cahn, who was a staff attorney with the Public Interest Law Center and served as director of the Garden Justice Legal Initiative from 2013 to 2017, when the Land Bank came into being. “I wouldn’t say that anyone thought the Land Bank was a silver bullet,” Cahn says, “but there was clarity about the problems it was intended to solve. It has not solved them.”

One of the main disappointments so far, Cahn points out, is the fact that the path to land acquisition via the Land Bank has become neither more efficient nor transparent, especially for residents looking to acquire lots for open space or gardens. Instead of bringing together the City’s four land-holding agencies — the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation and Department of Public Property — as was intended, the Land Bank effectively created a fifth, says Cahn, leaving residents who’ve

I’m bidding for a piece of my childhood.

That feeling is something that … can be traumatizing.

People are losing a part of themselves.”

— michael gonzal o moran, Iglesias Gardens board member

been tending and stewarding lots — many for decades or generations — to deal with even more convoluted bureaucracy and red tape.

The Land Bank also highlights the issue of councilmanic prerogative, which gives councilmembers final say over land use in their districts. “The Land Bank law codified, for the first time, the significant influence Philadelphia Councilmembers have traditionally had over projects in their districts,” says Cahn. While there have been influences where councilmanic prerogative has proved beneficial to communities, it also exacerbates an inherent tension in the agency’s mission to provide pathways for a range of sustainable and equitable land uses. “On a parcel-by-parcel basis, gardens and farms have not won out in balancing Land Bank priorities,” says Cahn. “Gardeners and farmers in Philly tend to be Black and Brown residents, as well as from immigrant and refugee communities — often responding to historic disinvestment. This goes back decades and decades and adds to the power imbalance,” she adds.

The Land Bank serves as a natural partner as City Councilmembers push to increase affordable and mixed-income

housing, a top priority particularly in districts with high rates of land vacancy. But, in many neighborhoods, residents who’ve been living on blocks pockmarked by vacant land have taken matters into their own hands, cleaning up overgrown, trash-filled lots and transforming them into places where community members can come together — and they’d like to see the Land Bank work for them, too.

According to the Land Bank’s 2019 draft Strategic Plan, about 20% of Philadelphia’s roughly 42,000 vacant lots and properties are publicly owned. The remaining 80%, many of which have been essentially abandoned, are in private hands, and more than 70% of those are saddled with back taxes and liens. The Land Bank’s ability to actually acquire those properties is limited by the agency’s annual budget and the amount of coordination and staff time the process can take.

Jenny Greenberg is the executive director of the nonprofit Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT). The land trust, which helps facilitate land exchange between organizations, community groups, individuals and the City of Philadelphia in order to secure ownership of and access to com-

munity-managed green spaces, currently oversees 50 gardens. Greenberg says that many of the issues with the Land Bank come down to funding. Without much in the way of funds to acquire properties, she says, it’s limited in capacity. Handing land over to nonprofits like NGT for nominal fees is a huge public benefit, she says, but it doesn’t provide a stable model to operate.

NGT has had success working with the Land Bank, Greenberg notes. Since 2015 the organization has been able to work with the agency to preserve 15 gardens encompassing 44 parcels of land, some of which were long-term tax delinquent properties that the Land Bank cleared. But, she says, the process could be easier to navigate for community groups and gardeners trying to get leases: “On a good day it’s a slow and complicated process.”

Another function of the Land Bank is to allow the City to intervene at sheriff’s sales to intercept privately-owned parcels and help put them to use in service of community interests. For gardeners, this is particularly important, since many have been cultivating and caring for spaces made up of multiple parcels, creating a real challenge

Iglesias Garden board member Michael Gonzalo Moran poses with his son Brayden in a sitting area at the garden.

P HOTO BY C H R IS BA K ER EV E N S

J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 23

kids; improving visibility and lighting; walking paths; and planting new trees.

But as the redesign kickoff party was approaching in the spring of 2022, Warford was shocked to learn that eight of the City-owned parcels making up the heart of the garden had been approved by the Land Bank for inclusion in an RFP for housing development. After bringing the issue to the attention of Councilmember Curtis Jones and the Land Bank, the item was revisited at the Land Bank Board’s May meeting.

“We were confused and disappointed to learn that the Philadelphia Land Bank conveyed eight parcels of an established and maintained garden for development and were left wondering where was the due diligence to uphold your commitment to community gardens,” Warford testified at the May 10 meeting of the Philadelphia Land Bank Board of Directors.

After hearing several people testify in support of UTC’s position, the Board settled the matter by splitting the difference and omitting four of the eight parcels from the RFP. Warford says that for the community, the realization that this kind of transaction had happened without any notice was especially jarring, especially given her efforts to go through appropriate channels to secure lease agreements. “It feels like the loss of the garden happened overnight, but this housing development project is part of a city-wide initiative that many residents and community members don’t know about,” she said. “There’s definitely something wrong with the notification process.

It feels like the very, very bare minimum.”

Political pressure is one avenue that shows promise. Councilmember Kendra Brooks recently launched the “Restore Community Land” campaign, as a solution to U.S. Bank liened properties in existing community gardens going to sheriff’s sale, which Grid report in February. But the campaign has larger im-

plications than protecting the 1,000 parcels that Brooks is urging the City to buy back to protect green space and affordable housing.

“Ensuring that Philadelphians have a real voice in how land is used, sold and developed is paramount to equitably building wealth, expanding low-income housing, and upholding racial justice in Philadelphia,” Brooks said in a statement for Grid.

“This is especially important in Black and brown communities that have been plagued by decades of disinvestment, gentrification and racist housing policies.”

One encouraging aspect of Brooks’ plan is that it looks at uses across the U.S. Bank properties holistically — identifying areas that are already in productive use. The process as it exists now tends to boil down to disagreements about best parcel use — too often pitting affordable and mixed-income housing projects against green space. Both Iglesias Gardens and UTC would welcome more affordable housing in their neighborhoods, but they’d prefer it not come at the expense of spaces that the community has invested in. They’d also like housing prices to be based on neighborhood’s income levels, noting that “affordable” by citywide averages doesn’t equate to affordable for most West Kensington or Haddington residents.

While the U.S. Bank-owned liens are only a small part of the picture, the approach of pre-emptively identifying long-tended parcels and strategically planning around them is a model that could serve as an example. “I’ve seen firsthand what it looks like when we sell our neighborhoods out to the highest bidder and I can tell you that it’s working-class people, Black people, elderly people, that end up paying the cost by being pushed out and priced out every time,” Brooks said. “When it comes to development and housing, it’s time that the City worked in partnership with communities instead of in spite of them.” ◆

The Land Bank law codified, for the first time, the significant influence Philadelphia Councilmembers have traditionally had over projects in their districts.”

Amy Laura Cahn.

24 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

— amy laura cahn, director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School

C O U R T E S Y O F A M Y L AU R A C A H N

when it comes to sorting out a patchwork of ownership. While NGT serves as an important resource and advocate, some gardens, like the Iglesias Gardens, are interested in pursuing ownership or lease agreements through their own nonprofit entities, but navigating the complicated systems can be extremely time-consuming.

Noelle Warford is the executive director of Urban Tree Connection (UTC), a West Philadelphia-based nonprofit that oversees six gardens and green spaces in the Haddington neighborhood. She says the Land Bank hasn’t been proactive in working with existing gardens to transfer publicly-owned land or to identify and intercept parcels that have long been tended and cultivated by communities that go up for sheriff’s sale or are flagged for other uses.

“A lot of people who have lost their gardens or feel their gardens are threatened do not feel like the Land Bank is looking out for them or working in their interest,” Warford said.

One of the largest gardens overseen by UTC is Memorial Garden, established as a memorial to local families who lost their children to gun violence in the 1990s. In the last two years, Memorial Garden went through a redesign as part of the University of Pennsylvania’s Urban Health Lab’s Nature and Well-Being Project. The process involved extensive community input, facilitated in part by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Among the community-identified goals (many tied to safety and reducing gun violence) were: creating flat, open play space for

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WHOSE LAND IS

THIS LAND? The dispute over Edgely Field highlights systemic failures in park maintenance story by bernard brown

T

he parkside saint s finally found a home. An October 4, 2019 announcement from Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative announced the completion of a practice field for the youth football club at the Parkside Evans Playground in West Philadelphia.

The Saints, founded in 2010 by Coach Cliff Smith, had practiced in whatever open space they could find in Fairmount Park and had played their home games on fields in other parts of the city.

The City’s 2019 announcement said that the practice fields were just the first part of the project. “Next up is a second, gameready field, complete with stadium lighting and bleachers.” The announcement didn’t mention where that second field would be.

Elena López, executive director of the Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance (PADA), learned the location in a meeting with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR) Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell in April 2021. The Saints’ new synthetic turf playing field, including a track around the perimeter, would be built on top of Edgely Field, the space that the Disc Alliance had played on and maintained for nearly 40 years, and which it shares with the Prior Cricket Club, which had been playing there for even longer.

“We were in shock,” López says. She looked up Rebuild online and learned that 26 GRID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

the goal was to build new field space, which seemed at odds with using an existing field for something else.

Edgely Field is a six-acre clearing in the woods of West Fairmount Park, a quarter-mile west of Belmont Avenue. Another smaller field sits on the other side of a small parking lot. (There is another, unrelated Edgely Field in East Fairmount Park.)

The city acquired Edgely Field in 1898.

Until that time it had been a horse racetrack called the Gentlemen’s Driving Park. An aerial image from 1930 shows the elliptical space with a dirt track around the outside, indicating it was still used for racing at that point, along with the faint outline of a cricket pitch, which becomes clearer in the next available image from 1959.

Ultimate Frisbee players began sharing the space by the 1980s. Philadelphia at that time had disinvested in park maintenance, as the city’s population declined and industry departed for other regions and countries. PADA, along with the Prior Cricket Club, picked up the slack, mowing and otherwise maintaining Edgely Field. As other open spaces in Fairmount Park grew in with brush and trees, eventually transitioning to forest, Edgely remained a field.

Edgely Field is currently large enough to fit six concurrent games of ultimate, with a nearby field able to host one more. Rebuild

We are proud to say these are some of the best grass fields in Philadelphia.”

— elena lópe z, executive director of the Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance

An aerial view of the Edgely Field.

held a “Stakeholder Session” on June 30, 2021 to explain how it had picked Edgely. A slide from the session shows a sketch of the new synthetic turf playing field, including a track around the perimeter, imposed over Edgely Field, obliterating three fields’ worth of space.

Among the details still to be determined about the new field is its cost. “Each project goes through a community engagement and P HOTO BY C H R IS BA K ER EV E N S

design process where the [rebuilding of the facility] relies on significant community feedback to address areas where residents see the most need,” says Raymond Smeriglio, Rebuild’s chief of staff. “We will continue to work with future users of the Edgely fields on the necessary elements needed to deliver a quality field space for young people to play, which will more adequately define the

budget.”

Although representatives of the Saints declined to speak with Grid for this article, Leroy Fisher, one of the founders of the North Philadelphia Aztecs football club of Hunting Park, describes what youth from Philadelphia see when they travel outside the city to play suburban teams. “Traveling to play on other fields as a kid and as an J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 27

adult, they see how manicured fields are in suburbs and other cities. They have dedicated investment to the quality of fields that you didn’t have in Philadelphia.”

The Aztecs’ synthetic turf field (including a track but without the bleachers proposed at Edgely) cost $1.4 million in 2013 ($1.76 in 2022 dollars). “I am ecstatic we made the choice of synth field,” Fisher says. Fisher cofounded the Aztecs in 1992 along with some friends who shared a concern for local youth and a passion for football. “Coming back from the military I met a young kid who said he had nothing to live for. He lived in a four-block radius. I talked to some friends, and we realized we had this 87-acre park [Hunting Park] that wasn’t being utilized.”

“You couldn’t tell a worse story than the field as it was back then,” Fisher says. Pipes from the adjacent swimming pool leaked, turning the sidelines into mud. “When we took over the field we would have to walk the field to remove glass, debris and drug paraphernalia. We had to play games in Edison because our field wasn’t suitable, a mile away.”

The Aztecs won a national title in 2004, and the club capitalized on the publicity from the title to launch a fundraising drive — which garnered a $200,000 donation from Michael Vick — that culminated in the new field.

The Aztecs maintain the synthetic turf field with Parks & Recreation, leveraging labor from volunteers and from people serving court-mandated community service hours. “The synthetic turf is easy to maintain. It has lasted and is still in great shape for 10 years, with less maintenance issues than you would have had on a grass surface,” Fisher says. “In more affluent places you can see pristine and maintained fields.

This is what we can give our kids. It’s good that we can give them something better than what we see throughout the community.”

Fisher considers structured sports to be a matter of life and death for local youth.

Philadelphia is in the midst of a surge of violence, with 550 homicides in 2021 and 222 so far in 2022 , as of this article’s writing.

Black and Hispanic people in neighborhoods like Hunting Park and Parkside have borne the brunt of the epidemic. Fisher says that structured youth sports programs, like those run by the Aztecs and the Saints, can keep kids occupied in positive activities and reduce crime, a claim supported by research into youth sports participation and crime.

28 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

They have dedicated investment to the quality of fields that you didn’t have in Philadelphia.”

— leroy fisher, cofounder of the North Philadelphia Aztecs football club “When we keep them off the streets from 5 to 7:30, when they could get into trouble, these fields save lives,” Fisher says. “We don’t hear about it on the news. You hear about the one kid with a gun killing somebody versus the 400 kids that have benefited on fields not getting in trouble.”

Fisher is in favor of building the Saints’ field. “Our priority can’t be adults who can get in their cars and drive somewhere else,” he says. These kids are stuck in these communities and might not ever get to experience great services.”

P

ada has welcomed the Saints to practice and play games at Edgely, but it has also mobilized against the proposed construction project, launching a Preserve Edgely ini�tiative. Along with a critique of the selection process, Preserve Edgely argues that building the new field on top of existing fields would yield a net reduction in play-

ing space and increase pressure on playing fields throughout the city.

PADA’s struggles with the City have motivated Marc Davies, an attorney and past director of PADA, to launch Friends of Fairmount, a group that advocates for the protection of park spaces cared for by private stewardship groups. Friends of Fairmount includes what it says are similar examples at the Cobbs Creek Golf Course, the Sedgley Woods Disc Golf Course and FDR Park. Davies says that the group has concerns about PPR not following ordinances about land conversion in the park.

Philadelphia law prohibits converting (“a change to the physical characteristics or use of land”) outdoors park space from one use to another without several steps including approval of the Parks & Recreation Commission, a body that hasn’t met since October 2019, and a vote by City Council.

According to materials from the June 30, 2021 stakeholder session, Rebuild had P HOTO BY TROY BYNUM

of Rebuild sites.” That initial list, and the lists that City Council has approved since, include the “Parkside Fields,” but make no specific mention of Edgely. A mapping tool for Rebuild that shows eligible Rebuild sites lists the “Belmont and Edgely Cricket Field” as distinct from the “Parkside Fields,” which on this map is placed on top of George’s Hill, one of the locations later eliminated from consideration.

S Michael Vick donated $200,000 for an artificial turf field in Hunting Park.

considered three other sites: one on top of George’s Hill near the Parkside Evans Playground, one near Ohio House off of Belmont Avenue, and one at the Sweetbriar Fields just north of the School of the Future. Building on top of George’s Hill (a wooded site that had previously been a drinking water reservoir) proved to be too expensive, and Rebuild determined a football field with lights and bleachers wouldn’t fit with the historic Centennial District that includes the other two sites. Edgely Field is flat and out of sight of historic landmarks. Notably, there seems to have been no public input in the site selection process.

Other signs point to a rushed, ad hoc site selection. Rebuild is a signature initiative of the Kenney administration in which the City is borrowing money (by issuing bonds) to rehabilitate run-down libraries and parks infrastructure like playgrounds and rec centers. The City is using income from the City’s sugary beverage tax to make payments on the bonds. Rebuild kicked off with a list of 62 proposed sites that were then approved by City Council. Smeriglio says, “The Edgely field project is a part of the approved Parkside Game project that was originally introduced and approved by City Council during the first introduction

ynthetic turf fields have several drawbacks compared to natural grass. Grid recently reported on their contribution to the urban heat island effect and how they expose athletes to toxic chemicals such as PFAS (sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they can persist for decades, in bodies as well as in the environment). The overall cost of synthetic turf fields is higher than natural grass due to higher installation costs, though maintenance costs are lower. Thus, from a budget perspective, a synthetic turf field shifts costs from operations budgets to capital budgets. This is particularly important in a parks system that underfunds maintenance, resulting in the scarcity of quality playing fields that underlies the dispute over the proposed complex at Edgely.

Spending money on maintenance like fertilizing, aerating, and seeding grass fields doesn’t make headlines in the same way as ribbon cuttings at new facilities. “Politicians like to stand in front of a ribbon and say, ‘We did this for you,’ but they are less good about committing the operating money to pay for ongoing maintenance,” says Brett Mandel, government reform activist, former assistant controller for Philadelphia, and commissioner of Greater Philadelphia Men’s Adult Baseball League.

Capital improvements and operations (including maintenance) are also funded differently. Operations funding is generally supported by the taxes a government can bring in every year, while capital spending, like Rebuild, is based on money borrowed by issuing bonds. “The capital budget is the fun budget,” Mandel says. “The mayor and City Council decide what to spend and at any moment we have millions of dollars to spend on building a new field, but the effect on the operating budget [for maintenance of the new facilities] is almost never considered, and if maintenance is ignored, the new field becomes unusable or dangerous pretty quickly.”

A

t tustin playground in the city’s Overbrook neighborhood, Gregory Allen doesn’t recall seeing the City do anything more than add clay to the baseball diamond and mow the grass on the field, where the Saints sometimes practice, as does the football team from Overbrook High School.

With no irrigation, the center of the field turns to a “dust bowl” in the summer. Allen supports building the Saints’ new field at Edgely, saying that PPR should favor the needs of local youth.

Allen has a long relationship with Philadelphia’s parks. “My first jobs were with the PPR system youth employment programs.”

Today he sits on the City’s Parks & Recreation Commission and is that commission’s representative on Rebuild’s oversight board.

He is also on Tustin’s Recreation Advisory Council, a volunteer group that leverages community support for the playground, which includes a pool, basketball courts and a building for programming along with the field and the playground itself.

“My understanding is that Parks & Rec hasn’t had the budget to aerate or seed fields in years,” Allen says. “I think some fields get aerated and seeded, but I don’t think Parks & Rec has as much to do with it as really active advisory councils who find the funding or have a neighbor who has a landscaping business and provides it as a donation.”

Allen pointed to other recreation centers as examples of public facilities benefitting from more affluent or resourceful neighbors. “At some locations, you have more active and resourceful people living in that neighborhood. So if they want to play sports, they’re going to get involved with the advisory council in their community. In my Overbrook neighborhood, you’ve got fewer people working together to find other resources to help us, so there aren’t as many resourceful people engaged.”

Allen spoke with Grid at the playground, sitting at a wobbly picnic table missing one of its benches. Tustin recently had two new basketball courts installed with funding from the Nancy Lieberman Charities and the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation, created in memory of Kobe and Gianna Bryant (Kobe played at Tustin’s basketball courts in his youth). The shiny new court, surfaced with DreamCourt tiles, contrasted with the rest of the aging site.

J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 29

Basketball players play a pickup game at the newly-renovated Tustin Playground courts in West Philadelphia .

Politicians like to stand in front of a ribbon and say, ‘We did this for you,’ but they are less good about committing the operating money to pay for ongoing maintenance.”

— brett mandel , good government activist Other physical improvements are in the works, according to Allen, but the playground’s building hasn’t been substantially renovated since it was built in the 1950s.

Tustin was scheduled to be but is not an approved Rebuild site, with an estimated $12 million worth of work needed for the playground, building, field and pool.

Based on the current rate at which Rebuild is spending money, Allen is not optimistic that funds will remain by the time projects ahead of Tustin are completed.

T

he funds and the value of time from staff and volunteers that PADA estimates as their investment total more than $50,000 per year taking care of seven ultimate fields’ worth

30 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

of grass, which would break down to more than $7,000 per field. The cost of maintaining a grass field varies widely depending on the type of field. An Oregon study from the mid-2010s comparing the lifecycle costs of natural grass versus synthetic turf found that grass soccer fields cost between about $10,000 and $51,000 in 2022 dollars, adjusted for inflation, meaning that PADA’s investment is on the low end.

“The City doesn’t even mow the lawn anymore,” says López. In addition to mowing at Edgely, López says PADA takes care of seeding, fertilizing and aerating the fields, along with clearing brush and trees that encroach from the edges.

With more than 600 playing fields of various types, the total for proper maintenance of

all of PPR’s playing fields, based on PADA’s figures, would be upwards of $4.2 million.

It is unclear how much the City spends on maintaining its playing fields, since the contracts for “turf management” include other spaces such as strips of land along roads, meadows that are mowed infrequently, and grass not used for athletics. Overall, the City spent about $2 million on “turf management” in fiscal year 2022. The fiscal year 2023 budget proposes $2.4 million.

Maintaining fields properly takes more than dollars. Natural grass fields require time to recover after play, limiting use to around 20 hours per week, and it can be impossible to play at all in wet weather without damaging the surface. An advantage of synthetic turf is that one field can host more hours of play per week in any weather, though due to the higher installation expense, the cost per playable hour is similar. Whatever the surface, an athletic field can be contaminated by dog waste or trash such as broken glass bottles or damaged by ATV or bicycle riders, leading to a tension between field quality and access.

“If you build a baseball field you need to put a fence around it if you want to keep it in top shape,” says Mandel. “You can’t have P HOTO BY TROY BYNUM

A group of ultimate frisbee players playing in a PADA league game.

people walking their dogs, running ATVs on it, biking across it if you want it to remain a nice baseball field. You have to separate people from that field, and it kinda sucks. It kinda sucks that I can’t just go out and throw a ball around that field with my kid if we want it to be a place where we can play baseball.”

Without sufficient maintenance and care, even new fields can deteriorate quickly. In 2019-2022, Columbus Square Park in South Philadelphia, which includes a soccer field, was renovated. Today a bare patch of dirt runs from one goal to the other.

Fisher makes the point that community support for the Aztecs’ programming has made field upkeep easier. “The pride that is instilled in the field, the pride is contagious.

You take that much pride in maintaining it and keeping it clean. You have to have buy-in.”

A

nity folks to know who to go to to get what they need.”

It is impossible to avoid the reality that the quality of playing fields that a child in Philadelphia can play on has depended more on the efforts of private groups than on the City government. In some cases, such as in Hunting Park, talented organizers such as Fisher can leverage outside support. In other cases such as at Edgely, communities of better-off users invest in the public fields they use.

“We are privileged that we are able to dedicate the people, funds and time to this,” López says, “but it’s something we take seriously. We are proud to say these are some of the best grass fields in Philadelphia.”

Advocates for preserving Edgely push back on claims that their programming doesn’t benefit local youth. Although thou-

sands of adults and youth from across the region play ultimate at Edgely, according to figures provided by López, 77 youth from the West Philadelphia zip codes closest to Edgely take part in PADA youth leagues.

Including the next ring of zip codes pushes the number up to 185. With the Saints now having access to Edgely Field for practice and games, the youth participating in their programs are now benefiting from the quality of the grass there as well.

PADA’s advocates argue that building a new track and field complex on top of Edgely will exacerbate the city’s overall shortage of quality fields, and that the City needs to take a more systematic approach. “We absolutely think the city needs more field space, and this would not be a net positive for quality field space,” López says. ◆

E L E N A LO P E Z

dvocates for philadelphia’s parks, such as the Philadelphia Parks Alliance, are currently lob� bying for more funding for Parks & Recreation’s operations budget, focusing on increasing staffing for programming and maintenance at playgrounds, libraries and recreation centers, which offer structured activities such as athletics, after-school programs, and summer camps.

“PPR’s budget needs to be increased,” Fisher says. “Why do we have to commision another study in violence prevention instead of investing in youth sports?”

“Of course Parks & Recreation should be fully funded,” Allen says. The budget today doesn’t allow the department to provide proper maintenance. This leaves it up to the local park communities based on their own resources or skill at leveraging outside support. “It becomes important for commu-

J ULY 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 31

Pasa executive director reflects on the life cycle of land and how sustainable farming can keep it healthy by hannah smith-brubaker

D

oes healthier soil create food that has more nutrients?

At Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, we have several community-science research projects based on farms working to find the answer to that intriguing question, because the wellness of our bodies is very likely linked to the overall health and wellness of the land and water that grow these foods.

But before we start thinking exclusively about our human bodies, let’s consider this: land itself is a body, a physical ecosystem with a life cycle of its own. We often approach the idea of a body at the human scale, yet we rarely expand to thinking of larger systems as living entities. When we describe a landscape as a body, it is because we can see its shape or boundary — marked in tree lines, or rivers, or mountain ranges.

The landscapes that surround us also have ecological boundaries and complex physical structures, with life cycles that respond to weather, time, and our attention to or ignorance of its needs. Since we often can’t envision a landscape as a living being, we are not always cognizant of our impacts on it or the effects of our actions on its health.

One hundred and thirty farms in the region have been working on collecting soil samples and infiltration rates of water to quantify the relationships between our actions on the land through agriculture production and the response of the land itself, both above and below the surface.

How can farmers’ actions repair and improve the health of their soils, one of the most important elements in a living landscape? An important start 32 GRID P H IL LY.CO M JU LY 2 0 22

is understanding how farming practices can either degrade or enrich the communities of microorganisms and fungi that allows our soil to maintain a healthy biome. In Pennsylvania, our soil health practices are developed across three different physiographic regions — the coastal plain, the piedmont, and the ridge and valley — and farmers working across the spectrum from livestock to row crops to vegetable production collaborate in changing land management practices and analyzing results. Sustainable agriculture practices also benefit communities beyond food production: they define how well we treat our landscapes and our neighbors downstream. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “each 1% increase in soil organic matter,” achievable on farms through intentional soil health improvements, “enables retention of an additional 20,000 gallons of rainfall per acre.” This is rainfall that would be impacting entire communities downstream. It’s a compelling story: “Purchase my strawberries, asparagus and

Riparian buffers along a stretch of farmland on the Susquehanna River in Bradford County to help protect water from agricultural sediment and nutrient runoff.

N I C H O L A S A . TO N E L L I

BODY OF NATURE

chicken because I implement climate-smart practices that build soil organic matter and soak up more rain, which lowers insurance rates because you’ll be less impacted by flooding from extreme weather.”

Having a sense for one’s foodshed, the geographical area between where one’s food is produced and where it’s consumed, provides an opportunity to learn and explore. A partnership of farmer service organizations is working to map our foodshed, which connects our communities to food and fiber produced within our shared landscape, however broadly or narrowly that is defined. This initiative is helping to ensure that municipalities, school systems and hospitals can access locally-produced products, produced with climate-smart practices; that farmers can access local markets; and that both producers and consumers can increase access to local commerce in our towns and cities. Strengthening these connections between food production, communities and land is central to helping our society envision the structures we need in place to produce healthy outcomes for ourselves and our landscapes.

The research we are conducting and the explorations of our foodsheds are helping us get at growing practices’ impacts on soil and water, as well as the soil health impacts on the food we eat. After all, the wellness of our bodies is very likely linked to the overall health and wellness of the land and water that grow these foods.

Land is a body, and we are it as much as it is us. ◆

Thom Carroll

100s of miles of trails, 100s of things to do #OnTheCircuit With more than 370 miles of Circuit Trails to explore in Greater Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, there are endless opportunities for walking, biking, fishing, kayaking, relaxing and being active outside doing the things that you love.

Find your fun at circuittrails.org/mycircuittrails

Living at the intersection of communication and science to advocate for sustainability Virtual Café Join the MES program team from 12-1 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month for an online chat about your interests and goals.

Log in with us.

www.facebook.com/UPennEES @Penn_MES_MSAG

Olivia (Xin) Wang (Master of Environmental Studies ‘16) had planned to be a reporter. While completing a master’s degree in journalism with an environmental focus, however, she decided to become a sustainability advocate. “I was really interested in environmental issues, but my knowledge extended to the stories I covered. I needed a systemic education in environmental studies to see the big picture,” she shares. She found that academic grounding with Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies (MES). The curriculum provided a scientific foundation plus room to incorporate her communication interests. “That’s one thing I love about the program; it allows you to take the professional track that fits your background.” Olivia’s coursework also exposed her to global issues and realworld policy, from an ecological trip to Puerto Rico to the World Water Forum in South Korea.

Today, Olivia uses her communication and environmental education as a marketing manager, promoting sustainable, technology-based standards and solutions to some of the globe’s biggest challenges, such as providing equitable telecommunication access in underserved communities. “Throughout my career,” she says, “I’ve tried to stay at the intersection of communication and sustainability, and that’s where I am: communicating sustainability to a broader audience.”

To learn more about how Olivia blended her communication and environmental education, visit:

www.upenn.edu/grid