Comunity Visions: Students’ fates lie in Yorktown decision

As of Dec. 19, any Temple students living in Yorktown were supposed to be evicted. This is no longer the case. A Philadelphia court has stayed the evictions in order to hear the merits of both sides of the case.

The case will be heard by the Zoning Board of Adjustment on Jan. 28 at 1 p.m. Some landlords have filed appeals to the evictions and are hoping to have the court allow them to continue renting out their houses in Yorktown.

“[The landlords] are asking them to roll back to the law they have already been breaking,” said Pam Pendleton-Smith, a community activist in Yorktown.

The law she referred to was the city-wide zoning ordinance, which prohibits no more than three unrelated people living in one residence. Some landlords had violated this law even before the special district laws, which made it impossible for students to live in Yorktown, existed.

Not all landlords are fighting the special district laws, Smith said.

“[There were] two cases in which the property owner moved into the property,” Smith said.

Other landlords have decided to appeal the decision. Some have said they need to rent a house to more than three people in order to make a profit.

“It has been said by certain individuals that they could not make money with only three tenants,” Smith said.

The meeting, which is being held in Center City at 1515 Arch St., will decide the fates of the students living in Yorktown, as well as the landlords who own the properties.

“I can’t say [the evictions] will be immediately because the students are kind of the innocent victims, so they will probably stay the evictions until May, which I would be in agreement with,” if the judge decides the evictions will continue, Smith said.

If the evictions are overturned, the special district laws could hang in the balance. A judge won’t be able to allow the student renters to continue living in Yorktown, but also uphold the special district laws which make it illegal for them to live there in the first place.

The ruling could have a lasting impact on Temple and its housing situation. If the evictions are upheld, then Temple would lose several sections of the surrounding community as a source of housing, not just Yorktown but Jefferson Manor and People’s Village as well.

On the other hand, if students are allowed to continue living in Yorktown and other areas under the special district laws, it could cause friction between the community and Temple. The fairly decent behavior of student living in those communities could deteriorate as public interest dies down, exacerbating the situation even further.

Temple may not have a hand in the decision being made on Jan. 28, but the result could affect it dramatically.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

Community Visions: Yorktown problems need Temple leadership

Leadership is not picking up the pieces when it all falls down. Leadership is making sure it doesn’t all fall down.

Unfortunately, Temple is not being a leader when it comes to the Yorktown evictions. Its official stance is that students should be talking to their landlords and trying to find a resolution. If students wake up with no home on Dec. 19, Temple will find them housing.

Temple’s position is not enviable. It sits between flustered students and irate parents on one side, and a law that is already on the books on the other side. What’s worse, a new, even stricter law may be passed soon.

As unpleasant as Temple’s position may be, it is there nonetheless. The important part is finding its way out. To do that, it cannot keep playing defense. So far, Temple has removed off-campus listings from its housing Web site.

More needs to be done. In addition to, or even instead of taking all but a few listings off the Web site, add information on what students are getting into when they move into Yorktown and Jefferson Manor. Provide a map of exactly where students can or cannot live.

Currently, Temple’s student housing Web site includes in its resources a list of Philadelphia neighborhoods, detailing characteristics of each. Amazingly, North Philadelphia, Kensington, Frankford and Port Richmond are all included in one category, with only a paragraph to describe them. If students do stumble upon this list, they will be no better off than if they read a rudimentary tourist guide to Philadelphia.

More parking is necessary for both on- and off-campus students. There are more cars in Yorktown during the day than there are at night because so many commuters end up parking there. Campus fills up early in the morning, and the parking lots are expensive.

Even though it may be a burden to take on the cost of parking, Temple needs to do it. If our tuition must be raised, so be it. Students who park in Yorktown and get fined are paying for the parking now, so they might as well pay higher tuition and get parking for a lower cost.

Temple cannot take on this burden by itself, though. Students need to realize that they are parking in places they shouldn’t be parking. Even if they are unknowing victims at first, continued disobedience is not a realistic option. Long-time residents shouldn’t have to park on another block just because a student is running late one day.

Temple needs to take a stronger leadership role in the Yorktown problem. At the same time, students need to follow the rules they are stepping into.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

Community Visions: Bringing big brother back

Off-campus housing is freedom. Freedom from quiet hours, resident assistants, guest sign-ins and bag checks.

Freedom may no longer be available in off-campus housing. City Councilman Darrell Clarke introduced a bill that would require all off-campus Temple students to register their addresses with the university. If they drive a car, they will also have to provide Temple with valid insurance and registration papers and the plate number, makes and models of the cars.

In addition, students’ landlords must also keep records of the plate numbers, makes and models of their cars. Once students are registered, they will be given a sticker from Temple, which has to be placed on their car.

If students fail to provide the information or do not attach the sticker, they can be fined anywhere from $50 to $150. Every day they do not comply is considered a separate violation.
“The university is supposed to keep logs of disciplinary problems with students,” said William Carter, Clarke’s director of legislative affairs.

Temple must keep records of disciplinary problems with students. If a resident is cited three times, the university must notify the Philadelphia Police Department as to whether the student was referred to the University Disciplinary Committee.

“It’s really about increasing the dialogue between the responsible parties,” Carter said. “[The university is] charged with coming up with some disciplinary codes for students who are habitually violating the conduct.”

Some of those habitual violations include parking tickets. If you’re running late to class, you’ll have to think twice about parking illegally: if you are given three citations, Temple will refer you to the UDC.
The new law deals with three violations. If you are cited three times with quality of life violations like drunkenness or excessive noise, your landlord has to take measures to curb the behavior. This can mean a last-chance warning, or it can mean eviction.

Temple has yet to come out for or against the bill.

“We are working with Councilman Clarke and we have no formal position on the legislation right now,” said Ray Betzner, director of news communications for Temple.

The legislation seems geared toward several communities around Temple, even though it applies to the entire fifth district. Yorktown and Jefferson Manor residents have been campaigning for enforcement of current laws, which already make it unlawful for Temple students to live or park in those communities.

This law may have been inspired by the tediousness of the Department of Licenses and Inspections’process for inspecting and citing city code violations. Some students living there have not received citations or even been visited by inspectors.

Ideally, one would hope that L&I would simply do its job, but history suggests that even if that does happen, it will take months anyway.

The law will take at least a month, and probably more, to pass. In the meantime, let’s hope Temple is coming up with a better strategy for housing and parking. It shouldn’t be up to students to stumble around the logistics of living at Temple and to hope they don’t get evicted or fined $150.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

Joe Frazier’s Gym closes its doors

This article was updated here.

Joe Frazier’s Gym has been closed, likely forever, according to a press release from the boxing and training facility in North Philadelphia.

Frazier, the former heavyweight champion of the world and longtime rival of Muhammad Ali, lived in a small apartment above the gym, while he toured throughout the country. His son Marvis, also a former boxer, handled the daily operations of the gym, which served as much a community center and outreach program as a training facility.

“It’s not always about boxing,” Marvis told The Temple News last October. “We’re trying to change young men.”

The gym opened at 2917 N. Broad St., above Glenwood Avenue, in 1969, a few years after Joe turned professional in August 1965. Joe was born the youngest of 12 children on Jan. 12, 1944 in Beaufort, S.C., but made Philadelphia his home. He won a gold medal at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, before beginning one of the most celebrated careers in boxing history, earning a 32-4-1 career record and winning 27 of his victories by knockout. His three matches against Ali in the 1970s are often considered among the best in sports history.

“Joe Frazier’s name means something to people,” Marvis said last fall.

Marvis trained at the now closed gym, also, launching his career there in 1975 and returning to serve as general manager after he retired in 1990. Despite success as an amateur, his professional boxing career was less memorable. Aside from his responsibilities at the gym, Marvis doubled as a Delaware reverend, as The Temple News reported.

“This is the ministry God has given me,” Marvis said.

In retirement, the Frazier’s were a draw for top young boxing talent even beyond the region. In February, British featherweight Marianne Marston moved from London to Philadelphia in order that she might train under Joe. Another top female boxer that has been forced to find a new boxing home is Diane Moses, originally from Jacksonville, Fla. Jayson Sia, mentioned in the release, moved from Los Angeles to train.

“The gym is closed, it’s over.” said Marvis Frazier, Joe’s son, in the release.

The official date the gym was shut down was March 30, according to the release. Calls to the gym by The Temple News were not returned.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

Urban decay crumbles home on North Sixth Street

See a photo slide show.

A vivid mural stares across a littered street at a dirt lot just one block from the Erie Avenue station on the Broad Street Line. The building that was once there fell years ago, but sections of thin plaster walls still cling to the adjacent brick house. Diagonally across West Erie Avenue, another dusty lot provides the neighborhood with a more recent reminder that it has been left to deteriorate.

The latter building fell just a few weeks ago, on March 6. The contractors have cleaned up the debris, but the chain-link fencing is still there. I talked to two elderly men standing at a side entrance of the East Bethel Baptist Church, which sits across the street. They said the house had been vacant for years, but had been used by drug dealers and users.

The mural across the street is titled “Forgiveness,” and was dedicated in October, 2007. It portrays Kevin Johnson, a North Philadelphia resident who became a quadriplegic after being shot at a party in Southwest Philadelphia in 2003. The title is inspired by his personal and public forgiveness of his attackers. Johnson died in 2006 from complications of his injuries.

“Put down the weight of hate and envy and blame and solitude and wishing that my circumstances could be different,” the mural reads.

The words seem like a quiet challenge to a neighborhood that needs its circumstances to be different.

Further south, another neighborhood with its own mural sees both the success and the failure of efforts to create neighborhoods worthy of pride: a building at North Sixth Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue now lies in a heap of rubble, after its roof partially collapsed.
A 74-year-old woman had been living in another home connected to the building, though she was not hurt. The Philadelphia Housing Authority had placed the woman, whose name was not released, in the house a year ago.

Keep reading below photograph

The city’s Licenses and Inspections department did an investigation, although they did not respond to my inquiries as to the conclusion of the investigation. PHA spokesman Kirk Dorn said they had inspected the building the woman was living in. While there may have been no danger to the woman, it is hard to believe that any part of a building might be safe to live in if another is in imminent danger of collapse.

A mural half a block from the collapsed building stretches along an old brick building. It features tidal waves, anime figures, crowds of people holding a rally, and an angry Statue of Liberty carrying away a young black boy. One of the signs in the rally reads “How would you feel?”

The mural seems to have anticipated the collapse of the building at Sixth Street and Cecil B. Moore: while it is not a disaster, it does not instill much faith in the city, and poses the same question of those who do not have to depend on public housing.

However, it would be a mistake to criticize PHA wholesale. Just one block to the west sit the Ludlow Homes, one of PHA’s newest housing projects. Ludlow Homes are a move away from public housing a la giant concrete boxes, and towards single-story one-unit homes, with the intent of creating a better community atmosphere. PHA thinks a lot about community, considering it houses 84,000 Philadelphians in 13,400 homes and apartment complexes.

If blame can be placed anywhere for crumbling houses that are not torn down or salvaged, and neighborhoods that are left, quite literally, to the elements, it is at the feet of the federal government, who, along with taxpayers, finance the PHA. Taxpayers cannot bear the burden, especially when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development threatens to remove $50 million from PHA’s budget, which it has.

While politicians play their games, Philadelphians try to forgive, and to put down the weight of hate and envy.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

See a photo slide show. Read other Community Visions columns.

Temple community relations under Peter Liacouras

*Note: article amended 4/14/08 at 6:58 p.m.

Peter J. Liacouras was officially made the seventh president of Temple on July 1, 1982. He came to power with a $52 million budget shortfall, the unfinished work of his predecessor Marvin Wachman and tenuous relations with surrounding neighborhoods.

While Liacouras regards Wachman warmly for beginning to reach out to the neighborhoods that surrounded Temple, the university was still regarded negatively for its role in clearing residential properties through eminent domain practices in the 1950s and 1960s.

“From Wachman to Peter, we’ve established a legacy, we just need to hope we have successors,” Anderson said. “Because of the past… people doubt.”

Temple was an entirely east of Broad Street institution before 1956, and the ground Annenberg Hall sits on now was covered with rowhomes as recently as the 1960s.

“Between 1958 and 1970 or so, Temple, which was really a white institution then, displaced a whole lot of black residents, just took their homes.” Liacouras said. “So, of course we weren’t trusted when we first went out into the community.”

But, Liacouras saw a working relationship with all of Temple’s neighbors to be a priority.

“The cardinal rule of our administration was no displacement of residents,” Liacouras said. “If the university wouldn’t protect the community, or at least respect it, then who would?”

TOM ANDERSON AND THE COMMUNITY

For more than 30 years, the face of Temple in the neighborhood was Thomas Anderson Jr., former associate vice president for community relations. By all accounts, Anderson was as good, and fair, and decent a mediator as anyone.

“Tom Anderson had tremendous, really unbelievable, relationships with the community,” said Liacouras. “I used to wonder which side he was on.”

Anderson was brought on by Wachman in 1973, electing the Camden, N.J. native to director of community relations, a newly created position. Wachman, trying to unwork decades of neighborhood misuse, needed someone to be a voice for Temple on the ground.

At the time, the Black Panthers, who had held national conferences in the Church of the Advocate at 17th and Diamond Streets in 1968 and 1970, were rallying in Temple’s backyard, as were other black elements of the city’s activist community.

So, Anderson met the leaders, their constituents and listened to their problems.

“I was always just honest,” Anderson said.

So, when Liacouras came to power nearly a decade later, Anderson was already on the pulse of the community and some bridges had been forged, Anderson said. Still, great distances were left to go, and Liacouras was ready to make them, though he is unflinching in noting the importance Anderson played before and during his presidency.

“How many Tom Andersons do you have to send out to the community?” Liacouras asked. “I always worry about a time when they aren’t around.”

One of the longest-lasting partnerships Anderson forged under Liacouras was one with the Norris Homes, east of Anderson and Gladfelter Halls, providing the community with health services, tutoring and some day care services.

“The Norris Homes were ignored until election time. So, Temple started picking up trash and fixing the sidewalks, creating health service programs and things of that nature,” Liacouras said. “Tom was doing that.”

Anderson brought Temple and its surrounding community closer together, launching an adopt-a-block initiative and a welcome wagon program, still alive today. He coordinated an agreement between the Temple University Greek Association and their neighbors, and initiated a handful of other programs that put Temple students in the community, Anderson said.

“We wanted both sides to better understand each other,” he said.

JAMES WHITE AND THE ARMORY FIRE

On the Monday evening of Aug. 7, 1989, Col. James S. White (U.S. Army, retired), a man of impeccable care, rushed to the 2100-block of North Broad Street, above Diamond Street, where an old armory building was in flames.

White was then the city’s managing director, the highest ranking non-political official in Philadelphia.

“I took to responding to all multi-alarm fires, after MOVE” White said, referring to the city government’s 1985 firebombing of a block of the Powelton Village neighborhood of West Philadelphia to enforce arrest warrants of several members of the controversial MOVE organization. Eleven members were killed, and the scars haven’t healed for any black political activist in the city.

The armory fire turned out to be nothing of the magnitude of that May 13 day, but changed the course of White’s life, if not immediately than certainly in entirety. White was impressed with Liacouras the night of the armory fire, a university president on the streets during a fire on a neighboring block.

“He was so involved in something he didn’t have to be,” White said.

For his part, Anderson was getting people out of their homes, making sure Temple police protected against looters.

“Tom was running up to houses like a man possessed,” Liacouras said, laughing as an old friend would.

Residents who were evacuated from their homes on Carlisle Street, behind the armory, were brought to Johnson Hall, just as the university had done for displaced residents of Powelton Village after the MOVE bombing. Liacouras and Anderson were behind it, and White knew it. So, it came with little surprise that after Liacouras offered White a senior position at Temple following a brief run to be mayor in 1991, he took it.

“Ramona Africa told me he was the only person in city government she would sit with,” said Liacouras, speaking of the only adult survivor of the MOVE bombing. “I knew I needed him on my team.”

White is quiet, calculating and fair-minded. After graduating from Morgan State College in 1954, the native of Cincinnati entered a racially charged U.S. Army, where he was quickly found to be a man of incredible efficiency, earnestness and vision.

After serving in Vietnam, White was charged with initiating army-wide, equal opportunity and treatment practices. He dealt with some of the most complex issues of the most powerful military in the world. Other issues may have seemed less important, but spoke to the value of cooperation, a strength of White’s by any measure.

“They put me in charge of dealing with afros in the army,” White said, smiling, not denying the idea that his task might have had something to do with his being a black man. The army was concerned about the trend growing in the 1960s and 1970s of soldiers wearing their hair long – both white and black – so White suggested a length limit that forced compromise from both leaders and soldiers.

“That’s James White,” Liacouras said. “Consensus building.”

He was hardly just a military bureaucrat, though, rather a decorated veteran. Before his administrative role, he served proudly in Vietnam. While serving in a test unit of 82nd Airborne, his helicopter crashed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Still, the details are hard to come by from White, whose humility can be unnerving.

“I’m not accustomed to talking about myself,” White said.

Not long after retiring from the Army in 1977, White moved to Philadelphia and found himself to be an effective administrator in city government. He spent four years in the city’s office of housing and community development, before becoming city commissioner of licenses and inspections in 1984. Then, under Mayor Wilson Goode, White became the city’s managing director. He supervised 24,000 city workers and managed a then $1.2 billion annual budget.

So, it comes with little surprise that White was fully capable of filling his initial role as vice president for public affairs and then as executive vice president. In leading all non-academic Temple affairs, White had a sincere involvement in the community.

In 1995, White cut 11 percent, some $25 million, of the university’s budget, and, among other cutbacks, closed a day care center Temple was funding. In times like these, White had to play the role of bad cop.

PETER LIACOURAS AND TEMPLE TOWN

During his 18-year tenure, Liacouras led a transition that took Temple from a regional commuter school to the professional research institution we know it today. He had a plan of attracting a larger student base, it involved broader recruiting and a wide-reaching advertising campaign. It also involved moving to transform a commuting population and the collection of academic buildings that constituted Temple’s flagship location in 1982 to a truly definable Main Campus.

For doing so, he was criticized for leaving Temple’s role as Philadelphia’s educator. His “Temple Town” vision became a rallying cry for activists against gentrification.

“You had to give it a name for it to make change. Still, we didn’t use the term publicly. We knew the initial response we’d get,” Liacouras said. “I remember in 1986, a riot breaking out at the housing project that used to be at 23rd and Diamond after the name first came out.”

They made signs crossing out the new Temple ‘T,’ just branded in 1983.

“That sure showed the Temple ‘T’ was working,” Liacouras said, laughing.

For Temple Town, he is either called a visionary who enlivened academia on North Broad or derided as an imperialist who decimated communities in central North Philadelphia. During his tenure, from 1982 to 2000, on-campus living had ballooned 175 percent. Students living on or within three blocks of the university’s east of Broad core had more than tripled, from 1,500 in 1982 to 4,800 in fall 2001.

With its history in forcing out residents, Liacouras’s Temple Town seemed a cover up for something sinister.

OTHER URBAN UNIVERSITIES

Liacouras and his administration didn’t go blindly into urban reconstruction. Throughout his tenure, Liacouras and his representatives traveled to universities elsewhere in the country to see how others consolidated a campus amid older communities.

“Look at what the University of Alabama did. George Wallace literally just took two miles on the main street there, just took it through eminent domain and things like that,” Liacouras said, “We visited Marquette to see the great work they did but found they just took the land, too. So we found, really, no one has a good answer to building a top university in an urban setting. Every model we were told to use, invariably, used eminent domain, something we weren’t willing to do anymore.”

After visiting Fordham University in the Bronx borough of New York City, Liacouras decided their own path would be best.

“They literally built a wall,” Anderson said.

“After coming back, I went to the Board of Trustees,” Liacouras joked. “Get the fences up.”

“You can build walls,” White said. “But the community would be part of us still.”

UNIVERSITY EXPANSION

There were three expansions made during the 18-year Liacouras administration that found the most community push back: the Liacouras Center, which opened in 1997, the Tuttleman Learning Center, which opened in Fall 1999, and the James S. White Student Residence Hall, which was named as such in 1999.

Temple first bought the land where the now-labeled Liacouras Center sits in 1988. The university got state funding in 1992, but ran into a resistant City Council motivated by vocal neighborhood resistant. It wasn’t until November 1995 that a compromise was met, and construction of the Apollo at Temple, the initial name of the venue, was underway.

Thirteenth Street, which splits Main Campus, was closed for more than a year for construction of Tuttleman. When the building was in its late stages of development, the administration announced plans to request of City Council the permanent closure of the thoroughfare.

“Nothing that we are requesting from a procedural standpoint is unique,” White said to The Temple News in November 1998. “The issue is safety. The amount of crossing and parallel movement across the 13th Street corridor will be significantly increased when the learning center and other projects are completed.

The most vocal community feedback, particularly from Yorktown, was decidedly negative.

“It sends the message that the campus is closed to the children. Is it OK to throw up barriers, whether barbed or invisible?” said Prissila R. Woods, Yorktown Community Development director.

After the armory fire in 1989, where Liacouras and White first developed a mutual respect that led to White’s later hiring, there was an abandoned, burned-out building just north of Temple’s Main Campus. The university bought and went about finding a way to fill a void it desperately needed filled: student housing. Again, the community fought back, most notably Evelyn Boyer, the block captain of the 2000-block of Carlisle Street.

Like the construction of the Liacouras Center, city leaders, pressured by residents and hopeful for a cause, held Temple to the letter of the law, one that kept Temple from developing on the armory. It was White, a man of meticulous resolve, who found a clause in city zoning of great value to Temple.

“As long as we built in the exact footprint of the armory, we were able to develop the property,” White said. “We decided to even go a little smaller.”

Like Tuttleman and the Liacouras Center after it, this project was completed, with the community involved. The message Liacouras wanted to convey was given, if only to some and with time.

“We’re not colonialists,” Liacouras said. “We want to be neighbors.”

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu

Watch, read, and explore the Peter Liacouras multimedia package by The Temple News

*The military experience of James White was incorrectly characterized when this article was originally published. White was involved in a helicopter crash in North Carolina, as is now stated.

Black Jesus: creating God in our own image

Soaring brick-and-mortar tributes to God can be found in any community. Churches especially permeate places that test faith and offer little hope, places like North Philadelphia. The imagery inside, however, shows that the God these houses are dedicated to may not

be as universal as we like to think.

The Bright Hope Baptist Church sits at the corner of 12th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. This structure, built in 1964 after the construction of Yorktown, serves an active congregation that was once led by William H. Gray, III, a prominent Philadelphia politician and one-time majority whip in the U.S. Congress. A large stained-glass window is displayed on the church’s Web site, depicting Jesus surrounded by glowing rays. This Jesus is shown just how he is commonly portrayed—kind, bearded and smiling. One thing is different, though. He is black.

Now, Jesus could actually have been black. Some schools of thought point to evidence that early Jews may have been at least partially black. Regardless of what the historical Jesus looked like, however, churches and religious paintings and symbols depict him in dozens of different ways. These vary from the traditional crucifixion scene to more contemporary, and often less frightening, images.

Depictions of Jesus and almost any other religious figure change over time and place, in order to fit the mood, so to speak. What Jesus looked like in real life is not completely clear, and that makes depicting him in different ways easier. Even if the world knew precisely what he looked like, I doubt that he would be depicted the same everywhere. Religious figures, whether they are saints, gods, martyrs or angels, give us comfort, and their stories are told to give us some spiritual connection, or at the very least, a social connection.

These stories lose their meaning and their ability to connect to us when they do not reflect ourselves. A story of European monks who were trying to convert people of color shows what happens when people do not see themselves in their deities.

The monks were appalled when they were told that these people preferred hell to heaven. A painting that depicted the two eternal worlds turned out to be the culprit. It depicted heaven as a place populated with austere, pale people, who lived in the sky. Hell, on the other hand, was shown as a place that had a lot of bonfires, and that was populated by dark-skinned people.

It isn’t hard to see how anyone would rather live in a place with warmth and people who at least partially resembled themselves rather than a bizarre foreign land filled with stone-faced strangers.

Perhaps it is better this way, with people who claim to worship the same God depicting him in sometimes drastically different ways. Even if we knew what Jesus looked like, depicting him that way would hardly make him more real to the millions of us who say they believe in some form of God — 86 percent of American adults, according to a recent Gallup poll.

For God, or religion in general, to serve any worthwhile purpose, he first needs to connect to the people who are searching for meaning in his story.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

Yorktown: the neighborhood, its history and rebirth

See a photo slideshow of Yorktown photos from Temple University’s Urban Archives here.

In 1959, Yorktown, the neighborhood directly south of Main Campus, did not exist.

Not only did it not exist, nothing stood in its place. The area, which spans from Girard to Cecil B. Moore Avenues, and from 11th to Broad Streets, was nothing but a bizarre clearing of dust and telephone poles in the expanse of central North Philadelphia. Ten years later, it was a vibrant middle-class neighborhood, with the sinew of a small town, and the adoration of Philadelphia’s mayor.

The median income had more than tripled. The slum that had existed there before was nowhere to be seen. In its place stood boulevards, grassy lawns, and quiet streets. Not everyone was thrilled, however.

UNEASY FOUNDATIONS

In order to create this oasis, the city took the 153-acre section by eminent domain, and sent several thousand people packing. More than 2,000 families, 1,000 more individuals, and almost 400 businesses were forced to relocate in order to give Yorktown life, according to a Dec. 14, 1969 article in the Sunday Bulletin. Some felt that the surrounding neighborhoods suffered because of these evictions.

“There were no relocation plans for the people and they didn’t know what to do,” a resident named Marvin Louis told the Bulletin afterwards. “So the [developers] bought up the land and the residents were given a certain amount of time to move out.”

Louis, at that time the president of the Ludlow Community Association, was quoted in multiple articles criticizing both the city and Yorktown residents for the way the build-up was carried out and the behavior of the community members themselves.

“Everyone who was pushed out couldn’t afford the mortgages, and there was also a lot of red-lining back then,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, associate director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University, where he is also a professor of African-American history. As a young child, Monteiro lived in what was to become Yorktown. His grandmother was one of the residents forced out by the city in the late 1950s.Monteiro also believes there was another force at work in the creation and success of Yorktown, which has been predominantly black since its creation.

“Philadelphia has always been a segregated city,” he said. “This was a way to ease the demand to desegregate neighborhoods.”The black middle class was making gains in jobs and social mobility, and was beginning to move out into the suburbs and Northeast Philadelphia, which at that time were predominantly white.

“When Yorktown was built, it gave the black working and middle classes a nice neighborhood to live in,” Monteiro said. More importantly, a neighborhood that did not have whites living in it.

SHIFTING CHARACTER

Yorktown has been largely successful thus far in keeping its working class character. This may not be the case for much longer.

“The real question is, will Yorktown be gentrified,” Monteiro said. With expansion from Center City from the south, and more immediately, Temple University to the north, gentrification may not be out of the question.

“We are not worried about that,” said Pam Pendleton-Smith, a Yorktown resident and member of the Yorktown Community Association. “The important thing is that it does not become an area that caters to transient tenancy. We want the owners to have a vested interest in the neighborhood.”

Transient tenancy, code for university students and anyone else who lives in an area for only a few years, has been a problem in Yorktown since 2000, Smith said. In that year, George Vasquez Jr., a then-employee of Temple University Health Sciences Center, bought a house in Yorktown. Instead of living there, however, he renovated it and rented it out to students. It is from this genesis that Yorktown began being inhabited by students. Many residents will tell you that it’s patently illegal.

City code stipulates that Yorktown homes host only single families. A family is defined as relation through blood, marriage, or adoption, or as fewer than four unrelated persons. If the people living in that home do not meet that definition, it is in violation of city code, also known as illegal.The mistake here would be to demonize Vasquez. He was simply taking advantage of a business opportunity. He was hardly the first, and certainly won’t be the last, to ignore city codes.

MISCONCEPTIONS

With any controversy, there are a few misconceptions that play into the animosity. Yorktown and Temple are no different.As evidenced by a short film made by University of Pennsylvania students, available on Yorktown’s Community Association Web site, some in Yorktown believe that Temple began buying up the homes for students. This is a misconception, one that comes from the fact that Vasquez was a Temple employee.

In reality, Vasquez has flipped houses and rented them out all over the city, and his Yorktown purchase was just another private business venture.

Another mistake would be to assume that there has always been tension between Temple and Yorktown. This is simply not the case.

“For as long as there has been Yorktown, there have been Temple students living here,” Smith said. “It was never a problem until absentee landlords began buying houses.”

This occurred first in 2000 with Vasquez. Then, instead of a student living in a house inhabited by empty-nesters, there were five or six students by themselves.As a result of the YCA’s actions, Temple has agreed to stop advertising Yorktown houses on their off-campus housing list.

The importance of Yorktown’s history lies in Temple’s future. With several hundred more freshmen in 2007 than in 2006, and with the influx of the Tyler School of Art, students will move into the neighborhoods surrounding Main Campus in droves. Understanding those neighborhoods is critical to ensuring that the expansion will be benign and well-received on both sides.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.See other Community Visions columns here.

Hiring from the community changes fortunes

Alphonso Richardson first tried to get a job with Temple University in 1980, the year he graduated high school. It was 27 years later that he finally secured employment, taking a job with maintenance and housekeeping. Richardson’s story underscores why Temple can never be an economic lifeline for North Philadelphia. At the same time, it tells us what can be done, given that unpleasant reality.

“It almost seemed like you had to know someone to get in,” Richardson said. That changed, for him at least, late last year. Community Outreach and Hiring, an office within Human Resources headed by Bill Hart and Janel Bowles, made it possible for Richardson to get himself noticed in the sea of applicants.

“It was an idea from [former University President David] Adamany,” Bowles explained. “It was an initiative he saw as important, to be a better neighbor.”

This office is an example of what Temple can do to give back to the community it owes most of Main Campus to. Besides running computer training and interview skills workshops for the public, it also keeps a list of resumes of North Philadelphians who have applied for work at Temple.

“Our role is to help bridge some of the gaps as relates to applicants understanding the employment process and to be in-house advocates for qualified candidates,” Hart said. “Our total numbers [hired] are about 600 employees from the targeted neighborhoods.”

Specifically, the targeted area covers Spring Garden, Kensington, Fairmount, North Philadelphia and Nicetown, with a focus on the blocks adjacent to Main Campus and the Health Sciences Center. When a resident of those areas applies to Temple, Hart and Bowles try to get them noticed.

There is a problem in the North Philadelphia economic sphere, one that Human Resources cannot solve. According to Hart, there can be 500 open positions in a year at Temple. Yet, as in Richardson’s previous experience, there are simply too many applicants and not enough jobs.

This issue of size is at the heart of town-gown relations here at Temple. It is an understatement to say that Temple is a large presence in North Philadelphia, and that presence includes job opportunities. However, Temple will never be able to employ even a fraction of the community.

Temple could also take on an advocate role if it wants to help revitalize this community, engaging issues that affect the larger North Philadelphia economy. First, though, part of its mandate is to simply prosper. A middle class institution like Temple, if it has its priorities straight and does not forget its community, can be the impetus that brings in other jobs and changes the economic landscape, as well as possibilities for local residents.

As such, Human Resources’ initiative to help local applicants stand out from the crowd when applying for any job is commendable, and should be sustained and expanded. What this can do is foster new businesses here, which will boost the economic outlook beyond anything Temple could ever achieve by itself.

When I interviewed Richardson, he asked if I could mention that he thanks Hart and his boss, a Mr. Rodney, for his job. After 27 years, he had earned a job with dental and health insurance, disability, vacation and sick days, even tuition remission for himself and his dependents, and he was not about to risk it.

Many others in North Philadelphia are still trying to find someone to whom they might be indebted, and Temple should continue to take the initiative in finding those people and companies, because it cannot fulfill the need itself.

Stephen Zook can be reached at stephen.zook@temple.edu.

Pending Blue Horizon sale is only for looks

If you don’t involve yourself in Philadelphia boxing, then you’ll never find a boxer you’ve heard of fighting at the 1,200-seat Blue Horizon.

The money isn’t there.

Instead, you’ll find two fighters respectfully trying to beat the hell out of each other for a couple hundred bucks. For purists, there simply isn’t any other place like it.

If you’re not interested, you also probably missed last month’s announcement that part-owner Vernoca Michael was looking to sell the famed boxing venue for $6.5 million. But it has sat, as the mansion has sat in the 1300 block of North Broad Street, near Thompson Street, for more than 140 years.

Chances are that Michael was just testing her opportunities. She can’t let the last great vestige of Philadelphia’s boxing prime in the 1960s and 1970s die.

That it has survived, unlike others, is likely why a Sports Illustrated article called the Blue the last great boxing venue in the country and one of the few left in the world. Or maybe it was its atmosphere – a mansion from the 1860s still without air-conditioning – that garnered it enough longstanding praise for The Ring, a magazine that has been the self-proclaimed “Bible of Boxing” since 1922, to call it the best spot to see a boxing match in the entire world.

Michael became the first black female boxing promoter in 1998 and created her boxing promotions company to carry on the legacy of boxing in the venue. A woman. A black woman saved boxing in this town. She wouldn’t leave the Blue in the wrong hands, $6.5 million or not.

There is no questioning Philadelphia’s role in boxing history, having been home to old heads like Jack O’Brien to middleweight Bernard Hopkins to former world heavyweight champions Sonny Liston and Joe Frazier. Blue Horizon itself boasts producing more than 30 world champion boxers and has been seen on most major stations in the world for boxing including USA and ESPN.

But you’ve never heard of it. And no one seems to be buying it.

Bernard Fernandez has covered boxing for the Philadelphia Daily News for more than two decades. All the accolades and legend aside, Fernandez might know why it’s a tough sell.

“They basically have to pack the place,” he said. “No television contracts, no big name fighters on the card.”

There was a time in Philadelphia boxing when the Wachovia Spectrum held heavily promoted fights with television contracts and big sponsors, Fernandez said. Their interests went elsewhere, not wanting to compete with Las Vegas casinos and larger arenas in larger markets. Suddenly, young Philly fighters had to go elsewhere to get paydays worth the beatings.

Which is a shame, considering what Philadelphia has meant to boxing in this world.

“Really, Philadelphia per capita probably churns out more fighters than any other city,” Fernandez said. “If a promoter can say he is a ‘Philadelphia fighter,’ you can expect that guy to be tough as nails, that he can throw a left hook because Philadelphia fighters come out of the womb knowing how to throw a left hook.”

Whether that can continue, Fernandez said, is yet to be determined by anyone.

“If you go to a NASCAR race and the cars go by you at 200 miles per hour, you can feel the power,” Fernandez said. “You can reach out and touch them.”

Doubt lingers on whether that can continue to happen for boxing fans in Philadelphia much longer.

Christopher Wink can be reached at cwink@temple.edu.

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