SRC to get earful today over $1 land transfer

NOTE: THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED.

A plan to build senior-citizen housing on a North Philadelphia block where young people now play basketball and have drill-team practice has sparked an uproar among area residents.

The fallout is expected to continue today at a School Reform Commission meeting during which at least two residents will complain that the school district gave little notice to residents before transferring the property to the city for $1.

"We had no notice at all," said Danita Bates, who manages a youth drill team and marching band that practice on the property. "The only notice we got was after the fact."

"They keep folks in the community out of the loop," Bates said.

The property is the entire block of Susquehanna Avenue between 15th and 16th streets, behind the Tanner Duckrey School on Diamond Street.

For more than 20 years, at least two basketball leagues played on courts on the land, with some players going on to play in college or the NBA. Among them were the late Hank Gathers, Pooh Richardson and Rasheed Wallace, now a Boston Celtic.

The city now plans to transfer the land - also at a cost of $1 - to a Philadelphia company called NewCourtland, which operates several senior-citizen housing developments in the city.

Some also question whether, if the city must develop the land, a senior-citizen complex is the right fit for the once-bustling business corridor.

"We have plenty of vacant land [in North Philadelphia] but this is not the place for it," Judith Robinson, owner of a real estate company, told a City Council committee hearing on Dec. 7.

Robinson told Council members the land could be sold for as much as $5 million rather than "giving it away" for $1.

The full City Council approved the transfer of the land from the school district on Dec. 17.

Councilman Darrell L. Clarke, who represents the area, said he believes in the housing project.

He said if properties were never transferred to developers, "there would be no low-income housing built in Philadelphia."

Clarke also said he intended to hold a public meeting about the project but said that NewCourtland had been facing a deadline to apply for federal money.

"We will have a meeting when there's a project," Clarke said. "It's not a funded project yet."

Clarke said there are also plans in the works for a new indoor basketball court for area youth.

Robinson said that at today's SRC meeting, she plans to ask school district officials if the district is getting fair-market value when it sells property.

"Sell it to the highest bidder so the money will go back to the school board and back to our children," Robinson said yesterday.

The project also has raised questions about the appearance of a conflict of interest in the way the property transfer occurred.

To be eligible for a transfer from the school district, land must be declared "unused and unnecessary" by an SRC vote.

Clarence D. Armbrister, Mayor Nutter's chief of staff, wrote the Sept. 29, 2009, letter that was sent to Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman, SRC chairman Robert L. Archie and other city officials.

On Oct. 21, Archie declined to vote on an ordinance because he was a former board member of NewCourtland. But another SRC member, Denise McGregor Armbrister, who is married to Nutter's chief of staff, was among the three commissioners who voted to approve the ordinance.

A district spokesman said Armbrister did not recuse herself from the vote "because she has no conflict." Another commissioner also declined to vote.

Zack Stalberg, president of the watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said both Armbristers "are honorable people" but said he believed they should be careful in future dealings. "It creates a suspicion among people in the commmunty," he said.

Stalberg said the bigger issue is whether communities know about development being planned for their neighborhood.

"City Hall is a distant place for a lot of people and checking the legal notices isn't something that average folks do all the time."

He added that "the burden is now on the Nutter administration to prove that this is a clean deal and it makes sense for the community."