Barnes move might displace Children's Crisis Center

The impending move of the Barnes Foundation to the Parkway is prompting other neighborhood changes - including the potential displacement of a nonprofit that provides mental-health services to thousands of troubled Philadelphia children.

Citing development needs, the Nutter administration wants to end the city's longtime lease of a building that houses the Children's Crisis Treatment Center, an agency treating about 2,500 children a year who have been physically or sexually abused, neglected, or have witnessed violence, or other trauma. Most of the children are between 2 and 13.

"When it became clearer that the Barnes was actually going to be there, there became a plan for the entire Parkway that the children's center no longer fit into," Mayor Nutter's spokesman, Doug Oliver, said. "It's not the only place where they can be."

Founded in 1971, the center has been located at 1823 Callowhill St. for three decades, inside a building that it leases from the city for $1 a year. The building is 11/2 blocks from the Barnes' future home at 20th Street between Callowhill and the Parkway.

On May 21, the city informed the center's executive director, Antonio Valdez, in a letter that the agency can remain in the building for some extended time if it starts paying a $4,000 monthly rent beginning Dec. 1.

However, that deal is off come April 30, 2010, when "the center must quit, vacate and deliver possession of the premises to the city," according to the eviction letter.

Valdez said he hoped the city changed its mind on the property.

Oliver said he was unaware of any specific proposal for the site. "Yet the property where they are has so many other potential uses," he said. "Whether it went to private development or something else, it really is just sitting there."

He noted that a 2005 appraisal of the site completed by the city's Commerce Department valued the property at $1.8 million.

Given the city's financial troubles as well, Oliver said, "It was clear that given the development in the area, it was not appropriate to have someone in the building rent-free, particularly at a time when the city is so strapped for cash."

Rob Stewart, president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, which includes the Barnes site and the center, said, "We've identified Callowhill Street in that area as a backyard to the Parkway that could provide auxilary services, whether restaurant, cultural or small residential."

At the same time, he said he saw no development-related reason for the center to move. "There are other soft sites in the area that are for sale."

With about 350 employees, the center has an annual budget of $14 million. Valdez said that nearly 80 percent of their revenue comes directly or indirectly from contracts with the city's Departments of Human Services and Behaviorial Health, as well as the Philadelphia School District.

In an interview, Valdez and the center's board chairman, Jim Hennessy, said that while their goal was to remain in the Callowhill building, they would comply with the city to find another location if that was their only choice.

"We are willing to work with the city, but obviously our preference is to stay in this location," Hennessy said.

The city's concerns about the building date back to 1999, when under Mayor Edward G. Rendell, City Council passed an ordinance enabling the building's title to be transferred from the city to the center, through the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. However, that potential transfer of ownership was based on the condition that the authority and the center strike a redevelopment agreement for the center's renovation and expansion.

Although Council extended the ordinance on five occasions, the last occurring in 2006, no redevelopment agreement was ever reached as the center struggled to raise funds and get a financing plan in place.

The next year, just when the center was ready with architectural plans and had hired a developer, Valdez said, the eviction notices started arriving.

The May 21 letter, however, was the first time the city asked for a rent payment, and reflects what Oliver acknowledges has been a more aggressive stance by Nutter than the previous mayor, John F. Street. "The city began in earnest to help the center relocate," he said.

Given the uncertainty, the center has put on hold a fund-raising campaign it launched in 2005 to raise $8 million to renovate the building. While less than $500,000 in cash has been raised, the center has $4 million in commitments, Hennessy said.

In January, the center's officials met with Nutter's chief of staff, Clay Armbrister, and subsequently proposed a compromise in which the center would relocate if the city helped find it another property that was also essentially rent-free. They sought a location between 2d and 20th Streets on Spring Garden Street, or nearby.

But the city rejected that proposal. "We listened," Oliver said, "but we are going in a different direction."

Shelly Yanoff, executive director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, said the center "provides very, very needed and valuable services, which are used by the children of the city who are very, very vulnerable. One would hope that an accommodation could be made so that there would be absolutely no interruption in treatment and no decrease in the quality of the treatment."