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Click play to see the community advocates think

In January 2004, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission released a report classifying the North Philadelphia region encompassing Hunting Park, West Fairhill and East Tioga an area of urban blight. The report’s stated purpose was to “make the area eligible for publicly-assisted acquisition of vacant land and vacant homes,” which would then be renovated by community organizations.

According to the Pennsylvania Urban Redevelopment Law of 1945, an area must meet just one of seven criteria to be designated an area of urban blight (Click here to see the report). Hunting Park met four of those conditions, including inadequate planning and economically or socially undesirable land use.

Yet members of the community have been working towards rectifying those very problems for decades. In 1980 community residents who wanted to improve the urban blight in that area established the Hunting Park Community Development Corp., according to HPCDC Program Administrator John Thomas.

When Thomas arrived in 2002 he helped shift the organization’s focus from housing development to one of youth development. Thomas started a youth leadership program called CityStars that works to infuse youth with the tools to become the community’s future leaders.

“What we do with youth is a development strategy,” Thomas explained. “When you think about Philadelphia, they call it a city of neighborhoods. Hunting Park is a neighborhood that operates when the people in that neighborhood are supported and are supporting themselves.”

Thomas also owns his own business, J. Thomas and Associates, which renovates residential properties in

Hunting Park. By creating employment opportunities that also help to rebuild some of the area’s vacant homes, Thomas’ goals of both youth and community development complement one another.

“The best thing that I can do for my family, my friends and those kids that I’m developing,” Thomas explained, “is to create opportunities for income streams so that when they graduate, they’re coming back to an opportunity that they themselves were a part of.”

The Planning Commission’s report compensated for HPCDC’s shifting focus by naming neighborhood groups that would rehabilitate vacant homes. The Prince Hall Masonic Lodge, located near Hunting Park Avenue and North Broad Street, has set up its own non-profit community development corporation for this purpose, called the Absalom Jones Foundation.

“This is a prime area for development,” said Charles Bishop, who is the Grand Deputy Master of the Lodge. “The area is developing, but we want to make sure it’s not all commercial and that we keep the residents intact.”

The Grand Lodge is currently seeking funding for several projects intended to promote economic development in the area including senior citizen complexes, community centers and low-income housing.

Bishop explained that in order for redevelopment to happen the community needs to gain more funding. Grants would generally come from a federal level; however, working through legislation to get the funding might encourage corporate contributions as well.

The Grand Lodge mainly targets areas designated as urban blight. “Our goal is to work in the community where there’s urban blight," Bishop explained. “We try to work with our congressman and our legislators in order to develop low-income housing."

The most visible illustration of the city’s failure to revitalize the local economy is the abandoned Beury Building, a high rise at the corner of Broad, Erie and Germantown avenues. The building was constructed in 1926 as the National Bank of North Philadelphia and in 1985 was certified as a national historic landmark by the National Park Service.

According to the Park Service certification, the Beury Building was built to be highly visible and to attract citywide attention to the neighborhood. The last sentence of the report’s physical description describes the Beury Building as “an important survivor of early 20th century prosperity.”


Past and Present: The Beury Building while occupied (left), in contrast to its current state of abandonment (right)

Yet as the Planning Commission report points out, the Beury Building has been vacant for over 20 years. Based on its close proximity to the Temple University Medical Center, the report suggested using the building for medical offices or housing for students and hospital employees.

Despite the prospect of renovating the Beury Building for commercial or residential purposes, the report admits

that “while rehabilitation is preferred, there needs to be a recognition that the building has been a highly visible eyesore for decades. Demolition must be considered if rehabilitation is not possible within a reasonable time period.”

In many ways, though, the city’s hands are tied. “The city has an office of Housing and Community Development,” John Thomas explained. “They do what they can with what limited resources they have.” The Office of Housing and Community Development did not return calls for comment.

It seems the future of the Beury Building, as well as less historic plots around Hunting Park, depends more on the commitment of local residents than on directions from city government.

“Our goal is freedom and autonomy,” Thomas said. “That means that the people who are going to be impacted by projects actually have their hands in the development of that project, and the freedom to choose how it goes.”

“When you take on help from outside agencies,” he concluded, “that freedom diminishes.”

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