Development help offered to man who's fighting City Hall
The leader of a community organization and an urban-planning firm have reached out to help Leroy Sterling complete his vision for a masonry business and trade school, which he planned for American Street in Kensington.
NOTE: This story has been CORRECTED.
The leader of a community organization and an urban-planning firm have reached out to help Leroy Sterling complete his vision for a masonry business and trade school, which he planned for American Street in Kensington.
It's a project that Sterling claims in a lawsuit was scuttled after the city seized the vacant lan he had bought across the street from the Crane Arts Building, a former plumbing factory that had been converted to studios and exhibit space. His story was in Monday's Daily News.
The suit, now in federal court, names as defendants the city of Philadelphia, the Redevelopment Authority (RDA) and Crane Arts LLC.
On Monday, Gary Adams, of the Coalition Inc., a network of community-based organizations in Southwest Philadelphia, said that his group would help Sterling see his plan through.
"We'd like to give [Sterling] some kind of backing," Adams said. "We started the coalition so it wouldn't just be individuals battling [City Hall] on their own."
Adams, a plumber, also said that he could teach plumbing skills once the trade school got started.
"I'm an activist from going way back," Adams said, "and I've seen a lot of things happen in University City with eminent domain. When the city wants your property or wants you to move, they will move you."
Sterling's suit alleges that a city official pressured him to sell the land, which the had bought in 2002, back to the city. He refused, but the agency seized his property in 2007 and sold it to Crane Arts in 2009. The RDA didn't return the $10,000 he paid for the land, and Sterling never received a hearing with the RDA, according to the suit.
Sterling claims that the Crane Arts owners' close ties to public officials led the city to favor their project over his. An official from Crane Arts, which opened to rave reviews in 2005, sat on the board of a financing agency for the American Street Empowerment Zone with officials from the RDA and the City Planning Commission, the suit says.
The RDA has seized properties across the city after their developers sat on them for years. But Sterling, 49, said that he had moved quickly to build his masonry garage and school but encountered one permitting delay after another while dealing with the city.
Yesterday, a city spokesman said that the city wouldn't comment because of the suit. Crane Arts officials also have declined comment.
Jethro Heiko, a founder of Action Mill, a business that aims to solve civic problems using design principles, also said that he would like to help Sterling.
Heiko offered to meet with Sterling to plan his next steps in bringing city officials together with community leaders to find a way for the American Street projects to coexist.
"If the city had given support to [Sterling] when times were good, he could already have been generating meaningful employment," said Heiko, who also co-founded Casino-Free Philadelphia. "He was a guy who was trying to do the right thing."