- The promise and the price: Special multi-media presentation.
- Camden Rebirth: A promise still unfulfilled
- How the Firms Know to Donate
- Gallery: Photo gallery: Camden's Stalled Rebirth
- How This Series Was Produced
- Camden's waterfront - and its woes
- Gallery: Photo gallery: Camden's waterfront and its woes
- Despite aquarium's promises, Camden pupils paid to play
- Camden recovery aids some
- Gallery: Photo gallery: Recovery aids some areas
- Despite aquarium's promises, Camden pupils paid to play
- Christie: Let Camden run itself; takeover a 'failure'
- How a state takeover revitalized a city
- Gallery: Photo gallery: How a state takeover revitalized a city
- Regional opposition helped Camden fail
RELATED STORIES
Camden recovery aids some
Other areas and agencies, though, have had no share in state funding.
Third of four parts
James Reilly sips morning coffee on his new front porch so he can watch the sunrise glow upon the looming Ben Franklin Bridge.
On the weekends, the 34-year-old Manayunk transplant and his new wife, Maria Nasidka, play tennis at the courts across the street and go for long runs along the Delaware River. They organize friends for coed football games at the nearby Rutgers University fields and walk to minor-league Riversharks games. Then they return home to three bedrooms, four bathrooms, 2,300 square feet, and a backyard of suburban proportions.
All this, in Camden - a city with one of the worst reputations in America - for the bargain price of $217,000 and the cheapest property taxes around.
These newlyweds are a rare realization of the vision set forth in the 2002 recovery law that put Camden City government under state control and funneled $175 million in bonds and loans to the city.
Although the law said market-rate housing to accommodate middle-class people was "critical," things didn't work out that way. Most of the $48 million appropriated to residential projects was targeted to low-income renters.
"The ratio is skewed; too much is going to affordable housing," acknowledged Theodore Z. Davis, the former Camden chief operating officer. "You'll never grow."
The newlyweds' community is a remarkable exception, and it shows the potential that the city has for middle-class growth.
Their home is part of a $10.4 million, 18-home middle-income housing project funded with $1.2 million from the Camden recovery fund. The theory? Offering $100,000 home subsidies could entice employed professionals to a city that has lost middle-class families since the 1950s.
"I could never have imagined the peace of mind I have being here," Reilly said. "I love living here."
He's awestruck over the community feel - with an active neighborhood e-mail chain, a recent mayoral candidates' forum, and a neighbor's generosity in lending a power tool.
"It's so personal," he said of his neighbors. "It's almost like [Camden] is their baby that they're rooting for."
The homes between Rutgers-Camden and the waterfront sold almost as soon as they hit the market last winter. "Middle-income people will pay a premium to get a good house in a good neighborhood in Camden," said Frank Fulbrook of the Cooper Grant Neighborhood Association, which developed the project with Pennrose Properties.
Each property was subsidized by about a third, with a 10-year residency requirement. Plus, for each of the first 15 years, the newlyweds will pay a "service charge" of about $4,340 instead of taxes. That's three times less than the taxes of some of their suburban neighbors.
This money only goes to the city's coffers, and not the schools' or the county's, but it's an effective enticement for buyers.
Such recovery-funded enticements are also used for businesses, and they helped to bring both a new Rita's Water Ice to the neighborhood and Victor's Pub, the city's nicest bar, which has built a lunch crowd with workers from the waterfront offices.
This slow uptick in improvements has stoked new residents' enthusiasm and helped strengthen their commitment to Camden - even if people who live in Cherry Hill say they're "crazy" for moving to a city known as one of the country's poorest and most dangerous.
"I always have to give them a pitch to tell them what it's all about," Nasidka said, gushing about biking to Philadelphia and walking to shows at Wiggins Park and Susquehanna Bank Center.
There's no nearby supermarket, but, they say, they would have to drive to a market if they lived in Mount Laurel, too.
A few blocks north is an active drug area, but, Nasidka said, "If you're in Rittenhouse and go a couple of blocks in the wrong direction, you're not in such a good neighborhood, either."
