The last hours for Germantown highrise

STARTING AT 7:15 a.m. tomorrow, the vacant, 16-story Queen Lane Apartments will come tumbling down - with a boom.

After the implosion, the Philadelphia Housing Authority plans to build 55 low-rise apartments in its place, at Queen Lane and Pulaski Avenue, in west Germantown.

Neil Blunt, who grew up there from 1955 to 1975, said the 119-unit public housing complex used to be "the best high-rise in the city."

"We made our own scooters and skates and go-carts," Blunt said. "We just had fun."

Blunt said former residents gathered last weekend for a block party to recall their years there.

But in recent years, neighbors said the high-rise had become plagued by drugs and crime.

Jim Santoro, project manager for Controlled Demolition, the Maryland company that will implode the high-rise, said he's been knocking on doors in the neighborhood since Tuesday.

"We've been going throughout the evacuation zone, where I've made face-to-face contact with each of those residents," Santoro said. "I like to look people in the eye and talk to them, put them a little more at ease."

The last residents of the Queen Lane high-rise were relocated by November 2011, said PHA spokeswoman Nichole Tillman.

The high-rise was completed in 1955, nearly 60 years ago.

But it will take 14 seconds for the building to come down, Santoro said.

The firm will use a small number of explosives, mostly around the base of the building, "and let gravity do most of the work," he said.

Teams from PHA and the city's Office of Emergency Management have gone door-to-door to make sure nearby residents know if they have to evacuate their homes - or simply place rolled up towels or newspapers under doorways to prevent dust from getting inside their homes.

PHA officials want everyone in the evacuation zone - on Queen Lane, Pulaski Avenue, Penn Street and Priscilla Street - out of their homes by 5:15 a.m. tomorrow.

A "Comfort Center" has been set up at Cook-Wissahickon Elementary, on Salaignac Street, near Righter, for people who may not have other places to stay.

PHA announced plans to demolish the high-rise in 2010. But the demolition was delayed because of community opposition to rebuilding over land that was once a potter's field, for "strangers, Negroes and mulattoes," since 1755.

Lisa Hopkins, of the Northwest Neighbors of Germantown, was one of several leaders opposed to rebuilding over the cemetery.

Her group, along with officials from the Germantown Historical Society and others, met with PHA and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for over two years.

Michael John, PHA's senior executive vice president for capital projects, called it a long "tedious" process to reach an agreement.

"After several contentious meetings with the community, and looking at the history, we felt it was right for the authority to take a step back and redesign the site to both honor the ancestors buried there, and going forward, to be respectful of the space," John said.

PHA came up with a U-shaped design to leave the potter's field open as a green space.

"This is a major victory for the community and our ancestors," Hopkins said.

For questions about the demolition, residents should call the PHA telephone hotline at 215-684-3001.