Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

Influx of newcomers fueling Phila. activism

The Navy pilot from New Orleans didn't know the community organizer from Boston, who didn't know the retail strategist from Fort Worth, who didn't know the urban planner from Chester County, who didn't know the writer from Miami, who didn't know the artist from Bucks County.

The Passyunk Square Civic Association's Jackie Gusic (left), Geoff DiMasi and Susan Patrone with trees it helped plant. Patrone sees out-of-towners as "new seeds for the grassroots."
The Passyunk Square Civic Association's Jackie Gusic (left), Geoff DiMasi and Susan Patrone with trees it helped plant. Patrone sees out-of-towners as "new seeds for the grassroots."Read moreRON TARVER / Inquirer Staff Photographer

The Navy pilot from New Orleans didn't know the community organizer from Boston, who didn't know the retail strategist from Fort Worth, who didn't know the urban planner from Chester County, who didn't know the writer from Miami, who didn't know the artist from Bucks County.

But in June last year, they found themselves at the Old Brick Church in Fishtown with a shared purpose: getting a group called Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront off the ground.

Ever since, these organizers have been vocal opponents of building casinos along the Delaware River.

They represent a new type of Philadelphian: transplants from the suburbs or other cities who are plunging into civic life without the weight of the past to hold them back. They are unfamiliar with "the way things are done" in Philadelphia and unencumbered by the politics that can balkanize and paralyze neighborhood life.

They come with the fresh eyes of outsiders, seeing Philadelphia more for its potential than for its losses.

"Most Philadelphians have absolutely no idea how wonderful this city is and have grown up to expect less and less from their leadership," said Shawn Rairigh, 32, an urban planner originally from Coatesville and one of the people behind Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront.

Growing up in Chester County, he said, he went into the city only for the occasional Phillies game or trip to the zoo. But after studying in London during college, he got hooked on urban living and discovered Philadelphia all over again. He bought a house recently in Fishtown.

"I'd love to be able to send every child in their formative years in Philly to live in another city for a month just to see how kick-butt this place really could be," he said.

Susan Patrone calls her new neighbors in South Philadelphia, near 13th Street and Passyunk Avenue, "new seeds for the grassroots."

Patrone, 54, can remember when it was fashionable for her neighbors to boast about escaping the city for Cherry Hill or Bensalem.

"Now we have a lot of people who want to live in the city and fewer people who live here because they can't get out," Patrone said.

Patrone is president of the three-year-old Passyunk Square Civic Association. It's one of three new neighborhood groups in South Philly alone, the others being the year-old East Passyunk Crossing Civic Association and Town Watch, and the equally new Dickinson Narrows.

In other areas, such as Northern Liberties and Fishtown, existing civic groups are getting a boost of adrenaline from the newcomers.

Census numbers from 2000 don't accurately tell the story of how many people have moved into the core of Philadelphia. Much of the influx has occurred since then, with many arriving from outside the city.

Last year, the Center City District, a special-services area, surveyed renters and homeowners not only in Center City, but also in the surrounding zip codes experiencing the most rapid change. It found that 41 percent of these dwellers had moved to Philadelphia from elsewhere.

Consider the transformation of Northern Liberties, an amalgamation of colonial townhouses, converted lofts and new-style condos. Its population is projected to more than double this decade if all the planned housing is built, according to the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association.

The neighborhood group is so active that it is building a new community center and has spent about $75,000 on urban planning for the group's area, which stretches from the Delaware River to Sixth Street and from Callowhill Street to Girard Avenue.

"There are a lot of newcomers with a lot of passion for this city," said Hilary Regan, 25, who spent much of her early childhood in Northern Liberties and returned two years ago.

The debate over the two casinos planned for the riverfront - the SugarHouse project in the Fishtown/Northern Liberties area, and Foxwoods in South Philadelphia - has spurred many newcomers into action.

One is Meredith Warner, 32, a college art teacher who grew up in rural Hilltown Township in Bucks County.

Warner bounced around after college, living in Center City; New York; Austin, Texas; and Champaign, Ill. Two years ago, she bought a house in Fishtown with her husband. She joined the Fishtown Neighbors Association and got deeply involved with the anticasino movement as one of the cofounders of Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront.

"I have a great relationship with my neighbors, most of whom are generational Fishtowners," Warner said. But most have told her that they cannot get involved in the casino issue because "they believed it is a hopeless cause."

She said her neighbors had lived through decades of neglect from the city and state.

"That said, those of us who grew up in other places come to Philly without that baggage," Warner said. "We have not lost battles here. We do not have the sense that the city and state will do as they please with the neighborhood."

In South Philly, Geoff DiMasi typifies the new Philadelphian.

DiMasi, 36, a Web designer, was raised near Asbury Park, N.J. "Where I grew up, there wasn't a lot of need to have a meaningful discussion with your neighbors," he said. "You didn't have to cooperate to get anything done."

He came to Philadelphia for graduate school, got married, started a family, and bought a house near Passyunk Avenue and Federal Street. Rowhouse living made DiMasi appreciate the art of getting along.

"It creates this need to have these relationships," he said. "I had no idea how that all worked."

As a first act of civic involvement, DiMasi and some neighbors tried to launch a town watch, but it didn't get off the ground. Relationships between neighbors, however, were forming. They started having meetings, organizing events, planting trees, cleaning blocks, holding a plant sale, and weighing in on community matters such as zoning and sewer backups.

They made their voices heard, too. Last spring, the group sent e-mail to its 500 members, asking them to remind their state senator, the influential Vincent J. Fumo, of his promise to introduce legislation to keep casinos 1,500 feet from homes. About 90 members faxed letters to Fumo's office, Patrone said.

To the south, the East Passyunk Crossing civic group was formed by residents living between Tasker and Snyder Avenues and Ninth and Broad Streets.

Groups like this fill gaps left by Catholic parishes, said Joseph F. Marino, who jokingly calls himself a member of the "landed gentry" of South Philly. He lives in a house in the 1900 block of South Jessup that his grandparents once owned.

When he was growing up in the neighborhood in the '70s, Marino said, parishes were the glue that held things together. Today, many parishes have fewer priests, who are too overwhelmed with ministering to members to worry about all the neighborhood's needs.

That's why the East Passyunk group took root, Marino said.

But not without some anxiety. Older residents were highly suspicious when they saw unfamiliar people hanging flyers about the group, he said.

"They said to me, 'Find out who these people are,' " said Marino, who eventually became cochair of the year-old association.

Sharing the job with him is Darren Fava, 36, a native of Middletown, Conn., who went to graduate school in Philadelphia and bought a house in South Philly four years ago.

"We're not a bunch of new people trying to change the neighborhood," said Fava, who works for the Fairmount Park Commission. "We like the neighborhood just the way it is, knowing at the same time that our presence is changing it."

He said plenty of naysayers had warned him that the new neighborhood group wouldn't last, that people didn't care, wouldn't volunteer. But Fava said he had found the opposite to be true. Today, the nonprofit is doing everything from attending zoning hearings to sponsoring a book swap for kids.

"I don't have the blinders on or see all the constraints that others who have lived here longer do," Fava said. "The city has had so much trouble . . . that sometimes all people can see is what was lost, instead of what's there."