Demolition begins in attack on Camden blight

With the crack of metal against wood, and a rumble that briefly shook the sidewalk, the ornate molding that pointed skyward from the roof of the Louis Street house disappeared Tuesday morning into the jaws of an excavator's bucket. Within an hour, most of the building was on the street in a pile of bricks and debris, soon to be hauled away.

The long-vacant house at 1510 Louis in Camden's Whitman Park neighborhood, one of many that officials say have harbored crime over the years, was gone by Tuesday afternoon. In the coming months, close to 600 such buildings are to crumble to the ground, demolition that city officials hope will clear the way for community gardens, affordable housing, and other development.

"This is the time our residents and our children will begin to enjoy their safer and more vibrant neighborhoods," said Mayor Dana Redd, one of the local and state officials who gathered Tuesday to announce the launch of the city's long-awaited demolition project. "We are not done here."

When Redd was elected in 2009, she vowed to attack city blight. Now, she and other city leaders are working to secure federal funding that could help residents become homeowners, and encourage development so that the demolition sites won't stay empty.

"The next step is to envision what these spaces could be," she said.

For decades, Camden residents have lived among a growing number of buildings that are empty and in disrepair, often abandoned by owners who walked away or stopped paying taxes. A survey last year by the nonprofit group CamConnect and the Camden Community Development Association found that close to 15 percent of the nine-square-mile city's structures were vacant, and about 37 percent of the city's land could be considered empty if 8,000-odd vacant lots are included.

The demolitions will target what Camden officials call "the worst of the worst," first tearing down 62 buildings with funding from a federal grant.

The second phase of the project, the $8 million destruction of the rest of the structures on the list, will be financed by a bond to be paid off with revenue from a tax on city parking lots. There has been no start date set for that phase, but city officials said they hoped to finish within 18 months.

Many of the buildings set to be destroyed are in Whitman Park, known as one of Camden's roughest neighborhoods, where police say dealers have used boarded-up houses as storage for drugs and weapons. The 1500 block of Louis has been the scene of shootings and police raids in recent years.

"These are crime factories," U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, whose district includes Camden, said Tuesday.

Increased police patrols in the last year have driven crime indoors, Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said, and fewer vacant buildings in the neighborhood will make conducting illegal business more difficult.

"It's going to take an area that was once saturated and make it more concentrated," Thomson said. "From the perspective of managing that problem, that helps."

Leona Iverson, a lifelong Camden resident who lives around the corner from the Louis Street demolition site, stopped to watch Tuesday as bricks rained down to the street.

"We need this," said Iverson, 36, who runs a club for girls out of her home. "It feels a lot safer here now, especially with the cops walking up and down the streets. But I'm still scared for my kids to walk to school."