South Philly parents confront PennDot over baseball fields threatened by I-95 construction

For nearly 30 years, Joann McAfee has served as the beating heart of the Southeast Youth Athletic Association. As league administrator, she prepares the rosters and schedules for the thousand-plus kids who play baseball, soccer, and flag football year-round at the ball fields at Seventh and Bigler in South Philadelphia.

Each season, while keeping league fees low, McAfee orders the replica Major League uniforms the children love, helps organize the annual fundraising carnival, and makes sure the moms in the concession stand have enough chocolate chip cookies for the families that crowd the seven acres of parkland on game nights.

McAfee, an unpaid volunteer, like all of the league’s officials, says it’s worth it just for the looks of excitement on the children’s faces.

But this summer, McAfee has a new job duty: saving the very fields the kids play on.

PennDot proposals for future phases of the decades-long I-95 reconstruction project include access roads that would run smack through S.E.Y.A.A.’s five playing fields that sit in the shadows of the stadiums and have hosted games for generations. The plans would also impact a nearby complex of five fields at Seventh and Packer, where about a thousand more children now play baseball each year in the Delaware Valley Youth Association league.

Two of the stage agency’s early designs for an expansion of the Walt Whitman toll plaza show a I-95/ I-76 interchange snaking through the heart of the parklands. A third design less severely impacts the fields at Seventh and Packer, but includes a looping ramp that would cut through S.E.Y.A.A.’s largest field, concession stand, and parking lot. In all three plans, new highway roads would be built much closer to homes along Bigler Street, which lines the S.E.Y.A.A. field.

Construction on the project, called the Walt Whitman Interchange, would not begin until sometime in the mid-2030s, PennDot officials said. But McAfee and other stakeholders say the uncertainty could affect critical donations that have transformed the fields in recent years and helped grow the leagues to a point where no child is turned away. They worry organizations would no longer lay down funds to renovate fields that may not be around much longer.

“This would be devastating for the community,” McAfee told PennDot officials through tears at a neighborhood meeting earlier this month.

PennDot officials stress that any plans are preliminary, and that designs will change with ongoing study and input from the neighborhood and the Delaware River Port Authority, which owns the parkland and leases it to the leagues for free. Further studies will weigh potential impacts to the fields and other community infrastructure vs. future traffic demands, said Brad Rudolph, a deputy communications director for PennDot.

“There will be multiple opportunities for public feedback and design refinement,” said Rudolph. “PennDot will work with the communities to refine the design to best fit into the community.”

But McAfee and community leaders say they were blindsided when PennDot posted the proposals on their website in September. Neighborhood pushback was immediate. More than a thousand parents and community members swamped a PennDot virtual survey on the project. S.E.Y.A.A. kids donned their uniforms to go door-to-door with fliers McAfee had drawn up alerting neighbors, while State Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler and Councilmember Mark Squilla lobbied PennDot for community meetings. Local civics groups have aligned against any proposals dramatically affecting the playing fields.

“These fields have deep generational roots in a really beautiful way,” said Fiedler, who lives in South Philly, and whose two children play in S.E.Y.A.A. “People are signing their kids up for programs they participated in as kids. They’re investing their time and love in the next generations of Philadelphians. You can feel it as soon as you step on the field there.”

McAfee, 60, first started volunteering in S.E.Y.A.A. in the late ‘90s, when her son and daughter began to play. Back then, the league consisted of only about 400 children, and the sprawling fields, which hosted neighborhood leagues for decades, were a muddy mess.

“When you left the field you were covered in mud,” she said with a laugh, while parents and kids streamed into the now-blacktopped parking lot for a recent playoff game. “Children were covered in mud, cars were covered in mud, and no one cared.”

The leagues play on ground that sits just outside the Sports Complex Special Services District, making them ineligible for community improvement grants available to organizations within the boundaries. Since they play on state-owned ground, the leagues are not included in the Parks & Recreation Rebuild initiative, which is remaking many city-owned fields. Responsible for upkeep of the parkland, both leagues have worked hard to fundraise to keep fees accessible to families. For years, S.E.Y.A.A. has relied on its Easter Carnival, which raises about $30,000 annually, to cover the costs of its utility bills, insurance, and liability costs.

“For so many years, no one helped these fields,” said McAfee. “We did it all on our own.”

It’s only been in recent years that major outside funding has helped the leagues address needed repairs.

Fiedler has helped the leagues secure some state funding for improvements. And Live! Casino & Hotel Philadelphia has proved a critical partner. Since opening in 2021, the casino has spent hundreds of thousands installing new LED lighting systems at both sets of fields, and helped install new sprinklers, fencing, and bathrooms at Seventh and Packer. (For almost 30 years, S.E.Y.A.A. had relied on faulty lighting that had been donated from the ruins of the old John F. Kennedy Stadium.)

“This place would never be able to do the improvements that happen at other fields without the casino,” McAfee said. “Since they came, that’s when things started happening for us.”

While any actual construction remains years away, a decision on the fate of the fields would have to be made much sooner. The leagues worry that could stall their progress.

Squilla said he hopes the recent meeting represents a turning point in PennDot’s planning.

“The community let PennDot know very strongly that losing these fields is not an option,” he said.

The proposals have touched a nerve in neighborhoods where many families can recall being displaced by eminent domain during the original I-95 construction in the 1960s. Now, all these years later, the community could lose their fields, too.

Patrick Fitzmaurice, president of the Pennsport Civic Association, grew up hearing stories from his mother about how her family was forced to relocate from their Snyder Street home in 1964. His sons, who are 5 and 3, both play at S.E.Y.A.A.

“People still feel sting of eminent domain,” he said. “And they are still showing up and telling everyone that we are going to have to deal with the ramifications of their construction.”

Parents who fill the bleachers are determined to keep fighting.

“We’re all a family down here,” said Christina Pollizzano, who cheered on her 9-year-old son. “Everybody knows everybody. The thought of them removing this just for a ramp — it would be impacting so many lives. They don’t want to pick a fight with South Philly.”

McAfee missed the league championship trophy ceremony, one of her favorite parts of any season, to attend the June 6 meeting at the Edward O’Malley Athletic Association in Pennsport.

PennDot officials took notes as she teared up.

“Where would these kids play?” she asked.