South Philly residents say PennDot misled them about plans to remove ballfields

Back in June, when PennDot officials met with South Philadelphia residents over a planned I-95 expansion imperiling beloved neighborhood fields, the state agency pledged to heed community concerns. After all, many parents were furious over PennDot’s proposals for the decades-long interstate reconstruction project that would snake roads through the heart of parkland where thousands of children play baseball, soccer, and flag football year-round.

As proof that residents’ voices would be heard, PennDot officials frequently pointed to a survey they conducted last year. When officials presented the findings at a neighborhood meeting, wary league supporters were told that half of the survey respondents, seemingly equalling hundreds of residents, favored an extensive and pricey option, that also spared more of the ballfields.

But after a concerned blogger uncovered the raw survey data, opponents of the plans say they were misled.

At the heart of the survey was PennDot’s early plans for a new Walt Whitman Interchange that would wind access roads through five playing fields at Seventh and Bigler. As longtime home of the Southeast Youth Athletic Association, the volunteer-run league has been a neighborhood staple for generations.

More than a thousand kids play on the scrappy fields in the shadows of the stadiums. The plans would also impact another complex of fields at Seventh and Packer, which hosts the thriving Delaware Valley Youth Association league.

Residents said they felt blindsided when PennDot posted the proposals on its website in September, and quickly swamped the state agency’s virtual survey, even if many complained it was confusing and hard to navigate.

PennDot presented the survey as a success — over a thousand people had visited the agency’s South Philly virtual meeting room, far more than for any other phase of the project, they said — and as evidence of their attempts to curry community input. They stressed the early proposals would change, and admitted they had not realized the importance of the fields. Still, they noted that 50% of the study’s respondents, according to their reading of the data and comments, had selected the most high-impact design option. It would loop a ramp through Bigler Street’s biggest field, parking lot, new electrical room, and concession stand. Of any option, it would preserve the most parkland.

But late last month, Megan Shannon, a Center City attorney and government transparency blogger, posted the findings of a Right-To-Know records request she had filed with PennDot over the raw survey data. It told a different story.

In its presentation, PennDot claimed that there were 1,025 “responses recorded” to the survey. But the new data shows that only 129 people took the survey — 1,025 was the number of people who visited the site.

The actual breakdown of those who completed the survey, according to Shannon’s breakdown:

While some selected the high concept, finding it the best worst option since it least affected the fields, the overwhelming majority of respondents were against any proposals endangering the fields.

“THE COMMUNITY NEEDS THE ATHLETIC FIELDS,” one person wrote in the survey.

Another added: “It would be sinful to move the ballfields.”

Still another: “What’s your plan for the kids?”

League boosters and state and city officials are now crying foul on PennDot, saying the study overstated public engagement and downplayed residents’ frustrations.

Brad Rudolph, a deputy communications director for PennDot, said the agency had not intended to mislead anybody, and had accurately noted the overall takeaway of the study — that the neighborhood did not want to lose the fields. The agency has said that that plans will change with ongoing input from the community and the Delaware River Port Authority, which owns the parkland and leases it to the leagues for free. Future studies will weigh potential impacts to the fields and other community infrastructure.

“It was not PennDOT’s intention to mislead the community and stakeholders with the survey results,” he said. “The results provided were accurate, but we recognize we could have been clearer with our preliminary findings.”

“PennDot needs to present the survey data accurately and clearly and answer community leaders’ questions about the results,” said State Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, who, along with City Councilmember Mark Squilla, has lobbied for more public meetings on the project, expected to start sometime in the late 2030s. She worries the process has only deepened distrust in a neighborhood where many families can still recall being displaced during the original I-95 construction decades ago.

“There must be in-depth, in-person community engagement done,” she said. “PennDOT needs to do much more to meet the needs of community members, whose tax dollars will be paying for this project.”

Squilla agreed.

“The new data sheds light that the PennDot survey information was misleading,” he said. “We would expect them to now be able to address these concerns at the next public meeting.”

Already critical of PennDot’s outreach, South Philly community groups want PennDot to scrap the study and start fresh.

“We find this data doubly concerning as it confirms a lack of any meaningful participation and suggests that representations made about the process are completely unreliable,” said Patrick Fitzmaurice, president of the Pennsport Civic Association. “They have derailed this process from the inception.”

Meanwhile, longtime administrators at the ballfields wonder if they were wrong to be hopeful that their voices would be heard.

“Now is that a lie, too?” said Joann McAfee, who has run the S.E.Y.A.A league at Seventh and Bigler for over 25 years. “Are they going to take everything into consideration, or is something already done that they don’t want to tell us about?”