City demolishes makeshift stable

DAVID PARKER says horses saved his life.

"I'm 71 and I've never been to jail because of horses," said Parker, an avid rider since childhood and a member of the Urban Cowboys.

So it was with a somber expression and a heavy heart that the cowboy-hatted Parker watched workers yesterday demolish the horse shantytown that has occupied a vacant lot on Fletcher Street near 26th in Strawberry Mansion.

City and animal-welfare officials on Wednesday raided the site, ordering the removal of more than 40 horses housed in makeshift stables built illegally on city-owned land.

They also ordered the demolition of the site, which seemed more junkyard than farm. Jalopies and assorted garbage rested in puddles of urine and piles of manure.

Yesterday, workers in a backhoe and excavator began bulldozing the filth away. The $14,000 clean-up is expected to last throughout the weekend; a flat, grassy lot will replace the farm.

Horses stabled in three nearby indoor stables will be allowed to remain there, as long as the owners fix faulty wiring and structural problems within 30 days, authorities said. Another slum-like vacant lot where about seven horses were stabled adjacent to the indoor stables is also expected to be razed.

The horses' owners lamented the loss of what they called a community institution.

Children from all over the city would ride and care for the horses, a pastime that kept them off the streets and out of trouble, said Leonard "Slim" Benson, 72, an Urban Cowboy who had to relocate his horse, Kipper.

Some owners complained that they hadn't been given enough notice to find new homes for their horses.

"How do you kick someone out with an animal in two days?" said Robert Davis, an Urban Cowboy who placed his horse Missy temporarily with a friend.

But authorities say they acted for the safety of the horses and the site's neighbors, who had complained that the stables were so filthy that they had chronic problems with rats, stench and animal waste flowing down the street past their homes.

"There were a lot of health concerns associated with that property," said Doug Oliver, a spokesman for Mayor Nutter. "There are no current plans to do anything with the site other than to clean up the health-code violations associated with it."

Agents with the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say they've visited the scene "countless times" in recent years.

"There have been arrests down there, citations written, horses taken. We've been asking the city for years to get involved," said George Bengal, the PSPCA's director of law enforcement. "This is a good thing; that place is a sewer."

The rotting carcasses of three dead horses were found last fall under lye-drenched piles of manure on a trash-strewn vacant lot that was part of Wednesday's raid. That case remains under investigation, Bengal said. *