Junkyard flap raises stink in Hunting Park
One of the citys highlighted pre-K programs operates next to a car-crushing junkyard. Neighbors want to convert some of that land to green space.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-pmn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/TZSI2KOYLFHODAPBQ5YZLBRAZA.jpg)
ON WEDNESDAY'S first day of soda-tax-funded free preschool classes in Philadelphia, news cameras from three local television stations showed up at Casa del Carmen in Hunting Park.
Television news showed the 3- and 4-year-old children's bright, smiling faces as they sat in their desks. The prekindergarten was able to grow its enrollment from 44 to 60 children.
"We're ecstatic about it," Christopher Gale, administrator at Casa del Carmen, said. "It is an incredible opportunity for us and allows us to serve more kids in our program."
But if those cameras had turned to pan just outside Gale's third-floor office at the pre-school on North Reese Street near Blavis, they would have filmed a jarring scene: A scrap yard full of junk cars.
The scrap yard has become a symbol of decades of division in Hunting Park. Community activists assert the junkyard owners have long ignored city violation notices and have even been siphoning fuel from abandoned cars on the property.
An attorney for the junkyard's owners, Clearfield Recycling, maintained that the community activists have ignored another waste recycling company in the area and have focused only on Clearfield because they covet the former railroad bed that makes up most of the junkyard for a new green park.
Community leaders Jose Figueiredo and Ryan Kellermeyer say that while the area near the facility had for years had problems with drugs and trash, there recently has been more investment in Hunting Park. As a result, they said they would like to convert part of the land Clearfield is using - an abandoned Conrail right-of-way - into a new green park. They say they were inspired by residents in the Callowhill area, who have made progress on converting the old Reading Viaduct into a new, elevated park.
"We envision some bike trails and other recreational activities, such as a skate park," Figueiredo said.
He said that Hunting Park - the park which gives the area its name and has added tennis courts and a football and baseball field in recent years - is the only green space in the neighborhood. And it's a long walk for families who live close to the junkyard, between 5th and 6th on Annsbury.
The preschool's Gale claimed in a letter to the city's Zoning Board of Adjustment that the junkyard, owned by Clearfield Recycling, stacks old tires next to a wall near the playground for the preschoolers.
In the summer months, he wrote, "there is a noxious smell that emanates from those tires, and the tendency of those tires to hold standing water encourages mosquitoes to breed." As a result, he said, the swarm of mosquitoes means the preschoolers are not allowed to play outside as much as they normally would in the summer.
"We've also found screws and bolts and pieces of scrap on our property," Gale told a reporter. "They were actually crushing cars not too far from our masonry wall."
About midway on the two-block property, in addition to junk cars, there is a mountain full of metal waste to be recycled: old refrigerators, air conditioners, file cabinets and water heaters.
In October, community activists led by Figueiredo and Kellermeyer won a round at the Zoning Board of Adjustment, which denied the scrap yard's application for zoning variance to crush cars on a disputed parcel of land that was once a railroad right-of-way. Anthony B. Quinn, the attorney for Clearfield, said his clients will appeal.
Furthermore, Quinn said, his clients don't understand why Figueiredo and Kellermeyer, who lead a community coalition called Hunting Park Church Action Network, are not raising a stink about another waste recycling company called Payload Disposal.
"When we took over the property, we removed 30 or 40 dumpsters' loads of trash that the community dumped on the property," Quinn said Friday.
While Quinn acknowledged there is a Cease Operations order against Clearfield, he said that only covers a disputed parcel of land that was once part of Conrail's railroad right-of-way. He maintains the business is within its rights to continue its scrap-metal business on the property it owns.
"The contiguous property owned by them has been zoned since the mid-1980s for automobile crushing," Quinn said.
But Kellermeyer and Figueiredo said city zoning laws prohibit any company from crushing automobiles within 300 feet of areas that are zoned residential.
"We know one woman who thinks her child's asthma has worsened from living close to this junkyard," Kellermeyer said.
Figueiredo, a former school teacher and construction worker, said the community has not complained about Payload Disposal because the owner of that company has always addressed any problems immediately. For instance, he said there was a time when Payload left a garbage truck inside its building, and a bad odor filled the neighborhood; people complained, and Payload stopped leaving trucks at the site.
Figueiredo added that the community opposes Clearfield because it has operated for more than 20 years under different names and has amassed scores of violations. It also owes more than $116,000 in back taxes.
Because of the long history of the junkyard, a Department of Licenses and Inspections spokeswoman said L&I is currently looking into the status of any citations for the junkyard.
215-854-5987 @ValerieRussDN