Grid Philly - March 2009 - (Page 19) ↓ Sandy Salzman gets an inside look at New Kensington’s efforts at the coral Street arts house. portrait by shawn corrigan ↙ Volunteers sift through debris in one of the many vacant lots that became dumping grounds up until the late ‘90s. We already have a lot of artists here; we wanted to give them the opportunity to get settled and put down roots. and if one is demolished, the exposed brick— if not taken care of—will quickly degrade and the exposed house will have to be torn down as well. In addition, the I-95 construction was starting, which caused more problems. “Looking at it all these years later it’s [I-95] still having a negative impact; it’s cutting us off from the river. When it came through, it displaced the area: families, schools, churches.” She left the area when she got married, as did many other people and much of the industry that once provided jobs. Salzman returned to Fishtown in 1971, but by then the area had “pretty much hit bottom,” she says. She got involved in community groups in 1979 and in ’95 joined the New Kensington, a nonprofit whose mission was to revitalize the Fishtown, East Kensington and Port Richmond areas. When Salzman joined, the empty lots in New Kensington’s area looked like landfills. There were over 11,000 vacant lots, and many were filled waist-high with trash that included more than just soda bottles and sandwich wrappers. Construction companies were dumping debris, and people were tossing in full garbage bags, refrigerators, washers and car parts. There were even old boats found in the mix. Salzman was partnered with the Horticultural Society by the Office of Housing and Community Development to help with a greening and clean-up effort called New Kensington 2000. The idea was to start cleaning up the vacant lots to build community involvement, start improving the look of the area and discourage dumping. Before this partnership, it was just the scouts and the little old ladies willing to pitch in for an afternoon of clean-up. Then New Kensington bought a tractor and a bulldozer, and that’s when the men joined in. In two 19 years, nearly a third of the lots were cleaned. NK2000, now a neighborhood-wide effort, began planting up to 100 trees in a day, which incidentally relieved the sewage system by absorbing rain water and organizing guerrilla gardening. In 1998, they opened a garden center to provide free gardening education and supplies to neighbors. The Art of reusing Space thanks in part to the efforts of New Kensington and many, many community members, Salzman’s childhood home is slowly changing again. In addition to obvious actions like planting trees and cleaning vacant lots, New Kensington has helped residents gain ownership of vacant lots next to their houses so people will g r i d p h i l ly. c o m 19 m a r ch 20 0 9
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.