They’ve had the less difficult task than many other people this year, admit avery Stern and her fiancé Chris Shafer.
They closed their first home in combination on League Street, a stretch near South Philadelphia a little wide enough for a car to pass on March 12, just days before the coronavirus shuts down Philadelphia. Like many others, Shafer, 33, teaches while battling unemployment, but Stern, 28, soon begins a new assignment as an English instructor at Moorestown Friends School.
However, feelings of existential impotence in this year of plague and turmoil still consume Stern. That’s probably why he’s so on this wasteland across the street.
“I’m not going to solve systemic racism; I’m not going to solve the challenge of climate change; I’m not going to solve the pandemic,” Stern said. “It seems so tangible.”
The 1008-square-foot lot is framed through a green slat fence, and this summer is covered with weeds. People climb the fence along the dumpsters on site to use as a bathroom. There are rats.
Stern believes the lot would be ideal for a garden, an escape from the pandemic’s oppression.
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The problem? The land is yours.
“I have plans to expand the property,” owner Jeff Redel said Wednesday. “I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
The 69-year-old Vineland resident also owns Carl’s Vineland Farm Poultry, across the street from Vacant Land on Ninth Street. His father, a Polish immigrant and Holocaust survivor, founded it in 1956 just a few doors from his current location. Recently, due to COVID-19, the market has many consumers.
“I’ve been on my premises every day since February,” he said. “I think I only had four days without going to work.”
It faces new fitness and protection restrictions and longtime consumers are irritated by precautions. But there is also pride that it has remained open.
“Our boys are very safe, they wear gloves, masks, disinfect…” Says. “None of the boys are sick.”
The friction between Stern and Redel is familiar, especially in the Italian market, where for 140 years and the apartments have coexisted.
“The design of the network has changed,” said Michele Gambino, acting director of advertising at the South 9th Street Business Association. “Residents and owners of commercial housing now have an exclusive setting here in the Old World.”
However, even in this dispute lies the pandemic.
“It’s anything I can move in the right direction, ” said Stern. “I was paralyzed.”
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Neighbors point out that the land has been a precedent for many years. Before a cleanup a few weeks ago, Robin Tama, a League Street resident for thirteen years, described the asset infestation as turning his sidewalk into a “Rat Road.”
“I’m looking to crucify him,” he says. “I just need to see something done with this lot.”
The condition of the lot has caused 8 violations across the city’s inspection and licensing branch since 2008, the recent high in May for waste after Stern filed a complaint. All violations have been resolved.
Gambino noted that the pandemic has made pests more complicated in the hundred markets, outlets and restaurants of the Italian market.
“Right now, it’s very difficult to locate a municipal company right now because they’re still running from home,” he says. “I wish I could bring them here all the time, but they can’t.”
Redel last tried to build in 2009, he said, and neighbors vehemently opposed each other, fearing disruptions to a business on his quiet street. He made arrangements, he said, but his zoning waiver permit refused and suspended his plans.
In retrospect, Tama said, the network would probably have been too enthusiastic.
“We didn’t anticipate that I would just abandon the project,” he said.
Redel has been the site as a home for a recyclable cardboard dumpster since 2002.
The virus has slowed ongoing renovations in his business, Redel said, and has even delayed his reaction to the L-I violation.
“We couldn’t get anyone out because of COVID,” he said. “Everyone limited to work.”
While Redel was fighting in the market, Stern and Shafer spent more time together than ever before in their five-and-a-half-year relationship. They played endless series of dominoes, debated politics and politics, and, to their relief, discovered that their love was consistently survived by being in the corporation of others.
They manage pandemic anxiety differently. Shafer, who will soon return to school for a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, absorbs articles in statistics, science, and politics, but can be distracted by other things. Stern digs it up harder.
“Reading the news is the ultimate masochistic you can do,” he said.
And then he settles on the floor across the street, where rats would get into garbage bags and exhausted needles lay near the children’s games. For three months, Stern pushed Redel to change. Face-to-face conversations didn’t work. She sent postcards.
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Redel has no lien on the property, about $66,300 according to city accounts, and is up to date with his taxes. Stern contacted local board member Mark Squilla, who spoke to Redel but has little influence to drive change.
“Whenever you have an empty lot, you have a chance to raise burns to the community,” Squilla said.
Squilla urges homeowners of the few vacant homes in the Italian market to sell if they do not need to grow.
Redel said he hopes to use the land for a retail construction on the first floor and apartments upstairs, however, he has submitted any plans to the village and refused to say when construction could begin.
“If it’s hers, I might do whatever you need with it,” she says.
Stern wonders why even a part of this lot might not be, at least temporarily, something better.
“Even though he gave us permission to use two-thirds of it for gardening,” he says, “it’s such a tangible asset with no ramifications.”
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