Building
a new vision of Chester
Laura McCrystal, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: Friday,
November 28, 2014, 1:08 AM
Boarded-up homes served as stash houses for drugs. Vacant lots
were filled with trash. Children took detours on their way home from school to
avoid the area.
Those images defined a neighborhood for years, making Madison and
Rose Streets some of the most dangerous in the city of Chester.
Today, Christmas lights and wreaths hang from brick rowhouses.
Freshly painted red doors have replaced the wooden boards that covered the
abandoned properties. A park with benches and flower boxes fills a plot of land
that was known as a meeting place for drug dealers.
The park, built by a private landlord on property owned by the
Chester Housing Authority, is perhaps the most tangible sign of efforts to
transform a notoriously dangerous neighborhood into a family-friendly one. It
is also the kind of effort that could "save Chester for Chester,"
said Chester Housing Authority Director Steve Fischer, and allow lifelong
residents of the struggling city to reclaim their own neighborhoods.
In one corner of the park, landlord Debbie DeSimone painted a
message that she said was a new mantra for Chester's east side: "Prove
them wrong."
With her husband and brother-in-law, DeSimone founded a real
estate company called Best Homes and purchased and renovated scores of homes
around Chester, including 16 in the neighborhood around Madison and Rose
Streets.
DeSimone, who lives in Glenolden, said she saw an opportunity to
refurbish old homes and rent them out at the same rate as other properties in
Chester - but in better condition.
She was drawn to Madison and Rose Streets because the Chester
Housing Authority was already working to improve the neighborhood.
The Chester Towers, between Madison Street and Avenue of the
States, were demolished in 2007 and 2008 as part of a massive overhaul of the
troubled public-housing agency. The last of the housing authority's new senior
apartment and office buildings on the site opened in 2013.
Though it took several years and millions of dollars in federal
funding to remake the agency and reconstruct its buildings, "that's, quite
frankly, the easy part," Fischer said.
"So now, as we look to what surrounds us, the vision [was]
that the redevelopment that happened on this site would hopefully spread its
wings and have even more of an impact on Chester."
Major drug bust
He especially hoped that change would come to Madison and Rose
Streets.
This fall, the neighborhood was the site of one of the largest
drug busts in the city's history. In what officials called the takedown of a
drug-trafficking ring that had contributed to a spike in homicides, 35 suspects
were arrested in late September. Prosecutors said the drug ring used stash
houses in the area of Rose and Upland Streets - just a block from the new
housing authority's senior apartments.
Standing in the courtyard of a 10-unit apartment building that she
is renovating on Madison Street, DeSimone grew quiet and raised her eyebrows
when asked what the property looked like when she bought it.
"It was dilapidated," she said. "It was used as a
drug den."
This week, she worked to complete renovations in time for tenants
to move in Monday. The one-bedroom units rent for $700 per month - a typical
rate in Chester, she said - and have new floors, paint, and appliances.
'Clean and beautiful'
Cheryl Mitchell, 45, has spent her entire life on the east side of
Chester. She used to avoid Madison Street. This fall, she moved into one of
DeSimone's apartments there, and she looks forward to letting her grandchildren
play outside.
"They really made it safe," she said. "And clean
and beautiful."
DeSimone covered a vacant lot on Madison Street with gravel, built
a tall wooden fence, and filled the area with flower boxes, benches, and trees.
But the neighborhood has not completely transformed. The new park sits between
DeSimone's apartment building and a bar.
Building a park next to a bar may not be typical, Fischer said,
but the new trees and flower boxes send an important message about saving the
neighborhood.
"It's a statement for the community," he said,
"that we're going to preserve this, come hell or high water."
Jayson Gethers, 37, is a barber who has rented one of DeSimone's
homes on Madison Street for nearly two years. He met DeSimone before his
current home was renovated and heard her vision for the neighborhood. It was
difficult to imagine then, he said, but he has watched it take shape.
"If you stand on this street and go maybe one or two blocks
over," he said, "you can really feel the difference."
610-313-8116 @Lmccrystal
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