Redevelopment Proposed for Broadway

If you look past or ignore the illegal activity on Broadway, you will find a busy commercial corridor.

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Again, Camden plans opposed
Lawsuits are trying to stop the redevelopment of the Lanning Square neighborhood.

By Matt Katz

Inquirer Staff Writer
What, exactly, is a bad neighborhood?

That's the question before a court as property owners in Camden challenge the city's latest redevelopment plan.

Lawsuits filed this week threaten a project in Lanning Square, the neighborhood next to Cooper University Hospital, that would bring new and rehabilitated housing while turning the Broadway commercial strip into a health campus with new shops and a medical school.

Two suits against the city - one filed by 40 residents, the other by the owner of stores on Broadway - question how the city determined that Lanning Square is blighted.

Without a blight designation, the city cannot declare an area a redevelopment zone. Without a redevelopment designation, the city cannot acquire property, through eminent domain or otherwise, for economic development.

The suits argue that the Camden Redevelopment Agency conducted an arbitrary analysis of the properties without taking into account a thriving, improving, 51-acre community.

And the residents allege that City Council, in unanimously voting to approve the redevelopment plan last month, ignored concerns that redevelopment makes all properties subject to acquisition for 25 years.

The project is the third proposal in four years for the neighborhood, and was intended to signal a new approach to redevelopment under the city's chief operating officer, Theodore Z. Davis.

The redevelopment plan limits the number of properties to be acquired to three occupied homes for an elementary school and 14 businesses on the first blocks of Broadway. Also, more community input was sought than in previous years.

Davis was unavailable yesterday to comment. Officials from the Redevelopment Agency said they could not speak about litigation.

A third suit was filed yesterday against South Jersey Port Corp., a state-created agency, because it has taken steps to move a methadone clinic from Broadway in Lanning Square to the port in the Waterfront South neighborhood.

The removal of the clinic was used as a selling point for the redevelopment plan because the clinic is believed to attract illegal activity. That's exactly why Andrea Ferich, a Waterfront South resident, filed the suit. She has said the clinic will hurt her community's efforts to rebuild.

Last month, South Jersey Port hired a consultant to estimate the cost of turning port space into a clinic, but the 1968 state law that created the corporation does not allow it to lease to nonmaritime operations, according to the suit.

Neither Joseph Balzano, the port's executive director, nor Richard Alaimo, chairman of its board of directors, returned calls for comment.

The Ferich suit does not strike at the heart of the Lanning Square plan, but the other two suits do.

The attorney for the residents, Olga Pomar of South Jersey Legal Services, has successfully represented three other communities - Cramer Hill, Waterfront South and Bergen Square - in their fights against redevelopment and eminent domain.

In all of those cases, the redevelopment plans were thrown out because of procedural mistakes by the city.

In the Lanning Square case, Pomar is not arguing that there were mistakes. But she hopes to capitalize on recent court rulings that demand that cities be specific in determining blight.

"That definition of blight kept getting stretched broader and broader, so it started seeming that it was just for the purpose of private development and helping a developer have a more profitable, more feasible project," Pomar said.

She argued that the neighborhood should be "rehabilitated," which does not include eminent domain, rather than "redeveloped."

The suit says much of the alleged blight is the city's fault because it failed to maintain its own properties, and it argues that the percentage of Lanning Square buildings in good condition rose from 23 percent to 50 percent from 2005 to 2008.

The other suit, filed Wednesday by Carmel Realty, the owner of Valu-Plus and other stores on Broadway, says the Broadway shopping district is both "active" and "vibrant."

Carmel argues that the city did not interview property owners or do interior inspections to determine blight.

There is no evidence, the suit says, "that condition of the subject properties - consisting of retail and accessory uses - is 'detrimental to the safety, health, morals or welfare of the community.' "

Contact staff writer Matt Katz at 856-779-3919 or mkatz@phillynews.com.