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Community garden takedown! Dense development follows.
Fishtown neighbors said no to 12 units on four lots, where a community garden until recently thrived.
Community garden takedown! Dense development follows.
For the past 15 years or so, the gardeners on Thompson and Leopard streets in Fishtown have been keeping up and gardening on a semi-forgotten plot of land — the parking lot of an old dairy — that was fenced in with chain link and barbed wire and filled to the brim with scrap and trash. They got access with the owner's permission and help from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and they cleared out six or seven dumpsters full of trash to make way for the Leopard Street Garden, a fenced-in garden at 14-22 W. Thompson St., plus lots fronting Leopard and Lee streets, maintained by various gardeners who used the space for free. The agreement with property owner Dave Andrews always was, says Kristie Landry, one of the gardeners, that "we'll let you use it until we're ready to use it ourselves." But no one expected things to end abruptly as they did.
That is, one day she saw surveyors. The next, she spotted a prospective buyer on the property, and he wasn't just looking around. "He kicked in the gate on the garden fence! I walked over and said, 'Would you want me to unlock the padlock?' And he said, 'Well, obviously the padlock is no good because I just kicked it in.'" Not long afterward, a backhoe from came by and tore up the gardens and a brick pathway the gardeners had laid down.
Since then, Andrews told her, he had a tentative agreement of sale with a buyer (we put in a call to Andrews to try to get a name) pending approval of the buyer's planned development. Now, neighbors aren't too happy with what might go in. At a Fishtown Neighbors Association zoning meeting this week, residents voted 42-34 against supporting a proposal, designed by Harman Deutsch Architecture, for 12 units on four lots, with roof decks and six parking spots but no other open space. The hyperlocal vote (within 500 feet) was 21-2 against.
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