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Kensington's "megalots" gets some love
A sprawling group of vacant lots in the old factory district offers possibilities (and politics).
Kensington's "megalots" gets some love
Residents in East Kensington have been eyeing the so-called Megalots, a group of intriguingly contiguous vacant lots at York and Emerald streets, for a while now. It seems like the perfect place for a park, a dog park, playing fields, residential development — in short, anything but the blight that's there today. So much so, that one local artist recently went out and installed this hopeful artistic statement, in the hopes that it might help unblight the block.
Unfortunately, Megalots is also an illustration of just how challenging Philly's vacant land issues are. Parts of the lot are already owned by the city or the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp., and parts appear to be more than 10 years in arrears on (albeit microscopic) taxes, making them ripe for tax sale. However, other parts are privately owned and all paid up, and as recently as a few years ago were being advertised as a development opportunity. And getting the already maxed-out Parks and Recreation Department to add new properties to its inventory might be a challenge.
Hopefully, this will be the type of project facilitated in the future by Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez' newly proposed Land Bank, which "will be coordinated with the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority and other City agencies directly engaged with vacant property management and blight elimination.” In the meantime, we hope neighborhood guerrilla artists will keep on doing their best.
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