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Anatomy of a 24-year-long land transaction
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Anatomy of a 24-year-long land transaction
In today's City Paper, we lay out Santiago and Margarita Principe's 24-year struggle to acquire land from the city, and how it illustrates a need for reform. Well, the city has outlined one important measure: a "front door" for all applications to acquire city-owned land, so that there's a clear pathway to ownership. However, beyond the front door that pathway splits into three different departments, each with it's own procedures. To show just how messy that can get, here's a blow-by-blow of what getting a city property actually entails. As the saying goes, it's kind of like looking inside a sausage factory — what goes into these transactions is a lot of jostling, nagging and, yes, some dealmaking, even when the motivation is just to get what was agreed to in the first place.
The application. In Principe's case, this was in 1988, through a side-yard program that was in existence at the time. The city agreed to take the land from a long-absent owner by sheriff's sale and deed it over to him for $1.
The city acquisition. This finally happened in 2003. Principe was contacted, but he was unable to close the deal with the city, despite repeated attempts. Over several years, the price was increased several times to $12,000.
The councilmanic prodding. In 2008, Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez took office and learned about the case. She began attempting to intervene, contacting Office of Housing and Community Development, the Vacant Property Review Committee, the Mayor and Redevelopment Authority director Terry Gillen. After being repeatedly overruled, she made some progress. But the city asked for a business plan, which Sanchez solicited from Principe and Finanta. The city then approved the plan, but it still took "dozens" of emails from the Councilwoman's office to move things along, bumping the transaction into 2011.
The negotiations. Demanding "fair market value" has been a key stance of the Nutter administration on vacant land, so to get the property for less than that, Sanchez had to, in essence, work out a deal for her constituent. In Principe's case, that meant detailing the expenses he would need to incur to upgrade the property to justify the reduced price. (In other cases, she's had to prove the appraised value offered by the city was wrong, in some cases off by $10,000 or more. Or, they have to track down ancient transfer documents to demonstrate that nominal transactions were promised.)
The last-ditch paperwork. Sanchez' office had to correct problems with the deed, and chase it down through the Law Department, Vacant Property Review Committee, Office of Housing and Community Development. Then the city deeded the land over to the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, and after that, it finally went to Principe. Reminder: This is for an 810-square-foot lot in Kensington, that eventually sold for $5,000.
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