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End of the line: Potential development in North Philadelphia meant moving residents off the 2100 block of Bodine Street. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

More story, Less words.

by Morris Bracy

Ramon Hernandez is all talked out. He’s already gone to City Council meetings to question, through an interpreter, why he has to leave his North Philadelphia home of four decades to make way for a yet-to-be-announced development. He’s gotten media attention since he unexpectedly became the human face for those to be displaced in this Neighborhood Transformation Initiative era.

"I don't understand how they can say they take my house when I did not advertise it for sale and don't want to leave. How can they say my house is an eyesore? It is beautiful," he told the Daily News last November. Last week, his family said he wouldn't have more to say about the issue.

All sides concede that 2150 Bodine St., Hernandez's three-story, meticulously kept rowhouse in the shadows of American Street's crumbling factory row, isn't being condemned for neglect. Five neighboring properties may be abandoned, but the Hernandez home shines with two American flags affixed to the walls not far from a garden.

But for all the care, Hernandez, his daughter and his two granddaughters will soon find themselves on the move.

Late last year, the Philadelphia Empowerment Zone, a municipal, neighborhood-revitalization office, blighted the block. Further, by living there, residents disrupted a "large amount of vacant land that would allow for the creation of a parcel of at least one acre," which could be used to attract businesses and jobs for the greater community. With eminent domain -- the properties were taken months before NTI even began, as it's a Commerce Department project -- the government soon seized seven properties with the promise of fair-market value and relocation.

But when Hernandez got his 90-day notice to vacate in October, he refused.

From there, Rosemary Cubas, executive director of the Community Leadership Institute, an activist group based in the American Street Empowerment Zone region, set up a meeting with Seventh District Councilman Rick Mariano and spoke on Hernandez's behalf at a December Council session.

"The whole thing just dragged him down. Last time I saw him, he just didn't look happy. He has this beautiful little house; it's part of his family," says Mariano, who blamed confusion surrounding the municipal plans to language barriers. Many residents are Spanish speakers; notices were written in English. The confusion led someone to distribute "you-may-be-next" fliers on neighboring blocks. "He wasn't going to be satisfied as long as he had to leave the house but the Empowerment Zone people are good people trying to do the right thing. They're not trying to hurt anybody. They're just trying to get something done."

What they're trying to do is revitalize the American Street corridor. Since the struggle already scared off a potential buyer -- a brake manufacturing plant -- Empowerment Zone Executive Director Eva Gladstein says they don't know what development will occur. (But nothing will happen, she says, until Hernandez is relocated.)

What is certain is that Hernandez won't be around to see it. He's accepted a home valued at roughly $50,000 that's still under construction near Norris Square Park, and is expected to move into it in November. Mariano knows it won't be the same, but hopes Hernandez likes his new digs. "I wouldn't mind living there," he says.