Bodega Daze

DOMAIN BATTLE: Zoila Reyes (left) spent months wondering whether the city would raze the store that supports her family.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

A city snafu sends the wrong message to a North Philly family.

by Deborah Bolling

Twenty-one years ago, Gertrudis Pena moved from the Dominican Republic to the United States, hoping to give her family a shot at the American dream.

Three years after she arrived, her husband joined her. Shortly thereafter, their two sons and only daughter, Zoila, followed. For nearly a decade, the Pena family moved from state to state, settling in Philadelphia in 1997. The children learned English, Zoila married Jose Reyes and started a family of her own and her parents bought and sold a number of independent small grocery stores, called bodegas, in Spanish communities from Orlando to New York City. Two years ago, the Penas used their savings to purchase a bodega on North 19th Street.

Today, their North Philadelphia block is mostly deserted, but the new Philadelphia Housing Authority twins at the end of the block may bode a brighter tomorrow.

Open seven days a week, the Pena Grocery provides the only livelihood for the family's six adult members. The floors above the store are badly in need of repair, but there are plans to make it a rental unit. Unfortunately, when the Penas purchased the property for $35,000 in 2001, they didn't know it was in an area long ago earmarked as blighted.

More importantly, they had no idea that under Mayor John Street's much-heralded Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), their future was -- at best -- on shaky ground.

Last June, someone showed Zoila Reyes a disturbing legal notice in a newspaper. It was an advertisement placed by the Office of Housing and Community Development (OHCD) listing her family's grocery store among nearly 500 properties slated for possible demolition.

When the Penas decided to buy the store, they didn't know that the neighborhood was an NTI target.

"[My dad] saw all of the construction and the new housing, but he thought it meant a new future," Reyes says. "He thought that the remodeling was a good a thing, that it would be good for his business. He never thought they would take his property."

After months of anticipating the bulldozers, a few weeks ago, the family learned that their address was listed in the newspaper erroneously.

"We were so worried and my husband was losing sleep," Reyes says. "This is the only job he knows how to do. Of course, he could work for other people, but it's not like working with the family."

In rundown neighborhoods, under a policy called "eminent domain," the Redevelopment Authority (RDA) oversees the acquisition of properties classified as blighted, and arranges for compensation and relocation for impacted homeowners. Usually, eminent domain comes into play when abandoned houses outnumber those that are occupied, causing property values to plummet.

Houses that meet the RDA's blight criteria can be confiscated through an assortment of administrative procedures. As a quasi-governmental agency, the RDA is directed and sanctioned by both City Council and the mayor. After an area is targeted, the elected district leader is responsible for holding public forums and encouraging community involvement in the transformation. The eminent domain declaration is then voted on in City Council, and the mayor makes it law. Owners of affected properties are required to receive letters, stating that the city and the RDA have determined the neighborhood blighted and intend to reclaim it. Another letter follows offering financial compensation for the property. There is a period for owners to respond and demolition begins shortly thereafter.

RDA officials confirm that in June, City Council passed an ordinance allowing for the possible seizure of 26 North Philadelphia neighborhoods. More than 1,700 properties, including the Penas', were identified as NTI targets. Their bodega, however, should never have been on that list.

"The grocery store at 1445 N. 19th St. is not in our development plan," says Michael Schurr, president of OKKS Development, L.P., one of the two companies approved by the RDA to erect 151 townhouses in that neighborhood. "It is not on the list for taking that was presented [to us] on May 6, nor are any of the properties that are adjacent to it."

An OHCD spokesperson admits that throughout the NTI redevelopment process, mistakes have been made -- even though nobody can explain how the bodega ever ended up on a list.

"Sometimes addresses are published that shouldn't be," says OHCD spokesperson Emily Romin, "and at other times addresses that do belong on the list aren't published at all. It's a problem."

"It was a redevelopment proposal," RDA Executive Director Herb Wetzel says about the June ordinance. "It was not definite but if there is a decision to proceed, the property owners will be notified."

Even though the family is not behind in any of their taxes, or aware of any fines or liens against their store, they worried when they saw their property on the list.

"We sent 17 letters to the 17 Council members telling them that we were not giving up our property," Reyes says. "We got no response so we went to City Hall, but learned nothing. We even sent a letter to [our district Councilman] Darrell Clarke, but he didn’t respond, either."

Clarke says he recalls meeting the Penas.

"I told them there had been no filing of a declaration of taking," Clarke says. "I also told them that we weren’t going to do anything until we had had more discussions."

But the Pena property was not part of the developers’ plans in May, a month before the newspaper ad was placed.

"The process was flawed and a number of mistakes have been made," Clarke says, "but we’ll correct them. When you talk about redeveloping a community, there will be some bumps. But now we’re trying to slow things down and accommodate people as reasonably as possible."

While the city decides which properties are priorities for demolition, as many as 200 families may be facing upheaval. The possibility of losing their homes, where many have lived their entire lives, has galvanized the largely black and Hispanic community.

"We don’t have walkie-talkies at our town watch meetings," says Rosemary Cubas, one of the founders of The Community Leadership Institute, an advocacy group offering residents ways to defend neighborhoods from takeovers. "Instead, we have the eyes and ears of all the people who live here. We took the neighborhood back from blight, and we’re not going to move."

Cubas says that although the Pena/Reyes family may have temporarily escaped the city’s hacksaws, she’s seen hundreds -- fluent in neither English nor the complex language of city bureaucracy -- who have become victims of Philadelphia’s sweeping eminent domain policy.

"For the Pena family, this is a victory," Cubas says. "But why put people through this agony? I’m happy to hear they will not be displaced right away, but I don’t believe it’ll stay that way."

Now, Reyes says her family will plan for their future.

"I know that in America you are supposed to fight for your rights," she says. "But I said, "We’re small voices and we’re not going to win.’ I’ve learned a lesson, though. We need to speak so they can hear us. Everything depends on where we stand. If we give up and don’t fight, we might lose the dream -- and we can’t do that."