The mysterious mounds at 6th and Emerald.
It almost looks like part of the landscape: a few mounds of soil, stones and tattered black fabric, sprouting tall yellow grasses and dusted with snow.
In fact, it’s the discarded plantings from the State Street median below the capitol, excavated and replaced this fall as part of a $50,000 project funded by county gaming funds and donations from a neighborhood nonprofit.
The debris now sprawls across a few vacant lots at the corner of 6th and Emerald streets, against a backdrop of bare trees and houses.
Ellen Crist, a member of Camp Curtin Community Neighbors United, an area neighborhood group, noticed the mounds recently and thought the materials looked familiar. So she posted some photos to Facebook and started calling around.
“Uptown should be taken seriously,” Crist later said. “I don’t think they would put this pile in Shipoke or Midtown and get away with it.”
Discovering how the pile got there in the first place, however, turned out to be somewhat more complicated.
The land, Crist learned, is owned by the Harrisburg Redevelopment Authority. She called and spoke to a woman there who said she had no knowledge of the authority having given permission to dump materials on the property.
HRA staff did not answer phone calls near the end of the day Friday. Later that night, however, Bryan Davis, HRA’s executive director, wrote in an email that the city has a “standing agreement” with the city permitting it to temporarily store top soil or backfill on HRA lots.
Crist also called Aaron Johnson, the city’s public works director. Johnson, in a phone interview with TheBurg, said the city wasn’t involved in the dumping. He added that there had been problems with illegal dumping on the site over the summer, and that he was speaking with codes about possibly putting up fencing.
But Wayne Martin, the city engineer, later said the city was aware of the dumping, and in fact had approved it, because the materials were indeed going to be used as fill at a demolition site on Allison Hill.
The lots were being used as a transfer site before city workers took the fill to the demolition project, located near 15th and Hunter streets. Bethesda Mission, a homeless shelter on Reily Street, had also coordinated with the city to dump materials from a recent renovation there, Martin said.
The State Street replanting took place in late October. Martin, referring to communications with the landscaper, Shaffer Landscapes of Middleburg, said that the project had been scheduled to begin on Oct. 23 and be complete by Nov. 12.
TheBurg photographed the median on Oct. 30, at which time the project appeared to be mostly complete. The materials would have been moved to the 6th and Emerald site in late October or early November, Martin said.
State Street Improvement Association, a neighborhood nonprofit, spearheaded the project and sought input from residents on its design.
Two local developers, Alex Hartzler and Dave Butcher, led the effort and contributed the bulk of the private funding of the project through their company, WCI Partners.
Hartzler is also the publisher of TheBurg.
Hartzler said Friday that the idea of donating the fill came up at a neighborhood meeting about the project, during which Martin had brought up the possibility of using it at a demolition site.
Hartzler said he and the landscapers were happy to give the material to the city, and that he found the use “entirely appropriate.” He added, however, that he “can sympathize with neighbors who own property next to a vacant lot” and would be concerned to see material dumped there without explanation.
“It’s a positive thing that the neighbors are concerned and would call the city about it,” he said. “If it were me, I would make a similar call.”
Martin said the public works department would be collecting the fill soon, and that it would be “gone within the next week.”
Crist, for her part, reached Martin on Friday, too, and got his explanation. “Just as long as it is moved and Uptown stops being a dumping site,” she wrote TheBurg afterwards, “I am okay with it.”
This story has been updated with comments from HRA’s executive director, Bryan Davis.
