The view of the lot from Herr Street, with the Zoning Hearing Board notice in the foreground.
Students of urban planning and Harrisburg history: a long-running war over an empty lot near the capitol should reach its conclusion tonight around 6:00 p.m., in the Public Safety Auditorium in City Hall.
Like any good war in a litigious age, this one is being fought with websites, hearings and zoning applications instead of swords and clubs. Though bloodless, it’s got the usual mix of misinformation and vitriol. And as with most wars, its outcome will probably be depressing.
The dispute concerns a sloping, paved lot at the corner of 6th and Herr Streets. The lot contains numbered parking spaces, marked by faded paint, and is surrounded by unkempt hedges and bushes. It’s been out of use since 2010. But the present calm covers a long and tortuous history.
The lot is currently split between two owners. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal, a historic black church, owns the eastern part. The Harrisburg Redevelopment Authority owns the other half, which consists of several smaller parcels.
The history can be summed up in two discrete phases. In the first phase, during the ’70s and early ’80s, the city, through the HRA, squabbled with Bethel Church over possession of the western half of the lot. Bethel had occupied a church on the eastern half—previously called Ridge Avenue Methodist—since 1953. The church also owned several vacant residences on the western half, which the HRA wanted to acquire for rehabilitation.
Bethel tried to protect the lots with something like a scorched-earth strategy, demolishing the vacant properties before the HRA could get them. HRA responded by condemning the empty parcels. The church then appealed to City Council, who struck the property from HRA’s acquisition list, but left the title to them in HRA’s hands. This placed the lots in a curious position. They adjoined the church, which used them for parking, but HRA technically owned them.
This uneasy balance was brought to light in 1991, in a series of memos between the HRA’s director and Mayor Stephen Reed. That year, Ted Hanson, a resident of Old Fox Ridge, the neighborhood west of the church, had approached the city with a request to lease a portion of a dead-end alley bordering the empty parcels. Reed supported Hanson’s request and, upon learning about the adjacent lots, added that he’d be “especially pleased” if the entire site were developed as housing, rather than off-street parking. But the HRA director, citing the convoluted history, expressed doubt about the legal options available.
For years, nothing happened. HRA continued to own the parcels, and Bethel kept using them for parking. That more or less concludes Phase I.
Phase II began in 1995, when an arsonist torched the Bethel Church, and the ruined building was razed. Bethel eventually relocated to its current site, at 1721 N. 5th St., but sought permission to use the lot, now doubled in size, as a site for commercial parking for state workers. And there, unfortunately, lie the seeds of the current controversy.
In order to use the spot for parking, Bethel required a special variance to the city’s zoning code. They were granted this variance in 2002, for a period of four years, but with the expectation that by the end of those years they’d submit a plan for more appropriate development.
In 2006, the variance expired, and Bethel had no development plan. Instead, they applied again for a variance, and were granted another two years for commercial parking. In 2008, the cycle repeated. Finally, in 2010, after increasing complaints by the neighborhood, the church shuttered the parking operation, and the lot fell vacant.
It remained inactive until late this May, when a laminated yellow notice appeared on one of the lot’s utility poles. The notice announced that, once again, the church was applying for a special variance, to resume using the site for commercial parking, this time until an “unspecified” date in the future.
Ted Hanson, who still lives in Old Fox Ridge, saw the notice and immediately set into action. Hanson, a bit of a self-styled digital vigilante, started a negative campaign on a website, foxridgeneighbors.org. Along with relating the parking lot’s history, he also attacked Mayor Thompson, whom he accused of using her office to curry favor with the Bethel church.
“Linda is looking to her secure her future,” Hanson wrote, by delivering a “cash cow to one of Harrisburg’s major black churches in the waning days of her administration.”
Hanson pointed out several troubling aspects of Bethel’s latest application. For one, the church has a documented history of applying for a special variance, promising a legitimate development, and reneging on that promise when the variance expires. The church also provided a collection of signatures that it claimed showed community support of the project, even though all of the signatories lived outside of Fox Ridge. Hanson also provided evidence that the church has not paid property taxes on the lot for two years running.
Finally, and most disturbing, the Thompson administration appears to have tried to shroud the application in secrecy. When Hanson attempted to gain access to the application in advance of the public hearing, a zoning officer, Geoffrey Knight, demanded that he submit a right-to-know request, which can take upwards of a week to fulfill.
I’ve written about Ted Hanson and this block of North 6th Street before, in the article “Missing Pieces” in the May issue of TheBurg. Hanson’s efforts on behalf of his neighborhood are commendable, if a touch overzealous. If Thompson really did attempt to speed Bethel’s application, then it was a serious oversight and an abuse of her powers.
But it’s also important to put the accusations in proper perspective.
Bethel AME and other churches fill a vital community role. They provide places where citizens can gather, affirm common goals and provide support and guidance to one another. To perform these functions, churches must find some way to draw sufficient revenue to pay their upkeep costs, which are often substantial. (We wrote about the community work of Harrisburg’s historic black churches, as well as their financial difficulties, in our April issue.)
In light of all this, Bethel AME should have been able to make a legitimate appeal. They should have made contact with the parking lot’s actual neighbors, to come up with a plan agreeable to all parties. They should have offered a firm timeline for development, rather than a suspicious repeat of the indefinite special exceptions of the past. They should have been transparent about their unpaid taxes, and made an urgent case for financial need.
But instead, they submitted an application riddled with dubious claims, and did so in a way that opened them to charges of political horse-trading. (They have also made themselves difficult to reach for comment. I spoke to a Bethel representative Friday, who started to answer questions and then demanded not to be quoted until a scheduled interview with the pastor Monday. On Monday, the pastor missed our appointment and as of this writing had not returned my calls.)
The result has been a lot of bad press and ill will. Depending on the outcome of tonight’s hearing, it may also be that the land remains as it is for the indefinite future, unused and overgrown.
If that happens, it will be a shame. Despite recent history, the lot has actually seen one notable improvement in the past few years. It came in April, when the county installed a sign beside it, as part of a project known as the Bethel Heritage Trail. The sign commemorates the former site of the church and the contributions of the many black leaders among its congregation.
It would have been quite an achievement if, looking up from the sign, a visitor saw some appropriate memorial to Bethel’s remarkable history. A park, perhaps, or a plaza or sculpture garden, conceived in some joint effort by the church and community.
In place of that paradise, for now, there’s a parking lot.
