The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 25

fb Jpfttlabelpfe Inquirer citysuburbs region News of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware section i Thursday, May 16, 198. Mayor and party chief at odds over panel seat By DOROTHY STORCK By Walter F. Naedele Inquirer Stall Writer Mayor Goode and Democratic Party Chairman Joseph F. Smith are backing different candidates to fill the unpaid position on the Fair-mount Park Commission board left vacant by the death of John B. Kelly Jr.

Goode is supporting former State Sen. James Lloyd, Democratic leader of the 57th Ward in Northeast Philadelphia. The party chairman, on the other hand, is supporting Robert N.C. Nix Pleas at 3:30 p.m. in City Hall Courtroom 643.

Appointments to the Fair-mount Park Commission board are made by the judicial board, which consists of the more than 70 Common Pleas judges in the city. The park commission oversees the Fairmount Park system from Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia to Pennypack Park in the Northeast which is said to be the largest urban park in the nation. The board has 10 appointed and six ex-officio members. Lloyd is the choice of a Common 3d, a lawyer and son of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert N.C. Nix Jr.

"What is most extraordinary here," Common Pleas Court Judge Bernard J. Avellino said in an interview yesterday, "is that the mayor and the chairman are on different tacks. "Apparently, there must be a problem there," Avellino said. Smith and Goode were not available for comment yesterday. Today, the choice is to be made at the quarterly meeting of the Board of Judges of the Court of Common Pleas Court screening committee, which interviewed about a dozen candidates, including Lloyd and Nix, and mailed notice of its recommendation to the judges last week.

Smith's support for Nix came to light when three judges said yesterday that they received letters from Smith urging a vote for Nix. For his part, Lloyd said in an interview that the mayor urged him on three occasions to seek the position and that he finally did so at the mayor's One judge said yesterday that' he Tho PhilaUi(jli. Inqunei jMIS McuARHlIY An iron picture of a bird on a bush; this and other works are on exhibit at the Chinese Cultural and Community Center Unusual materials become artworks in the hands of Chinese had received a phone call from Goode aide Shirley Hamilton urging a vote for Lloyd. Hamilton was unavailable for comment. Whether Goode's lobbying went further could not immediately be determined, because several judges could not be reached yesterday.

Common Pleas President Judge Edward J. Bradley said in an interview that he could not confirm whether the mayor supported Lloyd, whether the party chairman supported Nix, or whether the screening committee (See COMMISSION on 3-B) Developer named for waterfront Rouse wins bid on Penn's Landing By Gregory R. Byrnes Inquirer Stall Writer A special committee of city and civic officials yesterday selected House Associates to develop the north end of Penn's Landing with a proposed S200 million project that would include a 600- to 800-room betel as well as ofiice, retail, entertainment and parking facilities. The Penn's Landing a wholly owned subsidiary of the Philadelphia Port Corp. that controls the site.

is expected to confirm the committee's decision at its May 28th mteC ing. "Rouse Associates has it," said G. Craig Schelter, head of the selection committee and director of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. (P1DC). "Clearly, Rouse Associates assembled the strongest team of developers and architects." The selection was a major coup for Willard G.

Rouse 3d. who earlier this week broke ground for the city's tallest office tower, the 60-story One Liberty Place at 1650 Market the first phase of a S600 million olfkt. retail and hotel complex. "I'm delighted with the selection committee's decision," said Rouse. "I see Penn's Landing as the gateway to Philadelphia.

It has the potential to be recognized as the symbol of the city and the potential to be a great space for all Philadelphians. That's the challenge." Some developers, contenders and non-contenders for the project, raised doubts yesterday about Rouse's ability to oversee the development of Penn's Landing while also developing Liberty Place. And some suggested that Rouse would have conflicting interests. "If he comes up with a warm body la prospective tenant, where will he put him Penn's Landing or One Liberty Place?" said one developer who requested anonymity. "And don't forget.

Rouse is developing a 365-room hotel across the street from Penn's Landing. Is he really going to develop another hotel to compete with the Society Hill Sheraton?" Rouse yesterday rejected this criticism, saying he would have the resources needed to complete all of the projects and that he saw no potential for conflict of interest. While recognizing the potential for problems lrom the Rouse selection, Schelter supported the committee's choice. "We were concerned that Bill might be overstretching it a bit. In fact, we asked him that question point-blank.

His response was that he's never failed to finance and finish a project," said Schelter. "Clearly, he put together a strong team a team with vision," said Schelter. "They have a special understanding for waterfront projects and realize the potential of the Penn's Landing site." Rouse's team includes Evans Development Co. of Baltimore, developers of the award-winning Pavilion at (See PENN'S LANDING on 7-B) Two major housing developments have been proposed in West Philadelphia. Page 12B.

12 ktv IT 'V" I I t. tional form of Chinese folk art called Wuhu iron pictures. As the name implies, these are pictures made of wrought iron and made in such a way as to convey nuances that would do justice to a delicate oil or water-color. "What is here." said Wang Boshen of the China International Travel Service, "is an exhibition that combines two of China's most unusual art forms. They are so localized that relatively few people in China have ever seen one or both of them." Wang is head of a five-man team from Wuxi (woo-CHEE), China, that has been at the center since mid-February.

Three of the team members are chefs who prepare the Chinese New Year banquets presented nightly by the center. The fifth man is Zheng Lei, the creator of the miniature sculptures. Zheng has been doing wondrous things with his sculpture on a bit of ivory the size of a rice grain, for instance, he does a bas relief of a (See CHINA on 2-B) By Edgar Williams Inquirer Stall Writer First you blink a bit as you peer through the microscope, getting your eyes to focus. Then, suddenly, there they are, those three little words: "I love you." They are sculpted on a human hair. One human hair.

"I can guarantee that it's real," Virginia Van said. "I should know. It was pulled out of my head." She feigned a wince. This was yesterday at the Chinese Cultural and Community Center, 125 N. 10th where Virginia Van is a staff member.

It also is the place where a remarkable twin exhibit of Chinese art is being held. One facet is a display of miniature sculpture in ivory and on human hair. It is a nonstatic exhibition, inasmuch as the man who created all these works dragons, boats, pandas and the like is present, creating still more as a daily feature of the exhibit. Also, there is a display of a tradi Finger pointing solves nothing As I write, they have just assembled the pieces of the seventh body from the rubble of the MOVE house and buckled up the body bag to take to the medical examiner. This time, they think it is an adult.

The police bulletins come from Osage Avenue in terse terms. Earlier, after the dawn shootout Monday, they were delivered by a police lieutenant wearing a seersucker suit and a white flak vest who smoked a cigar and said exactly what was written on a piece of paper. Now, they are given on TV press conferences by the police commissioner, wearing his hat with the braided visor, or on the site by the former general, a Vietnam veteran, who is the city's managing director. The general is more accustomed to body counts. "Multiple parts of at least one more child have been found," he says.

Multiple parrs oj children. Traveling across the city from West Philadelphia's war zone, you encounter the mental blockades that are erected when it comes to disaster in someone else's neighborhood. Mental blockades "How is it out there?" the Center City restaurant owner asks politely, before drifting into his own concerns about dinner lobsters. "How terrible for our city," says the Society Hill matron, en route to a cocktail party in New York. "They was just trying to make the neighborhood better," says the garage attendant off Kittenhouse Square.

He does not blame the police or the mayor for the leveled homes. "Those people, they'll be taken care of." You sense just a touch of envy in this man's voice. Where he lives in North Philadelphia, crumbled brick and bombed-out streets are part of the natural decor. The families on Osage and Pine whose homes are smoking bricks right now will probably be taken care of in the long run. The heat and light of public scrutiny will remain on them for enough time, probably, to get that done.

The mayor says they may be In new homes by Christmas. The head of the building trades union says his people will volunteer to work Saturdays. There may be money coming in from the state or even Washington. We'll see. But already the insurance companies are taking long looks at the homeowners' policies.

Clothes and food and temporary shelter in churches and college dorms are one thing. Cash is another. 'Emotional anesthesia' You look at people picking through the rubble for some remnant of what used to be theirs one old man needs his teeth, another weeps for his collection of jazz records, a woman sees nothing but ashes where her just-bought living room furniture used to be. And the wonder is that they aren't more angry. Maybe it is, as the psychologists are saying, "emotional anesthesia." You watch your home burning down on TV and you get a little of that.

But it also could be that it's tough to find a real target for blame on this thing. MOVE, maybe. But the bodies of MOVE are coming out in body bags. The fire chief? The police chief? The mayor? They might have made mistakes in judgment, but they were just doing their jobs. Wilson Goode is taking a bum rap from some reporters in town.

Anyone who says the man is uncaring hasn't seen him up close lately. When he says he is "devastated" by what happened in West Philadelphia when the operations plan went wrong, there is no doubting he means it. It '8 Koch who 's silly One columnist called Goode a "silly" man. The mayor may be slow to take action, he may be overly cautious he has said that confrontation is not his style. What the man is not is "silly." "Silly" is Ed Koch of New York, dancing out to second-guess the disaster in Philadelphia.

This is the same man who runs a town where rent-control buildings are torched by their owners to get rid of tenants, a city where cops use stun guns on prisoners. Goode has said that we can't allow any group, such as MOVE, to hold the city hostage. The problem with that, so far, is that no one has been able to figure out how to stop them. With terrorists there are only three ways to go: negotiate, contain or blast. When some serious crazies won't negotiate and are willing to let their children starve or die in bomb bursts, you reach a new dimension of impasse.

And none of the blaming, review and rhetoric up to now has done a thing to change that fact. Lady Yang, emperor's concubine, portrayed in iron Franklin Bridge traffic up despite obstacles 26, it was the first time the bridge had carried more than 100,000 vehicles in a 24-hour period since the Walt Whitman Bridge opened in 1957. Officials attributed the single-day record to pleasant weather that apparently attracted large numbers of people to the Jersey shore. Although Garden State Park opened April 1, officials said the race track had accounted for only about 1,000 additional vehicles a day on the bridge a figure they said was The bridge last month handled 19,242 commuter sticker sales, for the first time exceeding monthly commuter sticker sales on the Walt Whitman Bridge. In other business yesterday, the port authority raised the annual salary of its secretary, Steve Joachim, from $35,000 to $42,500.

Joachim, 32, of Springfield, Delaware County, is a former football player at Temple University and for the New York Jets. He took the port authority job in January. Port Authority, which operates the bridge, attributed the increased traffic on the bridge to the efforts of commuters to avoid the traffic jams caused by construction work on the Schuylkill Expressway and on Interstate 95 near the Betsy Ross Bridge. Traffic has increased despite the redecking of the bridge, which has forced two of its seven lanes to be closed and the speed limit to be reduced from 45 m.p.h. to 35 m.p.h.

In addition, when 101,122 vehicles crossed the bridge on Friday, April By Francis M. Lordan Inquirer Stall Writer The Benjamin Franklin Bridge, despite construction that has necessitated lane closings and a reduced speed limit, handled 16.8 percent more traffic last month than in any previous April, it was announced yesterday. It was the highest year-to-year percentage increase for any month in the bridge's 59-year history. Officials of the Delaware River Ex-mortgage firm aide pleads guilty in fraud New TV station is scheduled Channel 57 is planning to go public soon phia's other independent UHF stations, WPHL-TV (Channel 17) and WTAF-TV (Channel 29). "We are not out to build a television station.

We are out to come on full-grown," Grant, who will be Channel 57's general manager, said in an interview this week. Grant said his group plans to build a studio-office-transmitter facility he said he did not know where yet that will broadcast Channel 57's television signal to an area within a SO-to-60-mile radius of Philadelphia. WWSG-TV now broadcasts on a relatively weak signal. Grant said he has FCC permission to boost that signal to 5 million watts, the maximum allowed by the commission. The new owners of Channel 57, who also operate WBFS-TV in Miami, already have contracted for a supply of television programs, including (See STATION on 2-B) By Neill Borowski Inquirer Stall Writer A group of investors plans to spend $10 million to build a new commercial television station that will begin broadcasting on WWSG-TV (Channel 57) in Philadelphia by this fall.

The Federal Communications Commission recently approved the transfer of Channel license to Grant Broadcasting System which paid former owners William S. Gross and Leon Gross $30 million for the station. Channel 57 now broadcasts the Prism pay-television channel via a scrambled signal to about 15,000 area subscribers. When Grant Broadcasting, owned primarily by television entrepreneur Milton Grant and several Texas investors, takes over Channel 57, it will drop Prism and begin broadcasting advertiser-supported programming similar to Philadel By Tim Weiner Inquirer Stall Writer A former vice president of a major mortgage company pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiring with three men the past president of the New Jersey Real Estate Commission, one of Burlington County's most successful real estate brokers and a Camden real estate speculator in a series of lucrative mortgage frauds. The guilty plea by Stephen C.

Springer in U.S. District Court in Camden was the latest conviction in a continuing federal investigation of corrupt real estate practices that defrauded the U.S. Department of Hrms. ing and Urban Development (HUD) in New Jersey. Three people have been sentenced to prison, and three more are under indictment in the case.

The guilty plea described a pattern of fraud that reached from the scarred streets of Camden into the offices of one of the nation's largest mortgage companies. Springer, 35, was a executive of Margaretten Co. until he left the mortgage company last month. He waived formal indictment and pleaded guilty to a series of frauds and kickbacks that took place from January 1982 to January 1985. Springer faces up to 10 years in prison and $20,000 in fines.

He has agreed to cooperate with the spreading federal investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jodi Lee Alper said. Specifically, Springer pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit fraud with Alvin J. Matthews, the former state realty commissioner and a paid appraiser for the Veterans Administration (VA); Howard Ryan of Ryan Realty, a large real estate company with offices in Willingboro and Del-ran, and Kenneth Chosecd, a real (See HUD on 8-B).