The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 11

Monday, May 22, 1995 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER All COMMENTARY Public housing is remodeling By Neal R. Peirce The old high-rise buildings are being demolished. And smaller, more diverse, models are taking their place. Marc Mortal invited in a HUD-desig-nated recovery team, recruited a new housing chief from San Francisco through a competitive process involving residents, and instituted site-based management and community policing. Now New Orleans will see a new separate, tenant-controlled public benefit corporation (free of civil service personnel restraints) take ownership and management control of its projects among them Desire and Florida, two of America's most deteriorated and crime-ravaged.

"We want to offer people choice," says Mortal. "Instead of simply reconstructing old, outmoded, high-density, multi-unit public housing, we will save where possible, demolish where appropriate, and we will create town-style construction and single family homes." Could it be true? Could we look forward to remodeled housing that's low-rise, much less dense, perhaps even interspersed with new private market housing at the heart of our inner cities? That's precisely what developer Richard Baron hopes to construct on the site of St. Louis' desolate Vaughn project. He foresees green parks punctuating blocks with 402 two- and three-story town homes, 45 percent for moderate- and middle-income families. Some critics say it can't be done.

Cities lack population and therefore market demand St. Louis, for ex- to condone a flow of federal "modernization" dollars into these projects. The Clinton administration's HUD, to its credit, has sought to move full-bore on public housing starting with pressure to take down the worst units. On top of that, Cisneros Co. have been demanding stem-to-stern reorganization and introduction of professional management in the country's 94 "troubled" public housing authorities 16 of them in major cities.

In Philadelphia, Mayor Ren-dell and City Council President John Street were persuaded to take personal control of the city's scandal-racked agency. Court-ordered receivers are now in place around the country, most recently to take control of the shockingly mismanaged Washington, D.C., authority. In New Orleans, freshman Mayor For The Inquirer JOHN OVERMYER Mixing publicly subsidized units with private housing has to be our society's best hope to restore healthy community norms and end the terrible stigmatization of public housing. The boom of the detonations of '95 punctuate the message: It's time for a fresh start. opment money in place, but state housing finance support and private sector financing targeted into once dicey neighborhoods.

Still, Chicago, Cleveland, Louisville and Pittsburgh are just some of the cities where mixed-income developments have either been recently built or are in serious proposal stage. April and May have been literally the most explosive months in the history of public housing in America. At 9 a.m. on April 30, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and city officials pushed a ceremonial plunger igniting 660 pounds of dynamite to implode five towers of the 41-year-old Raymond Rosen Homes in North Philadelphia. Good riddance, wrote The Inquirer's Acel Moore, of a project that for 30 years has "been an island a black township where crime, violence and drugs flourished." Until the towers were vacated in 1992, wrote Moore, he'd visited Raymond Rosen Homes each year as a reminder of a fearful, other Philadelphia one "filled with trash, garbage and dead rodents that rotted in hallways and stairways." A day later, May 1, the nation's chief landlord was in St.

Louis. This day, Cisneros began demolition of the beaten and broken George Vaughn public housing complex nine desolate brick-and-steel building? on the north side of downtown. Bj the end of this month, Atlanta oTficials will begin to take down the decayed and degenerated Tech wood Clark-Howell' Homes vintage 1935, America's oldest public housing project. Before this spring demolition derby, units were being reduced to rubble at Columbus Homes in Newark, North Lincoln Park in Denver, Father Panek in Bridgeport, and Chicago's Washington Park. More razings are set for this summer in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, San Antonio and Houston.

By this autumn and the end of the government's fiscal year, 32 developments, encompassing thousands of units, will have fallen. In one sense, the dramatic demolitions are less than meet the eye. They affect just a tiny fraction of the nation's stockpile of 1.4 million public housing units many are small developments that blend into their neighborhoods. Forty percent of all public housing is reserved for the elderly. The removal of blighted projects doqs, however, signal a vital turn proof that Americans have "had it" with those public housing projects that have turned into hellholes of gunshots, drugs, crime and stench.

No national administration, Republican or Democratic, could continue Claude Lewis Looking at a Showing how to rebuild a neighborhood on Market St. Neal R. Peirce writes on urban issues. tics. They are rooted in the commu-, nity, but not held captive by the narrowness of a local framework.

They understand that neighborhoods and businesses get built by emphasizing change and external relationships, not by escaping them. Corporations, too, are learning that community reinvestment can work and can be profitable. Maybe, just maybe, those hammers and cement trucks that you hear north of the Market Street El on 46th Street represent a departure from business as usual. Wouldn't that be something. Jeremy Nowak, executive director of the Delaware Valley Community Reinvestment Fund, will be presented today with the 1994 Philadelphia Award, in recognition of his efforts to improve the quality of life in the Delaware Valley.

The Reinvestment Fund organized the private financing for many of the projects cited in this essay. Pennsylvania and local public schools, the Enterprise Center's relationship with Wharton and the Ben Franklin Technology Center, or the ability of Philadelphia Interfaith to leverage millions of dollars of construction financing from their constituent congregations and enter into a partnership with Mayor Ren-dell. These are substantive partnerships, not relationships between "givers" and "clients." They are structured by mutual self-interest. A project ambition that fits the problem: The Enterprise Center is not trying to incubate a few businesses, it is developing a citywide system of business creation that will result in hundreds of new businesses. Philadelphia Interfaith wants to rebuild entire neighborhoods.

Pragmatism over ideology: None of these new city builders are ideologues. They can't be. They have to get things done, be accountable to investors, and demonstrate that performance delivers more than poli (mTh a'-vA ample, is down from 856,000 residents in 1950 to 380,000 today. There's an unsavory history of missed mortgage payments and defaults on federally insured projects. And any mix of public with private housing will require "layered financing" not just federal funds, presuming the Republican Congress leaves reasonable chunks of redevel rental and sales housing, as long as there are good transportation linkages to suburban job markets and an institutional base for local employment.

But more important than market forces is the new city-building leadership style that's invigorating Philadelphia. Four characteristics define this new leadership style: An emphasis on performance over politics: Homes and businesses are being built with business discipline. You only have to spend a little time with Delia Clark at the Philadelphia Enterprise Center or Gary Rodwell, Philadelphia Interfaith's lead organizer, to become convinced that this is not housing and business development by ward politics. These are projects that are defined by a regard for operational accountability; they are not program entitlements. The capacity to enter into substantive partnerships: Look at the West Philadelphia Partnership's ability to mediate between the University of 4 6.75 6.99 axMol 7.375 Saying goodbye to 'Mr.

Silk' -they all remember him fondly former home of television's American Bandstand is about to become a business incubator, thanks to the Philadelphia Enterprise Center. Walk a few more blocks east, and you'll bump into the headquarters of the West Philadelphia Partnership a coalition of institutions and community associations that is organizing town watch programs, promoting educational reform and linking residents to available job opportunities. What exactly is going on here? Two things: market demand, and a new kind of city-building leadership. First, the market. For years, West Philadelphians have resented the universities, hospitals, research institutes and hospitality centers in their midst.

Now those institutions are recognized as the neighborhood's biggest asset. They provide jobs, opportunities for related business development, and some residential heterogeneity. As a result, there will be a market demand in West Philadelphia for moderately priced or three jobs to get some of them for his family and himself. He served top-shelf liquors at Mr. Silk's and his menus offered many succulent dishes that drew patrons to his club.

In addition, Gus was often praised for his sartorial splendor. "Gus was one of a kind," said WPGR radio personality Georgie Woods. "A lot of civil rights strategy went on at Mr. Silk's. He was on the board of directors of the NAACP and he'd meet with Cecil Moore and me to map strategy.

Gus was a fun-loving guy, but he had a serious side, too. He contributed a great deal to our civil rights efforts. I'll tell you one thing, I'm gonna miss Gus. There'll never be another like him." Lacy's widow couldn't agree more. "There'll never be another Gus," she said when I called.

Virginia Hinch Lacy met Gus when she was 13. "I knew shortly after meeting him, we'd- get married and be together for a long time," she told me last week. They were. Their marriage produced three children Gus Craig and April and lasted 49 years. "Gus was a good man," Virginia Lacy laughed in a voice mixed with joy and sorrow.

"I was lucky to have Gus for so long," she said. "We were trying to make 50 years together, but it wasn't to be. You know what was so wonderful about Gus, was that he was always trying to help somebody. I mean he'd help the high and the low. "Right to the end, he wrote to prison inmates.

He told me: 'Put $10 in this envelope, $20 in that "I'm going to mail them with a note that he died and that this is the last time they'll be hearing from him. But he was like that. He helped, right to the end." "After so many years together, I'm gonna be traveling light, now," she said wistfully. "With Gus gone, I'm gonna be traveling light Claude Lwis' column runs on Mondays and Wednesdays. By Jeremy Nowak That sound of hammers and cement trucks that you hear at 46th and Market Streets is the sound of a new breed of city builder, chipping away at our collective political culture that says; "If you win, I lose." On the south side of Market, 50 affordable apartments are being developed and rented by two young entrepreneurs, Scott Mazo and Jim Levin, in cooperation with community organizations and local contractors.

All told, they've provided 270 units throughout West Philadelphia. North of Market, 160 new town-houses known as the Nehemiah Project are being constructed for people of moderate incomes by Philadelphia Interfaith Action, a citywide organizing coalition of church congregations. The houses are being sold as quickly as they can be built. One block away, at 45th Street, the merica The late Frank Rizzo once called him a "class act." "Gus is a little guy with a big heart who knows everybody and helps a lot of people from all walks of life," Rizzo said. Lacy earned his title, "Mr.

Silk," as a purveyor of fine lingerie during the days he worked at the post office where he cultivated a large number of friends and clients. Women were never embarrassed buying such personal items from Lacy. "He had a knack for knowing just what the ladies would be attracted to," said Janet Robinson, who while saddened by the news of his death, smiled as she recalled some of the Whether greeting guests at his nightspot, or selling lingerie to the ladies, or planning civil rights strategy, Gus Lacy did it with style. intimate garments he displayed from the trunk of his car. "He was a real gentleman and a real businessman," she said.

Lacy's death signals the end of an era that produced a large number of widely loved rascals that included lawyer, activist and City Councilman Cecil B. Moore. Another on the roster of lovable rogues was Stanley Branche, who earned notoriety battling to make Chester better for blacks. "Gus had a multitude of friends," Bennie Washington, a Lacy pal of many years recalled shortly after he received the sad news. "Whether you were big-time or just a guy on the corner, Gus made you feel like somebody.

He knew how to entertain his friends and was respectful of everybody he met. If you didn't like Gus, something was wrong with you," Washington said. Somewhere in his travels, Lacy developed a taste for the better things in life. He often worked two 8.443 apr Rate Rate 8.256 APR" Rate 7685 APR cgOsEMoffl port Even though one of the most famous nightspots in Philadelphia "Mr. Silk's Third Base" has been closed for 10 years, "the 52d Street Strip" was forever changed last week with the death of Gus Lacy.

The longtime bon vivant and owner of "Mr. Silk's" left the scene passing out orders to family and friends, just as he did when he was at the top of his form. Gus knew he was dying of pneumonia and responded to the good-natured kidding he received from those closest to him. "You're going to see Cecil IB. Moore, and you're gonna see Stanley Branche, but don't spend a lot of time with them look for my mother," one of his longtime friends told Gus in his room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he died last Wednesday.

As proprietor of the upscale nightspot for 32 yeajs, Lacy became a legendary figure who was respected by a wide range of people running the gamut from politicians and performers to a number of respectable playboys. Lacy's personal magnetism attracted a vast array of personalities to his club and they ranged from pimps and street-corner hustlers to politicians on the make to athletes, including Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier and several of the old Philadelphia Eagles players. When he was in town, singer Billy Eckstine dropped by Mr. Silk's. Songster Teddy Pendergrass used to stop by unannounced, just to talk with Lacy and mingle with the well-dressed crowds that frequented the night club at 52nd and Spruce Streets.

Lacy loved fun but was often willing to help those facing hard times. He. was so well-connected, rumor had it, that if he was your friend even trouble could be a pleasure. He knew his way around political circles and could pick up the telephone and get things done. He had contacts among the most powerful people in Philadelphia and used his frilidships sparingly, but well.

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