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Seven years from now, Jefferson Square could be a neighborhood populated with diverse economic and ethnic backgrounds, a place where small corner stores thrive and two-story twin homes are bounded by green grass.
Seven years ago, no resident would have imagined that future for the blighted neighborhood, but the Jefferson Square Community Development Corp. has promised that is what is on the horizon.
Tomorrow morning, the Jefferson Square CDC will hold a groundbreaking ceremony at Fifth and Reed streets marking the beginning of a $22-million neighborhood revitalization plan.
Expected to attend are Mayor John Street, U.S. Rep. Robert Brady, state Sen. Vince Fumo and Councilman Frank DiCicco — who has been instrumental in coordinating the project.
For the better part of decade, DiCicco and CDC director Jeremey Newberg worked with a list of city agencies to acquire 275 properties between Washington Avenue and Dickinson Street from Fourth to Sixth.
The goal is to clear the neighborhood of blighted and abandoned properties and to construct homes, both for existing and new residents.
"The feel and flavor is going to be urban American," DiCicco said, "just with a different look to it."
A total of 88 homes will be built, and six others will be rehabilitated. All will have small yards, garages and porches. Thirty-one properties will be sold to low-income buyers; the rest will be priced on the market for $175,000 to $250,000.
"It will have the diversity that makes city life really spectacular," DiCicco said.
The expected sale price of the market-rate homes is higher than DiCicco figured when the nonprofit CDC began acquiring properties for the project. A market study in 1996 predicted the new three- and four-bedroom homes would sell for $95,000 to $110,000, he said.
But as the work progressed and the revitalization plan received more attention, speculators began investing in properties along the periphery of Jefferson Square and drove the price upward, the councilman said.
DiCicco and Newberg are confident they will find buyers at the current asking price — DiCicco said the CDC already has a list of interested people — and they maintain the properties are still affordable to moderate-income families earning $35,000 to $85,000 a year.
In the early years of the Jefferson Square project, many of the residents who had lived in the neighborhood for generations did not believe the revitalization plan would benefit them.
"It was a very difficult road in the beginning," DiCicco said. "There was a lot of bridge-building with trust."
He and Newberg insist attitudes have changed. Newberg takes much of the blame for that initial divide.
After Mount Sinai Hospital at Fourth and Reed streets closed in 1997, the CDC began searching for another healthcare system to fill the void. To make the property more attractive to potential buyers, Newberg said he proposed knocking down some of the neighboring houses on Reed Street to make room for a new parking lot.
Newberg today says that suggestion was "was the biggest mistake of my career."
"That was what created so much of the distrust and anger," he said, adding it took years for the CDC, DiCicco and the leadership of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, Third and Reed streets, to win residents back.
With hopes of reviving Mount Sinai as a hospital long gone, a plan was devised to move the existing residents to new homes.
Residents whose homes were condemned to make way for the revitalization plan received about $50,000 from the city. Those who wanted to stay used that money as a down payment for a new home.
Additional subsidies from the city, state and federal government would cover the remainder of the cost as long as an owner occupied his new home for 15 years, Newberg said.
"We think that is the right thing to do," Newberg said. "We need to move beyond the days of displacing people."
If a person were to sell his new home before 15 years, Newberg said, a portion of the cost of the home would be due the CDC. He explained this is a safeguard to prevent an individual from quickly selling the property and making a windfall on the public subsidy.
Phase one of the construction is scheduled to begin next month and is expected to last 14 months, Newberg said. During that time, 43 homes will be built, including all 31 low-income units.
Near the end of this year, preliminary work will begin on the second phase of construction, which eventually will include construction of 50 market-rate homes, Newberg said. Several of the small streets in the neighborhood will be eliminated or widened to allow on-street parking prior to this stage of the project.
