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The Tolentine Community Center and Development Corporation, 1025 Mifflin St., is just about 25 years old and has enjoyed a convenient lease with the City of Philadelphia since inception. Overseers pay a nominal fee, which seems to be about $1 per year, to use the public space on which it sits in East Passyunk Crossing. Less than two blocks away, the East Passyunk Crossing Civic Association met Tuesday night at Ss. Neumann-Goretti High School, 1736 S. 10th St., to discuss the renewal of the lease and the mission of Tolentine.
East Passyunk Crossing is a neighborhood that technically stretches from Broad to Sixth Street and from Tasker Street to Snyder Avenue. The meeting began with the nine-year-old Recognized Civic Organization co-chair, Joseph F. Marino, making a claim that many other residents would echo that night.
“We, unfortunately, are one of the few neighborhoods in South Philadelphia that is minus a park or rec center. The only public space we have is the land on which the Tolentine Community Center rests,” the resident of the 1900 block of South Jessup Street said.
Marino reminded the crowd to remain civil throughout the meeting and gave the floor to Tolentine’s executive director, Dr. Anthony Mattei, who assumed leadership in August 2013.
“First of all, you stated what the meeting was about, but let me state why I was invited,” Mattei began. “I was invited here by [1st District Councilman] Mark Squilla to come and tell this organization what it is that Tolentine does — that’s all I’m ready to discuss.”
He brought a PowerPoint presentation, but Marino noted there was no projector in the cafeteria of Neumann-Goretti.
Mattei detailed Tolentine’s programming foci and its mission. The mission, he said, is very similar to many’s mission statements: “To improve the quality of life for all people of South Philadelphia, not necessarily Tasker to Snyder, Broad Street to Sixth Street. So it is all of South Philadelphia. We want to provide all of the constituents really, an opportunity for a better community.”
He explained his background as an engineer and that he came out of 15 years of retirement to volunteer as the executive director for his wife of 52 years, Dr. Anna M. Mattei, who has been a board member since Tolentine’s 1983 groundbreaking.
After school programs seem their main focus, with summer camp close behind, and housing and facilitating sport leagues as main functions. Adult programming, older adult programming and special events rounded out Mattei’s presentation.
However, it’s this disconnect between Tolentine’s stated mission to serve all of South Philadelphia and East Passyunk Crossing residents’ concerns that Tolentine doesn’t serve them that’s the source of great debate. Mattei believes that EPX residents haven’t made a strong enough effort to integrate their desires into their private organization, specifically their board of directors, and inhabitants are eyeing up Tolentine as a rare opportunity to claim some space for the greater public good.
Margaret Kalalian, a 14-year resident of 13th and Moore streets, suggested a compromise could be met.
“In the past 25 years, there have been a lot of demographic changes, and it’s been really exciting to be here and see this change take place,” she said. “It’s necessary now to consider the needs of the existing populations. The new community does need access to every inch of public space that’s available. What exactly is the renewal process? What’s the criteria for the city to make this lease or award? Can it be a joint lease?”
Unfortunately, the representative for Parks and Recreation at the meeting, District 7 manager Joe Brogan, didn’t have any answers upfront.
“I will check it out. I’ll find that out — honestly, I don’t know,” he confessed.
Squilla was in attendance and ended up serving as a bit of a referee. Mattei looked exacerbated at times and ready to leave when Squilla compelled him to relax, sit down and stay. The legislator said he was there to gauge community interest in the space and he would take recommendations to Deputy Mayor for Environmental and Community Resources Michael DiBerardinis.
“We want to go from today forward,” Squilla offered, not wanting to dwell on what Tolentine meant to EPX in the past but what it means to its community’s future. “We want both [parties] to be able to work together. We need to understand, at the end of the day, that the community and the board can sit down and work together. The community might have good ideas.”
Tolentine’s history, with a few spots of suspicion, was brought up by a few members of the audience. Ian Toner, who had formerly sat on the Tolentine board before Mr. Mattei’s time as executive director, said he and another young board member felt pushed out.
“I do know that we made some suggestions for things that we wanted to do or things that we thought could we could do in a better way and felt like we were met with a lot of opposition,” he said. “We hadn’t been there long enough to have an opinion about anything.”
Mattei made many claims that young people from the neighborhood had tried to be on the board but failed due to a lack of stick-to-itiveness and that new board members always want to change the name (away from Tolentine).
“Tolentine previously owned the Broad Street Armory and that property was sold in 2013 for $834,000,” David Clayton, a resident of 10th and Morris, said.
It seemed to fly in the face of what Mattei had said earlier, that Tolentine was in need of a new roof, a new kitchen that had failed code inspection and that each would cost nearly $40,000-$50,000 to replace correctly. Mattei said the state took half of the sale and the rest was used to recoup the cost of maintaining the dilapidated building.
“Let’s find out about that,” Squilla said.
There was also a question about the appointment of board members. Currently, it seems as though board members are nominated and approved by board members, a rather insular system. The community center’s tax-free status was called into question as well as the former executive director’s salary, rumored to have been as high as $50,000 at one point. Mattei said he makes nothing.
Alternative park spaces were often suggested to be a solution to EPX’s dearth of them. It’s a sad truth: the incoming revamped CHOP playground in place of DiSilvestro Playground is on the other side of Broad Street; Columbus Square Park and Capitolo Playground exist along Wharton Street in Passyunk Square; otherwise, there are small parks at Dickinson Square, Burke Playground and Mifflin Square. Another vaguely private-public partnerships, Edward O’Malley Athletic Association, was brought up as a better community-beneficial partnership.
EPX zoning chair David Goldfarb stood up for Toner and added “it’s really hard to believe that unless there are subsequent changes to the board [of Tolentine] that there will be any community. The biggest issue for me is that there is a nice-seeming opportunity for a big open space that is never open to the public unless it’s a structured event.”
Goldfarb added “from Fifth to Broad [Street] from Wharton to Jackson [streets], there’s not a single spot of public green space.”
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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