By Zenitha Prince
Washington Bureau Chief
CHESTER, Pa. – It’s noon and yet downtown Chester seems shrouded in shadows. On Avenue of the States, which runs perpendicular to City Hall, storefront after storefront presents corrugated metal faces, locked and closed for business to potential customers. Not that there are many.
To many Chesterites, this 75 percent-Black city on the southeastern outskirts of Philadelphia, is a mere phantom of what it once was—back in the day when manufacturing was king and a locally-based shipyard and automobile plant provided a flush economy.
“Chester was the place to be,” remembers State Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland, 53, a Chester native. “Downtown was bustling; everyone shopped downtown. There were so many jobs available that you could quit your job today and could find a job the same day. No one wanted for anything.”
It’s easier to rebuild a manufacturing graveyard or empty lot than it is to develop a community where people still live, work and play.
Now, says, Baba Sall, a downtown clothing vendor, he is barely making enough to get by.
“I’m here to eat and to pay rent, that’s it. My credit is shot. Everybody’s in debt,” he says.
That’s a familiar tale in too many other towns reeling in the wake of a decline in the manufacturing industry that began as early as the post-World War II era and crested in the 1960s. After losing so many shipyard and automobile manufacturing jobs, the state designated Chester as a “financially distressed municipality” in 1995, qualifying it for certain state assistance. Seven years ago, the schools ranked last among 501 school districts and were turned over to a private company to run.
The city is trying to turn that around.
In the past decade, officials have implemented Vision 2000, a systemic overhaul of Chester’s economy that is slowly nudging the city towards an economic boom.
“Fix what’s broken, keep what’s working and add what’s missing—guided by this definition and committed to working hard on behalf of all the City’s residents and businesses, I firmly believe that Chester’s best days are just ahead of us,” said Mayor Wendell N. Butler in his “State of the City” address earlier this year.
Butler has reason to believe in that bright feature. Since 1996, the city has attracted almost $1.5 billion of private and public investment.
David Sciocchetti, executive director of the Chester Economic Development Authority for the past 12 years, says the key was in not trying to recapture Chester’s industrial past, but in investigating new and various economic opportunities.
“There is no focus and that’s by design. We’re really about economic diversification; not putting our eggs in one basket,” he said. “We were all manufacturing and retail and when those two died we were done; we were cooked. Now, it’s let’s have some office, let’s have some tourism, let’s have some hi-tech, let’s have some manufacturing, let’s broaden our base so that if there’s a downturn in one economic sector it doesn’t wipe out our entire economy.”
To do that, officials thought about Chester’s competitive advantages: its waterfront; being located between financial and political centers of New York and Washington; and its closeness to transportation centers: about 10 minutes away from Philadelphia International Airport and close to Interstate 95 and the New Jersey Turnpike.
It took advantage of a state tax abatement program and invited developers to take a second look at the city, which is still under an Act 47 distressed community status.
The gamble paid off. The Development Authority worked together with Widener University and the nearby Crozer-Chester Medical Center to create a University Technology Park.
An abandoned Philadelphia Electric Co. plant along the Delaware River was refurbished and transformed into the Wharf at Rivertown, an office building where 1,500 people are now employed. Further up Route 291, an environmentally hazardous and derelict shipyard became the $430 million Harrah’s Chester Casino and Racetrack, which has already provided another 1,000 jobs. In addition, a $400 million project—a soccer stadium with adjoining expo center and residential and commercial units—will complete the riverfront development.
“I can see a time not too distant in the future when people will come and spend the weekend in Chester--stop and hang out and have dinner at Harrah’s on Saturday night; go to the expo and see what the show is on Saturday morning; Saturday night at a soccer game or a concert and Sunday morning hang out on the waterfront,” Sciocchetti said. “What an incredible concept from where we were a few year’s ago.”
A few years ago, Tikyra Cogman, 19, wouldn’t have had her present job. She is a hostess at a restaurant in Harrah’s.
“Since the casino came, it has given people a lot of jobs, especially the young people.
Now we don’t have to travel so far and it saves gas,” she said. “It showed people a different side—that it’s not as bad as they think it is.”
That’s not to say the city is without problems – a thriving drug trade, crime, paucity of some amenities such as recreation centers for children. Some citizens blame the city government—from the mayor on down—and question the rosy predictions for the future.
And some people miss the more prosaic signs of progress—the resurfaced roads, changed streetlights, garbage-less streets, the taxes that have not been raised in 13 years. Some fail to take advantage of the opportunities—job fairs, workforce development seminars and more—that are available.
“The cynics aren’t hard to find,” said Thomas Moore, the mayor’s chief of staff.
“But when you put that economic decline in the context of a 50-year time period, we’re really just in year 10 of our redevelopment effort. That’s one-sixth of the entire time frame that we have.
“You’re not going to bring back any community that has had this level of disinvestment; that had 67,000 people at one time and now has 37,000—that’s 30,000 taxpayers that have left the city—in addition to all the businesses that left. It’s going to take some time.”
Rep. Kirkland said changing people’s perceptions, salving their bitterness and reinvigorating them remain the biggest barriers to progress in the city.
“The biggest challenge in terms of pushing Chester forward is the people,” he said. “A lot of people feel hopeless. We have to find a way of retraining folks, changing their thinking. Somehow, some way within all that hopelessness, we have to find hope.”
One reason why all citizens may not be seeing the changes is that the city’s rebirth is not happening all at once, Sciocchetti said.
“Revitalization happens the same way decline does—it’s not an even, across-the-board situation. So, some parts of the city will see progress in advance of other parts of the city,” he said. “Ultimately, our hopes are the [developed areas] will start to touch each other and the more troubled areas will start to diminish so we can better target our resources to fix those problems.”
Officials have also had to take a more studied—and thus slower—approach to progress because of the human factor. It’s easier to rebuild a manufacturing graveyard or empty lot than it is to develop a community where people still live, work and play. Residents’ opinions and interests have to be weighed.
Chester has done a good job of considering those interests and incorporating all residents, said Robert Woodson, president of the Washington-based Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, which help residents of low-income neighborhoods address the problems of their communities.
“It takes patience for [the leaders] not to impose on people what their ideas of the vision should be,” Woodson said. “A lot of cities that are trying to redevelop, they end up gentrifying poor people out but Chester is trying to incorporate housing and other economic opportunities for working class and poor people as well.”
One example is Chatham Estates, a public housing complex that has been reengineered into townhouse-style units; and, another, the creation of a nearby public swimming pool, the first in the city.
Officials say the next frontier in Chester’s development is its downtown retail center. But before the stores can return, the customer base needs to be rebuilt, they said, and the ongoing developments will help.
Looking out at the quiet street from his store, Sall said while it might not be true now, he believes the city can become a shopping mecca again.
He explained. “[Foot traffic] is still slow now, but I’m still here because I believe people are going to come back.”