[EastSideHBG]

Courthouse site search back on

Federal officials scrap plan to demolish apartments

Saturday, October 07, 2006
BY IRVIN KITTRELL III
Of The Patriot-News

Janice Clark thought the federal government was heartless when it chose the Cumberland Court apartment complex as the site for a federal courthouse.

She questioned why the U.S. General Service Administration would want to disrupt the lives of more than 100 families and raze their apartments.

So Clark was surprised -- and relieved -- when the GSA announced yesterday it was scrapping plans to demolish the complex at 6th and Verbeke streets to begin the site search anew.

"I thought they didn't care," said Clark, as she walked back to the apartment she's called home for nearly three years.

But GSA Regional Administrator Barbara L. Shelton said the agency did care about destroying a neighborhood and having to relocate more than 100 low-income families.

"The most resonating was the sense of community that would be lost," Shelton said in a statement. She said the agency and its consultants were particularly swayed by residents' comments at an Aug. 17 meeting.

"Many of the amenities recognized by the site selection board as making Cumberland Court a good site for the federal courthouse were the same as those that the residents saw as being important to them," she said.

That a "vast majority" of Cumberland Court's residents are young, single mothers with small children receiving housing assistance was another main consideration, she said.

Other available housing did not seem suitable, and Shelton said her agency "is inexperienced in the relocation of this number of families within this demographic."

Shelton did not say what other locations are being considered for the courthouse.

The GSA initially explored 25 sites in the city, but rejected many because they are in the city's 500-year flood plain. The agency centered on three uptown locations and selected Cumberland Court.

GSA officials have said they need at least 21/2 acres for an eight- to 14-story building, with room for 50- to 100-foot security setbacks. Construction of the $100 million project was scheduled to begin in 2009 and end in 2012.

Harrisburg Mayor Stephen R. Reed called the GSA's decision "much welcomed."

A better site could be on largely vacant tracts along North Sixth Street, north of Reily Street; on locations along what will become an extended South Third Street project; or at or near South Second and Paxton streets, he said.

"Why remove hundreds of existing tenants when, two and a half blocks away, are open tracts of land with little use or occupation," Reed said. "The difference of several blocks seemed to be an obstacle for reasons unknown to us."

U.S. Middle District President Judge Yvette Kane said she is concerned the delay could result in a loss of funding for the new courthouse.

Kane was the court's representative on the five-member search committee.

"The process to select the short list of the three proposed sites that were rejected took 21/2 years, and we spent over $1 million," Kane said. "So it is an important delay."

Kane said the members of the court want a safe, secure location near the center of Harrisburg.

"We don't want the court to be out in the suburbs, where access is difficult for some people," she said. "But that has happened in other areas."

Richard Morse, clerk of the Harrisburg Friends Meeting, which is based at the Quaker meeting house at Cumberland Court and also would have been demolished, said he was pleased.

"We were opposed to the location of a courthouse on the site from the very first," he said. "We had been saying all of the proposed sites were unacceptable because of displacing people and destroying communities."

Cumberland Court resident Gerald Ramos said the complex is not like any other subsidized apartment complex in the city.

"Everybody is like family here," Ramos said. "People look out for each other."