In residents' fight against McDonald's, fast food wins

Despite a two-year battle over the plan to build a McDonald's at 43rd and Market streets that left politicians pitted against community members, construction is set to begin again in March.

The construction was halted last March after only a month of work, when a potentially hazardous pollutant was found in the site's soil.

The hiatus in construction gave community opposition the chance to rally once again against the restaurant's proposed location, but due to political pressure and a fractured base of activists, construction will resume anyway.

Protesters say their political leaders have ignored claims that a fast food restaurant will degrade their neighborhood, while politicians have maintained that more businesses create more jobs, making McDonald's an asset to the community.

In the end, the politicians seem to have won out.

"On this one, the community never had a chance," said Barry Grossbach, executive vice president of the Spruce Hill Community Association. "Every bit of political power that could be pulled was being pulled on this one."

The McDonald's project has encountered numerous challenges, which have largely been overcome by political maneuvering.

After McDonald's purchased the property in October 1999, the company needed special permission from the city to install the type of parking lot and signage their restaurant design required. This brought company representatives before the city's zoning appeals board, which is heavily influenced by local politicians, particularly members of City Council.

Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who represents West Philadelphia, filed a letter in support of the changes in May 1999.

As the community's opposition to the project became more apparent, Blackwell sent a second letter in October of that year to the zoning appeals board. However, she did not rescind her support, only requesting that the board consider the dissenters' opinion when making its decision.

"There's always hope that we'll get the two sides to come together and work something out," Blackwell said in a recent interview.

Those most affected by the project say that Blackwell has not represented their wishes.

"As powerful as Jannie Blackwell is, she's done absolutely nothing to help us -- nothing," said Rev. Larry Falcon, a neighborhood activist whose backyard abuts the McDonald's site.

Falcon had previously gathered 125 signatures from those against the new fast food restaurant. They bemoaned the "sights, smells and traffic" that a fast food restaurant would bring.

Falcon and his neighbors also blamed McDonald's for destroying their backyard gardens, although many of the gardens had grown over the years onto the property that was now McDonald's.

And when ground pollution was discovered on the site last spring, delaying construction for about a year, Falcon contended that the pollutants were poisoning him and his neighbors.

"Our properties are worth nothing now," said Falcon, the de facto head of the West Philadelphia activist group Neighbors Against McPenntrification. "We can't afford to stay there physically, and we can't afford to leave financially. Nobody wants to buy a house with a McDonald's in their backyard."

The pollutant Falcon and his group are concerned about is tetrachloroethene, a highly volatile dry cleaning solvent left behind in the lot's soil by a dry-cleaning company that had occupied the space decades before.

But Walter Payne, a geological specialist for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the tetrachloroethene would not be harmful to the neighbors unless they had "acute exposure" to it.

Some say that besides McDonald's, only a limited number of stores -- for example, drug store chains -- would find it profitable to operate on the site given the limited space and toxic conditions. Even if the residents do not want further development, the site's premium location makes development almost inevitable.

"There has to be development somewhere, and I think if you live on Market Street, you'd better be prepared for it," said former Mayor Edward Rendell, whose administration supported the project.

In a May 1999 letter to the zoning appeals board, then-Commerce Director Stephen Mullin requested that the project be approved, citing McDonald's decision to relocate their regional headquarters to Center City as a major reason behind their support.

Mullin wrote in his letter to the board that McDonald's office and their many restaurants are an important source of jobs to Philadelphia neighborhoods.

In an interview, Rendell said that such assistance is typical for major corporate entities, as is expediting the permit process and smoothing things over with the Department of Licenses and Inspections. However, he said, this was all on the basis of having community support.

"If community groups had come to us and demonstrated sound reasons that this wasn't a good location, we would never have sent [that] letter," Rendell said. "Or, we would have tried to talk McDonald's into moving."

The fractured nature of the community dissent left its message garbled. For instance, the Spruce Hill Community Association, the area's chief residents' group, initially came out in support of the project.

Grossbach said that the group did so after receiving McDonald's word that the restaurant had the blessing of the surrounding residents.

He conceded that his group would have better reflected the community's viewpoint if they had consulted the affected residents personally, rather than simply relying on second-hand information.

"That was our fault," Grossbach said. "We did not have direct contact with those residents at that time." Because opponents were not totally up front about and consistent in their views on the project, Grossbach said that seeking legal remedies against such powerful interests would be a "kamikaze mission."

Spruce Hill later met with Falcon to see if some sort of compromise could be reached, but Falcon and his group would not abandon their hard-line stance against the restaurant.

"I'm not going to compromise with McDonald's," Falcon said. "They're the McMafia."

McDonald's regional vice president David Murphy said that his company has no choice but to develop the site, owing to the significant expenditures of time and energy thus far. They will be voluntarily footing the approximate $500,000 bill for cleaning the site's contaminants.

Jon Edelstein, who manages the city's program to reuse abandoned industrial and commercial properties, said that the community could have used McDonald's insistence on proceeding with the project to its advantage. He said that citizens could have promised to back the project if McDonald's would make a contribution back to the community, such as seed money to build a new park or low-interest loans to try and fix up vacant housing.

Instead, by choosing to work against McDonald's, and not with them, Edelstein says that they have come up with an empty hand.

"All that energy and activity that Mr. Falcon rallied could have been put to something good," Edelstein said. "There could have been something positive out of this, really positive."

"This was a win-win situation and he turned it into a situation where no-one can win," Edelstein added.

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