Impacting the neighborhood

Church's plans for Mt. Airy Commons site include demolition. Community groups object to losing buildings, one of which has been nominated for historic status

by MICHAEL J. MISHAK

"Creating people who cannot be destroyed" has been the mission of Impacting Your World Ministries for nearly a decade. Area residents want to know if the nondenominational Germantown church can accomplish its goal in Mt. Airy without destroying some venerable buildings.

Residents from four separate community groups, representing Germantown and Mt. Airy, attended a meeting last Thursday at Impacting Your World Christian Center, 5507 Germantown Ave., for a formal introduction to the church, its ministries and its plans for a 5.6-acre site on West Johnson Street.

Amid rumors and protests in recent weeks, the church sought to set the record straight about its involvement with a property Blair Christian Academy pursued last year.

In February, Blair announced its intentions to expand on the site of the former Mt. Airy Commons. The school, which serves pre-K to 12th grade, currently operates from 220 W. Upsal St.

In April, the school withdrew its zoning application, confusing many residents.

After months of silence, talk of Impacting Your World as a potential buyer surfaced earlier this month.

"At some point there was a switch,” said Sherman Toppin, legal counsel for the church, at last week's meeting. “And that unsettled the community, but you were not left out.”

According to Toppin, Impacting Your World was approached in April by Blair Christian Academy executive administrator Dr. Karen Jenkins. Lack of funding and zoning challenges prompted Blair to seek a partner, Toppin said.

The property seemed ideal for Impacting Your World, which had pursued two other sites — one in Northeast Philadelphia, the other in Springfield Township — within the last year, he said. The church wanted to relocate and expand its ministries, but competitive bidding derailed those plans, he said.

Because Blair had already entered into an agreement of sale with the Johnson Street properties’ owners, Impacting Your World “had to buy in the way it was,” Toppin said. After two months of negotiation, the church emerged as the lead developer in the project, with plans to build a multi-use facility, he said.

“That’s where the lights went out,” Toppin said.

Then, Impacting Your World discovered in June that someone had filed a nominating petition with the city’s Historical Commission, requesting historic designation for the former Mt. Airy Commons. Originally designed as the Presser Home for Retired Music Teachers, Mt. Airy Commons closed in 2002 after investigations revealed abuse and neglect of low-income mentally disabled residents.

The church decided to postpone all contact with the community until Aug. 10, the date of the Historical Commission hearing to determine the petition’s merit, he said.

An Historical Commission committee found the building worthy of consideration. A final vote on historic designation is scheduled for next month. Another petition nominating the other building, referred to as the Edgemont, has since been filed.

“The church was never in a position prior to Aug. 10 to articulate its position,” Toppin said.

Historic designations would further complicate the church’s plans, which include demolition, he said. The vote next month could directly impact cost and design, he said.

Addressing rumors that the church secretly brokered a deal with Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller’s office to expedite development, Toppin said he had met with Miller just once and that she asked him to meet with the community and to devise an inclusive plan. “That was the only agreement that existed,” he said.

Though church members cautioned the audience that an architectural walk-through video detailed plans for a commercial site in the Northeast, some found more ammunition. “It sounds like a plan for a supermarket,” said an audience member of the video, which showed a sprawling parking lot, playground and courtyard outside the church.

The 5.6-acre site has about 100,000 square feet of space, said project architect John A. Teets. Teets has connections to both the interested developers. He was Blair’s architect prior to Impacting Your World’s involvement with the Johnson Street properties, and also worked on Impacting Your World’s Northeast site plan.

Teets did not deliver good news for residents who would like to see the buildings incorporated in the plan. “It’s impossible to keep all the buildings under any scenario,” Teets said.

With its wide corridors and narrow rooms, Mt. Airy Commons’ design was rendered obsolete years ago, he said. Fires and poor repair work have further damaged the building, he said.

Zoned R3, the site can legally accommodate single homes, a church or a retirement home without any zoning variances, Teets said. “A church would be an appropriate use. The simplest and most cost-effective approach would be to start from scratch with demolition, but we’re not opposed to keeping one building,” he said.

Originally designed as a retirement home, Mt. Airy Commons does not lend itself to adaptive use, he said.

As a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Teets said he shared neighbors’ concerns about the buildings, but added that preservation would drastically increase the project’s budget by millions of dollars.

In addition to replacing windows, the church would have to replace Mt. Airy Commons’ two stair towers, costing between $200,000 and $300,000 each.

Historic designation would add at least another $2 million to the project’s $5-plus million budget, Teets said.

While Teets recognized the need to preserve architecture from all periods of history, he said the buildings on West Johnson Street were “minor works.” Similar, more refined examples of the styles exist elsewhere, he said. The interiors aren’t even “remotely original,” he added.

Responding to residents’ traffic and noise concerns, Toppin said that the church’s major traffic peaks would be on Sunday and Wednesday nights. Church operations would not make the street’s already heavy traffic volume worse, he said.

Impacting Your World would close its current Germantown church if the deal were finalized, said Pastor Ray Barnard. Even after spending “close to a billion dollars” in renovations, Barnard said Impacting Your World could not “implement our vision” in its current facility. With plans of expanding to every section of Philadelphia, the church sees the Johnson Street properties as an opportunity to establish a strong Northwest congregation, Barnard said.

But some did not find the presentation convincing.

“You should have been cooperating with the community from the beginning,” one resident said. “This doesn’t feel like hope to us. We value the historicity. If you don’t, why can’t you walk away from this deal?”

Barnard countered, “Opposition doesn’t mean it’s not God’s will for us to be there.”

“Did you say I’m opposing God,” the resident shot back.

Both Barnard and Teets asked the audience to think about the likelihood of another buyer if the church’s plan became too costly to implement. “What happens when those buildings lay vacant for years,” Barnard asked. “The impact of a church in a neighborhood has always been positive,” said Teets, who has been designing churches for 25 years. “It can only be a positive thing.”

“I’m a contextual architect,” Teets said. “We don’t do things that upset communities." Teets pointed to his work on the New Covenant campus in Mt. Airy. "I’m not interested in ruining my reputation on this project.”

Blair Christian Academy plans to reside at its current location, said Roslyn Morris, a Blair representative. But the school will share the new facilities, she said, just as Impacting Your World has used the Blair building to conduct Bible study classes. She also mentioned the likelihood of a future merger.

While several residents voiced objections to demolition plans, at least one spoke in support of Impacting Your World. "It's not right for the community to disallow them from coming in," said Marvin Rosemond, 68. Rosemond, of McCallum Street, has lived in Germantown for 60 years. "What happens when you leave blighted buildings? What does it do to a neighborhood? It goes down."

Still, residents like Jim Foster, of the Pomona-Cherokee Civic Council, wonder if the church's plans will be "too big and too busy" for the residential neighborhood.

"It's a total fallacy," Foster said of the warnings about continued blight. Development groups have expressed interest, he said, and the buildings weren't boarded up until two months ago.