The last time Harrisburg had a plan for how it would develop and improve its neighborhoods, housing and open green spaces, the price of gas was 42 cents and Richard Nixon was about to resign from the presidency.
Now almost 50 years later, the commonwealth’s capital once again is poised to mint a new plan that could revitalize its chronically downtrodden communities and reshape its future.
The so-called “HBG2020” plan, which is about to wrap up the 45-day review period by the city council, broadly addresses the issues central to the continued revitalization of the city.
But the very comprehensive plan that could reverse and reconcile decades of unjust social, economic and racial structures has fomented discord that resonates with racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter.
Many of Harrisburg’s key stakeholders — its residents — say they were left out of the conversation on what their city should look like in years to come. Many see it as a continuation of the policies that promoted the racist structures that for generations barred the city’s mostly Black majority from the table.
A growing number of residents say the city’s current plan pushes for development and redevelopment, but with little effort to engage residents nor factor in the impact such plans might have on residents.
“The plan that the city put together is all about the developers coming in and getting available land and developing for housing or whatever they want, which benefits them as opposed to making owner-tenant associations,” said Joe Robinson, president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute.
“There is no vested interest in city residents owning some of these properties, which in turn will ensure properties will retain their value.”
Many city residents say the current plan before the council offers little in the way of detailed neighborhood development that would foster quality of life amenities, such as trees, street lighting and pedestrian-friendly byways.
More importantly, city residents say the plan lays out no calculus for how they can reverse decades of being left out of the mechanisms to invest in property and owner cooperatives.
“It’s sad,” said Joyce Gamble, head of the Camp Curtin Community Neighbors United, which has for years lobbied for more resident input and greater resident redress in the comprehensive plan.
“I think it’s time for a change. The people need to know what is going on in their own backyard. That’s churches, community, business people. Everyone needs to step up. I’m getting tired of being overlooked and being overlooked in your own backyard.”
City officials largely push back on such charges from residents. They say the comprehensive plan before city council, which was vetted by the planning commission and other stakeholders, broadly addresses a myriad of issues central to the continued revitalization of the city.
“It’s a guiding document,” said Mayor Eric Papenfuse. “I don’t think it’s a game changer in that it was never any magical thing that was going to somehow transform the city. It’s a planning document. The real problem in Harrisburg is that we hadn’t had consensus about a document for too long. Now that we have, I think we are going to move forward with a number of initiatives.”
HBG2020 broadly outlines how public money will be spent to foster economic activity and even develop parks, neighborhoods and roadways, tackling topics ranging from affordable housing to pedestrian walkways and cycling lanes.
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The plan, for instance, calls for further development of city areas, such as that of “Market Mews” near the Broad Street Market, which would promote development of a “pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use core” of residential and commercial uses. The plan outlines other ideas including refreshment kiosks in Riverfront Park, a “City Square” mixed-use development along Market Street east of the train station, a downtown gateway and a new “Meander Park” on Allison Hill.
But city residents say that such proposals fall short of addressing the scope of revitalization. They decry the plan for deferring much of the substance of future plans to outside developers and contractors.
“A major flaw of the plan is that it’s not citizen-centric,” said Basir Vincent, co-founder of Young Professionals of Color of Greater Harrisburg, and leader of the Harrisburg Comprehensive Plan Community Working Group.
He has pushed for greater transparency and public engagement in the comprehensive plan process, and worries that it is now being rushed through without meaningful resident input.
“If you look at the makeup of Harrisburg it is a majority-minority city. People who live in the city don’t have the same input and impact into the plan and that manifests itself in priorities,” said Vincent, who for months has been hosting informative virtual lunchtime sessions for residents. He has pushed for greater resident engagement but said the public health limitations posed by pandemic have further complicated an already complex process.
“There are a lot of benefits to knowing how this plan could potentially uplift this community,” Vincent said. “There’s a lot of contracts that could come through. I think that blinds a lot of people. You get a lot of outside contractors who then try to make other deals with other outside forces to bring things into Harrisburg versus focusing on citizens and empower citizens to build the city from within.”
A growing number of Harrisburg residents say the city's new comprehensive plan fails to offer a path for more resident-owned properties - and less landlord-owned housing.
EVOLUTION OF A PLAN
In 1974, the only way Harrisburg could tap federal funds to help it recover from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Agnes was to roll out a plan for how it would spend public money.
On top of the hurricane, the city was about to be dealt another one-two punch: the combined loss of the region’s steel and rail industries. Those factors coupled by structural racism in banking, government, business and housing fast spiraled the city into an economic and social abyss.
The Rev. Earl Harris, former president of the Interdenominational Ministers Conference of Greater Harrisburg and a city advocate, said that for decades, the city’s vitality and economic viability were authored and steered by outside interests, largely developers and contractors from the West Shore who, aside from their respective financial gains, had little vested interest in the city.
Harris fears the city is about to roll out much of the same with the comprehensive plan.
“The city of Harrisburg is a living organism,” he said. “Every census tract with the exception of two is below the poverty line. How do you deal with this organism which has so much cancer? You can’t deal with just one piece. You can’t approach it as a silo. You need to look at everything. The streets. The delivery of service. Housing, education, the people... all at one time and treat it holistically as opposed to trying to treat a portion of it.”
City residents say the comprehensive plan addresses issues singularly or in silos, rather than their overall impact on the city as a whole.
Past efforts intended to bring decimated areas back to life - such as housing developments, the building of hotels or restaurants in the downtown - have had little impact on the overall lives of residents, Harris said.
“That’s what this urban plan should be doing looking at everything, because if it doesn’t, it’s a failure,” Harris said. “The planning that has been done in this city for 40 years is project by project by project. It’s not holistic or systemic, not appreciating its people.”
A key point of contention with residents is the idea that the current comprehensive plan does little to address homeownership or property ownership by city residents. The plan outlines “affordable housing,” but little in the mechanics that would create a path for residents to have a vested interest in the houses and buildings in their neighborhoods.
“When developers come in and look at vacant land, it’s transactional. It’s about having the privilege of throwing money and saying I can do whatever I want,” said Rob Shoaff, an architect who lives in Midtown and has advocated for more public input into the comprehensive plan process.
“In very rural places that’s not a problem because who is adjacent? When you are dealing with urban issues and ones that have social and social justice constructs that’s a problem. It starts to impact the lives around. Developers never ask ‘what do kids think around here, what are their visions, what about the people who live here all their lives? What are their issues?’”
Papenfuse has pushed for a zoning amendment to increase affordable housing in the city.
“That type of zoning change has really been waiting for completion of the comprehensive plan,” he said. “The comprehensive plan should form the foundation for review of the zoning code. I‘m excited about being able to go back and make changes to the zoning code.”
DUELING PLANS
The current discord with the Harrisburg comprehensive plan is enmeshed in a thorny backstory.
As part of its recovery plan, the city in 2014 was directed to come up with a plan for future development and revitalization.
With funding from the state, the city retained Bret Peters and his firm, the Office for Planning and Architecture, which, contrary to what its name suggests, is a private firm.
The commonwealth earmarked $200,000 for the city to accomplish the task.
Peters, an urban planner and professor at Penn State and Harrisburg Area Community College, crafted the plan largely on the basis of resident input. He embarked on a months-long process of engaging residents via meetings in church basements and community centers to come up with a plan centered on the idea of resident ownership.
“This idea was a cornerstone of the plan,” said Peters. “We heard many people in the city say they enjoyed their neighborhood and liked their neighborhood but absentee landlord buildings were creating eyesores and bad management and dilapidated conditions within their neighborhoods. If they could get absentee landlords out of the city or under control in their neighborhoods, that would go a long way to making their neighborhoods better places.”
Indeed, the concept has become a politically charged issue. Across the country, majority Black communities roiled in the aftermath of rioting following racial justice marches. Central to the national conversation is the idea that Black communities are destroying their own neighborhoods.
But that is a simplistic perspective.
Robinson said that, as with most cities, the people who live in Harrisburg have little vested interest in their city, and, when it comes to urban renewal, that factor makes all the difference.
“Sometimes people say they don’t know why these people are rioting and burning down their own neighborhoods,” Robinson said. “But they dismiss the reason why people are not engaged. They fail to remember that none of those buildings are owned by any of the residents. That’s not an excuse...but there is nothing in this neighborhood that belongs to us.”
Residents say the plan authored by Peters and delivered to the city gave them a vested interest in the future of the city. The plan offered a path towards property ownership and resident cooperatives.
Peters said his original plan was intended to reverse decades of redlining, and the exclusion of Black and brown communities from the economic investment in their own communities.
Peters largely proposed to increase property ownership among residents by promoting owner-occupied properties, which allowed the property owner to live in one of the units, while generating revenue from the rental of two apartments in the building. That equation aligned with the predominant demographic of a city like Harrisburg, which has about a 2:1 ratio of owners to renters.
“Not everyone wants to own a house when you live in a core community like Harrisburg,” Peters said. “When you first move in, you are not going to buy. You are going to rent. We need lots of quality rentals here..lots of options for rentals.”
That calculus, he added, would have injected nearly $2 billion into the city’s economy.
But the plan was doomed amid contractual negotiations and delays, and things between the city and Peters went from bad to worst. By 2017 the city had severed its contract with the firm and began to look for another firm.
What played out between the city and Peters resulted in a lawsuit, but arguably more importantly, fueled community outrage.
By July 2019, the city had awarded a contract to the firm of Wallace Montgomery to provide “comprehensive plan editing and formatting” services to its comprehensive plan. Peters said he was struck at what he described as nearly identical substance from his original proposal.
Notably, though, the cornerstone to the plan authored by Peters - the resident ownership of city property - had largely been replaced by the concept of affordable housing.
Peters filed a lawsuit against the city claiming the city had wrongly used its proposal, violating copyright law. His contract granted the city exclusive use of the plan, but not the license to alter the plans or drawings, something Peters says is incumbent on the professionals to oversee to guarantee safety and integrity.
“The city had no experience in doing this,” Peters said.
RESIDENTS BALK AT NEW PLAN
Beyond the contract fight between Peters and the city and the delays, residents balked at many believes was becoming evident: that once again the city was paving the way for monied outside interests to have control of city real estate.
While the city waged its contractual battle with Peters, residents were left seething at the thought that the idea of homeownership and cooperative apartments, the ability of a first-time homeowner to bid on a house next door or reinvest in their community, had been removed from the table.
“When you get people vested in their community and they can see ownership and that they have a say in development and that they can take ownership, you have sustainability,” Robinson said. “The plan that Bret proposed was about employing people, rehabilitation, upkeep, pride, ownership and maintenance. You don’t have to lose the historical value of properties. You are not just having someone coming in razing them as developers normally do.”
Papenfuse said the fallout with Peters’s firm was strictly business - the architectural firm’s failure to deliver, he said.
“They basically stopped working and didn’t finish the product, and demanded more money,” the mayor said. “We were left with an uncompleted comprehensive plan and we had to go hire another company to do the work and finish the plan.”
The charge that residents were left out of the current plan? Papenfuse refutes that too.
“Pure spin by Bret Peters. Not true at all,” he said. “I don’t think he had any faith in the community and was constantly imposing his ideas on the plan.
“The current plan as completed and vetted by the planning commission really does take into account the community voice much better than Bret’s plan ever did.”
The lawsuit filed by Peters in June was dismissed from the U.S. Middle District Court of Pennsylvania.
In his opinion, Judge John E. Jones said the court could not sustain a claim for copyright infringement “where the allegedly unauthorized use clearly fell within the scope of the original license and the only alleged impropriety was merely the continued use of the work product following a fee dispute.”
Jones dismissed the case as being meritless.
The comment and review period on the proposed plan was slated to end last week; the city has submitted the plan to such stakeholders as the county and the school district. The mayor said all stakeholders approve the plan.
“We haven’t perceived any substantive feedback,” Papenfuse said. “I think everyone’s desire is to move forward as soon as possible.”
Vincent remains concerned that the new plan has been pushed through hastily.
“It’s taken me many years to unpack all the layers,” he said. “There’s functional challenges and to create a document that is robust is challenging. You find out there is dysfunction within city government and that makes a complex process much more difficult.”
Before his passing last week, Reginald Guy Jr., cofounder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Development Institute and one of the region’s most formidable civil rights activists, expressed concerns that the new plan failed to address the policies that led to Harrisburg’s social and economic erosion.
Guy said the original plan incorporated many of the elements important to the holistic revitalization of the city: the desires of residents, education, health care, and economic development.
“It was based on the needs of residents,” Guy said. “It set the community up for economic vitality. It’s not a plantation-style experience where the wealthy, what I call the West Shore landlord, comes over and picks off the better sections of Harrisburg for development of a commercial building. There is a world of difference. With the new plan there is a lot of land being developed, but with no economic benefit to residents whatsoever.”
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