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A $7,000 sale dropped, no explanation

Weinstein submitted expressions of interest for two city lots, once in 2014 and once in 2016.

In the first instance, the city actually offered him a small vacant lot near Wayne Junction for about $7,000, documents show. But officials inexplicably dropped the sale after he agreed to their price, Weinstein said.

“We followed up a half-dozen times. We were ready to purchase, and we had a good use for the land as a community park,” Weinstein said.

The second time the developer applied for land, he received an automated response message. The email said that the city planned to sell the property through a competitive bidding process — a process that never happened.

Weinstein said his frustration came from the system’s opacity, never knowing whether an application would move forward or not, let alone why it had been rejected.

“I know the disposition of all city properties get City Council approval. So you have to assume that’s one roadblock,” he said. “Maybe someone decided a friend wanted it. But you don’t know.”

Paul Chrystie, a spokesman for the city’s land dispensation agencies, said in an email that some land faces legitimate obstacles to sale –– unqualified buyers or legal problems involving tangled titles and liens. The backlog is reflective of multiple buyers submitting applications for the same few lots in a few hot neighborhoods, he said.

“To date, approximately 4,000 [expressions of interest] have been closed, but that feature does not accurately reflect the achievement of the agencies,’’ Chrystie said. “The real metric is that we’re moving properties out the door.”

But the city spokesman acknowledges flaws with the current system. For example, the city’s online application currently does not distinguish between lots that have already been earmarked for redevelopment projects or other use agreements. Chrystie said about 3,500 open expressions of interest had been submitted for lots that can never be sold.

89 sales in one day

The city’s charter and state law require a City Council vote to approve land sales. But many Council members take a more granular approach, a strategy their small staffs are ill-equipped to take on. Employees at the city’s land sale agencies — who are not authorized to speak to reporters — said that despite Council’s involvement in land deals, their offices have little practical connection to online sale applicants.

“Council people are not regularly notified” about expressions of interest, said one staffer. “It’s an ad-hoc system.”

Sometimes politicians use the system to help people they know. Councilman Kenyatta Johnson assisted a childhood friend who successfully purchased a public lot despite other higher offers. Council President Darrell Clarke was recently implicated in an iffy land sale to a for-profit developer he knew.

District Council members also have the power to push properties to competitive sale; often, the move to market depends on an individual legislator’s attitude.

Councilman Mark Squilla recently pushed more than 100 lots in his district to auction, selling 89 properties in one day. But that is the exception, not the rule –– today just 20 properties in the Land Bank’s citywide portfolio, for example, are currently cleared for competitive sale. Squilla’s district is one of the most marketable in the city, encompassing booming Center City and South Philly neighborhoods, as well as gentrifying sections of the River Wards.

Clarke argues against such sell-offs, saying they jeopardize the city’s ability to steer land toward affordable housing, green space or other public good.

“Many of the parcels that were auctioned off are located in thriving neighborhoods where new, market-rate housing is not affordable to low- and middle-income families,” he wrote, condemning an auction of city lots in a 2017 Inquirer op-ed. “Parcels also may have been sold to speculators who had no immediate, constructive plans for them.”

A spokesman for the city’s landholding agencies said that a strategic plan to flag more properties for redevelopment and other public uses is in the works. Recent reports and revelations that the city’s land appraisal system was chronically undervaluing properties have already led city agencies to freeze sales, pending changes.

Weinstein said he is sympathetic to concerns that simply auctioning off as much public land as possible would deprive the city of the opportunity to reserve certain properties for redevelopment opportunities or affordable housing. But he struggles to see the logic behind the city’s current system.

Both lots Weinstein wanted to buy remain empty, collecting litter.“I understand the idea of assembling properties for the common good or affordable housing,” Weinstein said. “But that’s not what is happening here.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated how long most EOIs have been unresolved.