Metal scrappers get asbestos exposure at former Clemente Middle School

Juliana Reyes painted a grim picture of the former Roberto Clemente Middle School at Fifth and Luzerne:

Gregory Betancourt perches on an overturned love seat and peers through a stripped window frame into a darkened six-story building.He sees a pile of filthy clothes, a mattress and a lot of darkness. Discarded tires and empty soda bottles clutter the concrete around him. A wooden plank on the ground nearby - what used to be the top of a school desk, maybe - is still legible: "Property of the Philadelphia School District - 1988," it reads.

The old Roberto Clemente Middle School closed in 1994, and relocated to West Erie and North Front. Before it was a middle school named for the Puerto Rican baseball great, it was an Apex Hosiery factory. Reyes says students at the original Clemente called their school "The Pantyhose Factory."

(Note: Do not Google the phrase "pantyhose factory" unless you want to be inundated with pornography. For more information about the old pantyhose factory, read this heart-breaking article from 1954 about Apex in Philadelphia, and this one from 1937.)

After its first two lives as a pantyhose factory and a middle school, Reyes reports that the building became the Greater Philadelphia Book Bank, "a pet project of businessman Robert Graves. The Book Bank, a place for teachers to get books for free, shut down in 2007. Graves said the School District couldn't afford to keep the building open anymore."

Clemente is now abandoned, as it has been for four years, leaving it open for scrapper seeking copper wire and other building materials to sell. A recent article in Philadelphia Weekly by Michael Alan Goldberg explored the dangers unleashed by scrappers tearing up the walls:

The presence of asbestos comes as no surprise to 49-year-old Jose Lisojo, owner of JL Custom Shop on Rising Sun Avenue, which faces the back of the Clemente building. Standing outside his garage, Lisojo and his friend Ray—a carpenter who says he’s certified to remove asbestos—point to pipe wrappings inside the building that they’re certain contain asbestos. Both mention the white dust that comes out of the property every day. 

“[Scrappers are] poisoning the air around here,” Lisojo complains. He says he’s called the city’s 311 hotline repeatedly to report asbestos contamination, but claims no one takes him seriously. “One time the guy told me, ‘Don’t worry—you won’t get sick for 20 or 30 years,’” says Lisojo, shaking his head.

Philadelphia School District Spokeswoman Elizabeth Childs said the district's Facilities Management Division monitors the building daily, and cleans the site monthly. It also "routinely welds doors shut and closes openings in windows on the ground level," but somehow, scrappers still get in.

 

Philadelphia Health Department spokesman Jeff Moran told Philly.com that the district has been cited by the city's Air Management Services: "To comply, the district must either seal the building or remove the asbestos. The district will work with an asbestos abatement contractor as well as a vacant property specialist to seal the property, Moran said."

What do you say, readers? Do you see an asbestos abatement project happening anytime soon at the old Roberto Clemente? Or will it take some kind of tragedy to motivate the underfunded city government to make this dangerous asbestos den a priority? Call me a pessimist, but I'm betting on the latter.