A city that s struggled with fallout from the war on drugs is now considering how to make legalized sales equitable for all its residents and businesses.
Camden weighs how to get back what was lost in legalizing cannabis courierpostonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from courierpostonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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By Mechan 11: The Collector was installed in North Camden s Cramer Hill Neighborhood. The heart for the 15-foot-tall robot was designed by a Camden high school student and then fabricated by Tyler Fuqua Creations. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
The City of Camden spends more than $4 million a year cleaning up after illegal dumpers.
Some are so bold, they’ve carved out specific dumping grounds. There’s a place where mountains of old Christmas trees pile up. Other places have tons of kitchen and bathroom appliances or accumulate debris from housing construction and other garbage sources.
Camdenites have been fed up for a while. They see it as a combination of greed from the haulers that send their trash there and a form of urban insult.
A New View preview: A look at large art installations in Camden
CAMDEN Commuters look out the windows as the PATCO Hi-Speedline trains rumble past a dead-end lot on Pershing Street in Camden s Whitman Park neighborhood. Usually, there s not much to see: Lines of rowhouses. One or two abandoned, boarded-up properties. A few cars. Some trash, dumped illegally. A giant black panther.
Wait.
It was. It is. Invincible Cat, by husband-and-wife artists Don Kennell and Lisa Adler, is 15,000 pounds of what used to be car hoods (56 of them, to be exact). And it s keeping watch on this vacant lot tucked inside a neighborhood along the Hi-Speedline not only to entertain riders, but also to call attention to a serious problem plaguing the City of Camden: illegal dumping and pollution.
Contemplating mural, Camden neighborhood asks: Who are we? It will also be a Welcome home to you.
On a virtual meeting with about a dozen or so residents of the neighborhood and the city, Chandler, a community events manager with Cooper s Ferry Partnership, asked residents to discuss what makes Cramer Hill home, and how they wanted to be represented.
Artist Roberto Morales, who was born and raised in Cramer Hill and still lives there, would create the mural based on that input. It would be painted in the spring, Chandler said, with the site currently under discussion.
The mural will be funded by a Choice Neighborhoods grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for revitalization of Ablett Village, a housing project in Cramer Hill. A joint effort between Cooper s Ferry, a community development nonprofit, and St. Joseph s Carpenter Society, a housing nonprofit, the mural is part an early action activity for the revitalization, according to Meishka Mitche