Developer Hilco meets PhillyThrive and South Philly residents in a sometimes tense meeting over former refinery site

Representatives for Hilco, the company redeveloping the massive property of the defunct PES refinery, met Wednesday night with local advocacy group PhillyThrive in a South Philly park for the first face-to-face open public forum with the community.

As PhillyThrive moderated the two hour-plus discussion, residents lined up to ask questions about the site’s contamination, how trucks and traffic will be routed, and how regrading of the property would impact flooding during storms.

Hilco Redevelopment Partners, or HRP, plans to spend $4 billion over the next 15 years to transform the former refinery on the banks of the Schuylkill into the Bellwether District, “a 1,300-acre state-of-the-art campus.”

The company’s presentation and ensuing discussion were mostly calm, but the gathering became tense at times as residents pressed for more answers, often holding up signs indicating they did not believe Hilco officials had adequately answered questions during the event at Smith Playground in the Girard Park neighborhood of South Philly.

“We hope to get a lot of answers and also for them to just hear our concerns,” Sanija-Lanea Aikens, 18, a member of PhillyThrive, said at the start of the event.

» READ MORE: South Philly residents demand input in redevelopment of refinery site

Shawmar Pitts, co-director of PhillyThrive, told the crowd the goal of the meeting was to build trust.

“We want Hilco to be able to meet the residents’ needs, and we want to bring forth our needs,” Pitts said. “And we want to be able to work together.”

Though Hilco has met with members of PhillyThrive before and has hosted virtual public meetings, organizers said it was the “first in-person discussion with residents.”

Construction will start in 2024, company officials said. The first phase will create an industrial site with warehouses. The second will create a life sciences “innovation campus.”

Hilco says the new campus will bring 19,000 permanent jobs and 28,000 construction jobs. That will translate to $100 million in annual taxes revenue for the city and $120 million for the state.

Part of the refinery exploded and caught fire in 2019 and was then closed for good. Sunoco, and its affiliate Evergreen Resources Group, are responsible for cleaning up contamination that occurred before 2012 when Philadelphia Energy Solutions purchased the operation.

Hilco purchased the property in June 2020 and also will perform environmental remediation. It has dismantled 90% of the refinery, conducted cleanup, and begun prepping for construction. Demolition is scheduled to be complete by 2024. The company also owns the separate and still intact but dormant Schuylkill Tank Farm, which adjoins the property.

» READ MORE: High levels of a toxic chemical were recorded as the former South Philly refinery got demolished

As officials were making their presentation, resident Deena Willow, of 74th Street, shouted out: “When are the fumes going to stop?” She yelled that someone from every family on her block had gotten cancer or other illnesses that she attributed to the refinery site. She said she had thyroid cancer and an autoimmune disease.

PhillyThrive’s Pitts rushed over to stop her, and the two began shouting at each other, with Pitts telling Willow she could ask her question later when time was set aside for the public. Eventually, Willow was ushered away. Pitts later apologized, and the two eventually sat together.

Juliana Connolly, who is overseeing the cleanup for Hilco, said the company is responsible for dismantling and cleaning up an area of the refinery that contained 100 aboveground tanks that once held oil and gas. She said the company has sampled the soil and groundwater. She said the company has used the soil for grading but noted that it would not be removed.

“The soil, unsurprisingly, is contaminated,” Connolly said. “And we’re going to need a lot of care in moving that around.”

» READ MORE: A breakdown of chemical contaminants found at the shuttered South Philadelphia refinery

She said that Hilco, although it did not cause the contamination, would take responsibility for vapors from volatile chemicals that escape from the ground with potential to go into the new buildings. Company officials also said they had no plans to use the Schuylkill Tank Farm that once stored oil and gas.

Many in the crowd were concerned that Hilco had stopped sampling for benzene. Connolly said the monitoring was no longer required because the site was no longer a refinery. She said that Hilco was measuring multiple volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and that benzene was included in the mix.

However, residents in the audience repeatedly interjected, saying benzene should be monitored separately. PhillyThrive had given them red and green cards they could raise to signify whether they believed the company had adequately answered. The majority held up red cards with a question mark, signifying they did not believe the company had addressed the issue.

One Hilco official told the crowd, “We’re not going to be able to give you every answer you want tonight.”

Blake Rowan, Hilco’s vice president of industrial development, said the company is grading the site by taking soil from higher areas and moving it to lower areas to build the industrial campus. Ultimately land will be raised above the 100-year floodplain, meaning it would have a 1% chance of flooding in any given year.

The industrial campus would total 10.5 million square feet. Rowan said two buildings totaling over a million square feet are planned in the area off Passyunk Avenue and 26th Avenue. The first building would be 326,00 square feet. Construction could start by the end of 2023 and take about a year. The second building would be 727,000 square feet, and its roof would be equipped with solar panels to produce energy.

The main entrance would be at Hartranft and 26th Street. Rowan said the company is working with PennDot to widen 26th Street and would add lanes to allow trucks to enter the site. He said the road would be designed so trucks don’t go into the residential development off Hartranft.

The second phase would include the Innovation Campus and would be located off I-76 with three buildings totaling 500,000 square feet. The plan includes life sciences, bio manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

Several residents said they were worried that stormwater from the raised areas would flow into neighborhoods and streets.

Some residents gave Hilco credit for showing up, saying it would help heal the community’s long-standing grievances against the refineries. However, others remained skeptical.

Erica Brown, 20, said the meeting was a “chance to restore and repair relationships with the community,” but it came years after the company had purchased the property and called it a “neutral step.”

“Everything is on the line for the community,” Brown said.