Italian pride for
planned cultural center

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

Rome wasn’t built in a day. And judging by progress on Northeast Philadelphia’s long-promised Italian American Cultural Center, even a small slice of the Eternal City can take quite a while to finish.
But leaders of the non-profit corporation who developed the concept of the center over a decade ago now insist that the project is truly back on track more than six years after they held its ceremonial groundbreaking.
Several factors undermined the effort before it ever really got off the ground, said Amato Berardi, secretary and treasurer of Italian American Cultural Center Inc. Ultimately, it boiled down to lack of funding.
But with a new fund-raising effort in place, Berardi and his colleagues on Oct. 28 hosted a second celebration to reintroduce the project and re-energize community support for it.
The festival, featuring cuisine and drink from dozens of area merchants, was held at the site of the proposed center, a wooded tract of public ground at the northern end of Northeast Avenue.
"There are Russian-Jewish, Jewish, Ukrainian, African-American, Polish (and) German community centers, and we don’t have an Italian-American community center yet," Berardi told the gathering of hundreds. "I think it’s about time we put this together and make this happen.
"We talked about it years ago," he said. "Now we are ready."
Privately, Berardi favored a scaled-down and less expensive project than the one touted at the same site in June 2001. That day, an all-star cast of public officials joined the Italian-American business leaders and curious community members for a daylong party.
Notables included Mayor John Street; City Council President Anna Verna; City Councilmen Brian O’Neill, Rick Mariano and Frank Rizzo; and former state Sen. Hank Salvatore.
At the time, Street declared the center a place for Italian and non-Italian residents "to call our own, to convene and reflect on the history of Italian-Americans. It is very special and very appropriate."
Architectural drawings depicted a grandiose facility with an expansive "piazza" or open garden area, a museum, banquet hall, meeting rooms, classrooms and locker-room facilities. Outdoors, there were to be a soccer field, tennis courts, bocce courts and a picnic area.
Though one cultural center official had announced an expected project cost in the tens of millions of dollars, the president of the non-profit corporation later told the Northeast Times that the announced figure was inaccurate.
The new figure is about $3.5 million, said Berardi, principal of the Berardi & Associates insurance and financial-consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd.
"We’ve scaled down the plan to more of a recreation and cultural center," Berardi said. "The museum will be in Center City."
The soccer field has been taken out of the plans too, because the area has many other facilities where teams can play, Berardi noted. Primary uses for the new center will be recreation, language and cultural classes, senior activities, community meetings and business conferences.
Organizers are in the process of renewing their development rights for the ground. At the time of the initial groundbreaking, they had entered into a $1-per-year lease with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., a quasi-public agency that promotes local business through real estate acquisition and redevelopment. That agreement gave Berardi’s non-profit at least six years to build the center.
Similarly, the center’s leadership believes that an agreement struck with local residents, addressing the details and scope of the project, is still valid.
As early as 1995, neighbors had expressed concerns including traffic, noise, lighting and accessibility, but those issues were later resolved between cultural center officials and the Somerton Civic Association.
Meanwhile, Berardi hopes that the project now has a brighter financial future than it did in June 2001.
Three months after the first groundbreaking, the 9/11 terrorist attacks drew a lot of charitable dollars away from non-profits like the cultural center. A short time later, Berardi explained, a leading advocate for the center and Philadelphia’s Italian-American community in general, Andrew Farnese, passed away.
Farnese was the founder and longtime director of Casa Enrico Fermi, at 1300 Lombard St., which was one of the nation’s first subsidized senior-housing facilities. After his death, the facility was renamed Casa Farnese.
"He was an inspirational guy. He was going to contribute a lot. Andy was the dean of the Italian-American community," Berardi said.
In more recent years, the cultural center’s president, Anthony DiSandro, was engaged in a highly publicized and drawn-out sale of the publicly traded bank he also headed. DiSandro was chief executive officer of First Penn Bank, commonly referred to as "Fumo’s Bank," after state Sen. Vince Fumo.
Fumo, who is facing trial on federal corruption charges linked to his dealings with the non-profit group Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, was the largest shareholder in First Penn. He and DiSandro received multimillion-dollar payments as part of the bank’s sale last March.
DiSandro remains listed by the Pennsylvania Department of State as the president of Italian American Cultural Center Inc. The state paperwork lists his mailing address as 1210 Tasker St., next door to Fumo’s district office in a building owned by the Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods.
Fumo did not attend the June 2001 groundbreaking or the Oct. 28 celebration. Officials attending the latest gathering included Robert Carullo, aide to Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll; Tom Forkin, aide to Pennsylvania House Speaker Dennis O’Brien; former state Rep. John Cordisco, the Bucks County Democratic Party chairman; City Councilman Jack Kelly; Bucks County Sheriff Edward Donnelly; Montgomery County Commissioner Tom Ellis; and Republican mayoral candidate Al Taubenberger.
According to Berardi, the project is getting a lot of private individual contributions and is being supported by a series of local companies, including several that are Italian-owned. The cultural center committee is lining up contractors to contribute supplies and skilled labor. It also is applying for public grants on the local, state and federal levels.
"This time we have a real committee, and it’s formalized," Berardi said. ••
Call 1-610-660-7684 or e-mail iaculturalcenter@gmail.com for information about the Italian American Cultural Center.
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com