Henon, chairman of Council's Public Property Committee, was talking about the bill to create a land bank.
It's a system Atlanta, Cleveland, St. Louis, and other cities have adopted and that supporters say could help cure the blight haunting many Philadelphia neighborhoods.
But with history at stake, the proposal seems stuck.
The bill introduced in Council last month would establish a land bank, a uniform system for acquiring and disposing of Philadelphia's 40,000 vacant and abandoned properties, a quarter of which are city-owned, and putting them to productive use - whether as community gardens or upscale townhouses or affordable housing. Philadelphia would become the largest U.S. city with a land bank.
