Crozer Health’s shutteredTaylor Hospital in Ridley Park will be soldto a group of local healthcare executives for $1 million, according to an agreement filed Friday in bankruptcy court proceedings for its owner, California-based Prospect Medical Holdings.
The buyer is a partnership led by Delaware County business owner Todd Strine. The group’s goal is to refill the empty property with medical services, Strine said.
“The ideal thing that could happen is we reopen an emergency room, because that’s what Delaware County needs,” said Strine, who is the majority owner of medical transport company Keystone Quality Transport.
Prospect closed Taylor in late April after the failure ofa state-led effort to find a new operator that would return the Crozer health system to nonprofit ownership. Shortly thereafter, Crozer-Chester Medical Center also closed.
Crozer was Delaware County’s largest healthcare system and a provider of critical safety-net services.For-profitProspect had previouslyclosed Springfield Hospital and Delaware County Memorial Hospital in 2022.
“It’s a fact that Delaware County is less safe today than it was when these hospitals were operating,” Strine said.
He said it seems unlikely that a full-blown hospital would return to Taylor.
Ridley Park Council president Dane Collins said he’s hopeful that an emergency department and doctors services will return to the site. “It’s no secret. The area’s in desperate need of it,” he said.
As part of the agreement, Delaware County, Ridley Park Borough, and the Ridley School District agreed to reduce the taxable value of the property from its assessed value of $60 million to a fair market value of $1 million for the next two years.
The reduced value slashes the amount of property taxes that can be earned on the property for the next two years. However, beginning in 2027, the taxing authorities would be permitted to appeal the value of the building.
The decision to reduce the building’s value so dramatically in tax rolls was opposed by some members of Ridley School District’s board of education, which only narrowly approved the measure on a 5 to 4 vote last week.
Prospect hasn’t paid property taxes on the property since 2022, according to public records.
Delaware County councilmember Christine Reuther called the new value a “tough pill to swallow” in an interview. The property was worth more than the “fire sale price” it had gone for, she said.
The building would be worth less than many homes on the county’s tax rolls, Reuther noted, at a time when property values and home costs are increasing.
She called the resolution yet another example of the negative fallout from Prospect’s abandonment of healthcare resources in the community.
“There’s literally nothing we can do that isn’t going to resolve in a worse result, and that’s wrong,” Reuther said.
Strine acknowledged that the price seems cheap, but noted the building is empty, and it’s a special-use building, making it harder to find tenants. “There’s a ton of carrying costs and a lot of uncertainty about how long it’s going to take to fill up,” he said.
The investment needed to bring the building back to life is going to be many times the price, Stine said.
“It’s positive movement to have an experienced local businessperson purchase the property instead of allowing the property to become abandoned,” said Frances Sheehan, president of the Foundation for Delaware County, whose mission is promoting health and welfare in the county.
Taylor is the second shuttered Crozer hospital to be sold in less than a month. Upper Darby School District bought the former Delaware County Memorial Hospital for $600,000 on Aug. 14. It plans to use the property for expansion of its neighboring high school.
In both cases, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan said Prospect could abandon the properties, which means that local authorities would have had to put the real estate up for a tax sale.
Prospect had told the judge that the top offers it had received were $1.25 million for Delaware County Memorial, which closed in 2022, and $575,000 for Taylor.
Given the risk of abandonment by Prospect, county and local authorities riskeda totalloss to tax rolls ifProspect abandoned the property entirely.
Robert Strauss, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies property tax, noted that the buyers may have backed out of a deal if they couldn’t obtain the reductions in property taxes.
“It’s hard to envision anything easy happening in the short run that would bring it back onto the tax rolls and be profitable,” he said. “The reduction in revenues seems to me to be inevitable in the next couple of years, regardless.”
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
Pennsylvania spent a whopping $2.53 billion at Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores from July 2023 to June of last year. From pints of whiskey and boxes of wine to cans of vodka seltzers — 156 million units were sold across the state.
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Zipcode falls mostly in County, but also spans .
Raise a glass to Pa. – here’s what alcohol people loved in the state
Sales at state-run liquor stores show that was purchased more than .
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There store in your zipcode. This data is based off of those sales.
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You’re a neighborhood of brand loyalists
In , more units of were purchased here than any other brand.
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Folks in have a unique taste for
spent more money on this than the rest of the state on average.
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A bottle of white? A bottle of red?
When it comes to wine, your area prefers the based on units sold.
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Wine lovers of agree, is the best varietal
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is a –
These are the most popular liquors by units sold.
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Bottoms up to
When it comes to stiffer drinks, these are the most popular liquors sold.
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For the more refined palate, is flying off the shelves in
A sweeter option flavored with herbs or fruit, these liqueurs are most often purchased.
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That’s a wrap for , but the party doesn’t have to stop
Check out these other zip codes to see how the alcohol flows elsewhere …
Lansdale is most loyal to one Philly brand — makers of Stateside Vodka and Surfside cocktails.
Bryn Mawr, on the Main Line, loves its white wine.
See just how much State College drinks
Doylestown, staying true to its Irish roots, consumes a lot of Baileys.
Methodology
The Philadelphia Inquirer acquired a dataset from the state Liquor Control Board comprising one year of daily sales data of each product sold at each of the state-owned Fine Wine and Good Spirits. The data only include Pennsylvania, donot include beer sales, and do not include any wine or mixers sales made outside of state stores (grocery stores, etc.).
For this story, we analyzed sales data by zip code. For zip codes with no state-run liquor stores, we assigned the zip code of the nearest store. The Inquirer also categorized alcohol into four main types — wine, liquor, liqueur, and cocktails (mixed drinks) — along with subcategories of each. Our analysis includes “most unique brand”’ which was calculated as the most money spent compared to the statewide average with a minimum of 0.1% of sales in that zipcode. Across all zip-code level analysis, we only analyzed bottles over 200 ml and excluded mini-liquor bottles.
Struggling with alcohol? There are ways out. For free, anonymous help, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week:
Pennsylvania: Call 1-800-662-HELP or visit PA.gov for a live chat.
New Jersey: 1-844-732-2465
Staff Contributors
Design and Development: Garland Fordice
Data: Chris A. Williams and Lizzie Mulvey
Editing: Sam Morris and Stephen Stirling
Copy Editing: Brian Leighton
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Picture it: The Birds game is on, you’re snacking on the couch, and suddenly, you hear it: “This holiday season, my good friend gave to me: seven Powerball tickets — .” With the start of Pennsylvania’s annual showing of its prized lottery Christmas commercial, the holiday season is truly here.
Dating to 1992, the ad, which is titled “Snowfall,” features a group of carolers singing an abridged and heavily modified version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” swapping the usual swans a-swimming and geese a-laying for an array of lottery games.
On social media, the return of the ad — which typically begins airing in early November — is celebrated. “It’s practically a holiday tradition,” one Reddit user wrote 13 years ago about the ad (from a Reddit thread in 2011 discussing its return that holiday season). A new Reddit thread posted this week also embraced the holiday ad.
“The moment they hear the carolers sing, many Pennsylvanians reflexively smile, sing along, and mentally count the weeks until they can put up the tree,” Drew Svitko, the Pennsylvania Lottery’s executive director, said in 2016 ahead of the ad’s 25th anniversary. “We are proud that our popular commercial brings back so many warm memories for viewers and has become a Keystone State holiday tradition.”
But the ad we see today is not the exact ad that was shown over three decades ago.
The original version was filmed in Pittsburgh ahead of its 1992 debut. It features an older man, Joe, leaving his place on a snowy night to dole out lottery ticket gifts throughout his neighborhood, including tocoffee- and newsstand owners. Carolers sing. That version was shown from 1992 through 2011.
In 2011, the Pennsylvania Lottery reproduced the holiday commercial in high-definition video and to accommodate modern TV specs. This time, the shoot took place in Philadelphia. But the shot-for-shot remake was so carefully executed, many viewers didn’t notice the difference when it was shown in 2012 until it was pointed out.
“The lottery took great care in recreating the beloved ad,” Pennsylvania Lottery spokesperson Ewa Swope said Tuesday. “By retaining the original audio track and voice-over, along with the shot-for-shot remake, we stayed true to the look and feel of the original spot.”
Local Philly blog Crossing Broad posted a side-by-side comparison of the 1992 and 2012 ads to highlight the matching.
Of course, the 2012 ad has been tweaked slightly over the years to account for changes to the lottery’s game offerings. Swope said a visual card within the ad is also updated annually to spotlight a featured holiday scratch-off game — this year’s is the Jingle Jangle Jackpot.
“Because the original spot is so beloved, we didn’t want to upset anyone by going in a vastly different creative direction,” Connie Bloss, a marketing pro who worked on both the 1992 and 2012 “Snowfall” ads, told the Associated Press at the time of the new spot’s debut. “We meticulously examined each frame to match the outfits, props, location, and other small details. We really wanted to get it right.”
Swope said the ad’s aim has always been the same: to remind consumers that lottery products can be given as gifts. Becoming a holiday classic was just a bonus.
“We could not have imagined in 1992 that this spot would become such a holiday classic,” Swope said. “We routinely hear from players that when they see the commercial, they know the holiday season is starting. We are happy that so many players enjoy and look forward to this spot as a part of their holiday tradition.”
You can watch the latest version of “Snowfall” below:
Robert Jordan was playing in his backyard on Aug. 15, 1975, another summer afternoon in his idyllic Delaware County neighborhood, when the panic began to spread from house to house.
Gretchen Harrington, an 8-year-old girl from his Bible camp, was missing.
“I remember being asked, ‘Have you seen Gretchen?’ and saying, ‘No, why?’” Jordan, who was 9 years old at the time, recalled this week.
The Amber Alert system wouldn’t begin for two more decades. There were no cell phones. No Facebook, Citizen or Nextdoor apps.
But through a network of suburban moms, everyone in Jordan’s Marple Township neighborhood seemed to hear the news at nearly the same time.
“It went right down the line, housewives not even getting on the phone, just going to tell each other something had happened,” Jordan said. “We knew something was happening because our mothers were so jittery.”
They sprang into action. Jordan piled into a neighbor’s Volkswagen van with his mother and four other kids. Their search began at a nearby park.
Hundreds of residents from Marple and neighboring towns would later comb wooded areas with no results. Tracking dogs were called in. Even a psychic.
“We haven’t got a thing, not a thing,” then-Broomall Fire Chief Knute Keober told The Inquirer two days after Gretchen’s disappearance. “If she’s in the area, she’s by Jesus well-hidden.”
Police search for Gretchen Harrington in 1975. Harrington was reporting missing that August, and found dead in October.
It wasn’t until Oct. 14, 1975, that a hiker found skeletal remains along a path in Ridley Creek State Park. At first, he thought they belonged to an animal.
“I looked closely and saw what I thought was fingernails,” the man told police, according to a new book on the case. The body was positively identifiedas that of Gretchen Harrington. It bore signs of blunt force trauma to her skull. Her death was ruled a homicide.
Jordan, 57, now a health care marketing executive, still thinks of Gretchen and that summer each time he drives down Lawrence Road, the last place she was seen.
He remembers the Bible camp. Hot dogs and baked beans. Kickball and Wiffle ball. Then, an abduction and a murder. It haunted families for years.
“So many young people from the ‘70s still bear that pain and anxiety today,” he said. “She was a lovely girl.”
‘It was always a dead end’
Brandon Graeff was 2 years oldwhen Gretchen Harrington’s body was found. The case had long turned cold by 1997, when he joined the Marple Township police force.
Tips had poured in early on, then slowed. Detectives pursued them all, on and off the clock.
“Everything — and I mean everything — was followed up on,” said Graeff, who became chief in 2020.
The case came up from time to time, in roll call, or when a detective would grab the folder again during a slow week.
“They’d look through it, maybe try to see something different for her,” Graeff said, “But we couldn’t. We didn’t. It was always a dead end.”
In a 1975 Inquirer photo, Zoe Harrington looks over the area on Lawrence Road in Broomall where her sister Gretchen Harrington was last seen.
Since 1975, the case has proceeded along two tracks: the abduction handled by Marple Police, and the homicide by state police, because the park in Edgmont Township is in their jurisdiction.
In early 2021, Graeff got a call from a man named Mike Mathis, who said he and another former township resident, Joanna Sullivan, were working on a book about the murder and were hoping the department would cooperate with granting them some access to the files.
With little movement in the investigation in decades, Graeff couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.
“We’re dealing with a little girl whose killer was not held to account,” he said. “My question to myself was, ‘Why not? How could it hurt?’”
Trinity Chapel, where David Zandstra was reverend.
Sullivan, 57, remembers being at Lawrence Park Swim club the day that Gretchen disappeared. The image of a hovering helicopter was seared into her memory.
“We were just at the pool on a hot summer day and the helicopter was overhead,” she said. “We were wondering what was going on. Then we heard.”
Mathis, 58, remembers his father joining the search for Gretchen. He and Sullivan would meet a few years later at Paxon Hollow Middle School. They were editors at the student newspaper, The Hollow Log.
They kept in touch through high school and beyond. At a reunion decades later, they’d talk about writing a book together about Gretchen.
“It just stayed with me and Mike and many other kids through the years,” said Sullivan, now the editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Business Journal. “I always thought I’d like to write that story.”
Joanna Sullivan and Mike Mathis, who worked together on the student newspaper at Paxon Hollow Middle School, released a book last year on the murder of Gretchen Harrington. Weeks later, a new witness came forward who enabled state police to elicit a confession from David Zandstra, a former reverend.
When COVID struck in 2020, Sullivan and Mathis suddenly had more time. They got started by creating a list of people they wanted to interview.
“At the top of the list,” she said, “was the Zandstra family.”
The book, Marple’s Gretchen Harrington Tragedy: Kidnapping, Murder and Innocence Lost in Suburban Philadelphia, was published in October 2022. Sullivan and Mathis did a round of public appearances in the area, including a December book signing at the Barnes & Noble in the Lawrence Park Shopping Center — just down the street fromwhere Gretchen was abducted.
They had no idea that, just a few weeks later, a woman would come forward with information that would break the case wide open.
“I think it was Mr. Z”
On Jan. 2, 2023, state police interviewed a woman later identified in court documents only by her initials. She said she’d frequently slept at the home of a local reverend named David Zandstra and his family because she was friends with his daughter.
Zandstra had served at Trinity Chapel Christian Reformed Church, one of two churches on Lawrence Road in Marple Townshipthat were used for the Bible camp that Gretchen attended. The other was the Reformed Presbyterian Church, where Gretchen’s father was the pastor.
It was Zandstra who called police and reported Gretchen missing at 11:23 a.m. on Aug. 15, 1975. He said he was calling at the request of the girl’s father.
A missing person’s poster for Gretchen Harrington, 8, from a 1975 Inquirer article. The Delaware County District Attorney has announced charges against David Zandstra, currently of Marietta Ga., in Harrington’s murder.
The new witness told state investigators that during two sleepovers at the Zandstra house when she was 10 years old, she awoke to Zandstra touching her. She also showed police a childhood diary she’d kept that mentioned the sleepovers and, in September 1975, her suspicion that Zandstra might have been involved with the attempted kidnapping of a girl in her class, as well as Gretchen’s disappearance.
“It’s a secret, so I can’t tell anyone, but I think he might be the one who kidnapped Gretchen,” she wrote. “I think it was Mr. Z.”
At first, a cordial interview
Earlier this month, David Zandstra, 83 and living in Marietta, Ga., walked into an interview room at the Cobb County Police Headquarters with no reservations about speaking with police. He didn’t lawyer up. It was the department’s “soft” interview room. Couch, comfortable chairs, unlocked.
Two Pennsylvania troopers were waiting for him: Cpl. Andrew Martin, who had picked up the Harrington case about 2017, and Eugene Tray, who’d been called in recently. They’d caught a flight to Atlanta on July 17 to interview the octogenarian suspect, with thenew information in hand.
Trooper Eugene Tray, who participated in the investigation and arrest of David Zandstra, and Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, announcing the arrest.
If Zandstra was worried about the interviewwhen he sat down, he didn’t show it — at least not at first.
Back in 1975, police had interviewed Zandstra twice. He also spoke to Mathis for the book, which focused on a different man as the prime suspect.
“Deep down, I’m sure he was very, very concerned,” Tray said.
The conversation was almost cordial to start. Zandstra denied ever seeing Gretchen on the day she went missing.
But then police told Zandstra about the sexual assault allegations from the girl with the diary. It was the final straw placedon top of nearly a half-century of guilt. He broke down and confessed.
“We asked and he spoke,” Tray said. “He was presented with things I don’t think he expected to be presented with. Then, I think he started to think more on it. I think he just wanted his sick, twisted version of redemption, and to come clean.”
Zandstra admitted to abducting Gretchen as she was walking to Trinity Chapel for morning exercises, according to the criminal complaint. He said Gretchen asked to go home, but he drove her to a wooded area and parked. When she refused his demand to take off her clothes, he struck her in the head with his fist, court documents state.
Zandstra said he checked her pulse and believed that she had died, so he attempted to cover up her half-naked body with sticks and left the area.
“He was two different people,” Tray said of Zandstra, before and after his confession. “He was definitely relieved and happy to get that off his chest, how sick that may be.”
Searching for other victims
Zandstra left Delaware County in 1976, and worked in Texas and California before retiring to Georgia. Cops in and around Marple Township who’d worked on the case, or helped search for Gretchen in 1975, have retired and died.
The case took a toll on many of them, knowing a child killer could have gotten away with it, said Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, who was 12 years old when Gretchen disappeared.
“It’s important to understand law enforcement officers are moved by the trauma they see happen,” he said. “That’s why they’re in this business of trying to bring justice.”
A photo of a victim and her alleged killer are shown during District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer’s news conference on Monday, July 24, 2023.
Stollsteimer described Zandstra’s arrest as a “great relief” to police in Delaware County and praised Martin, in particular, for sticking with the case.
“This is just great, old-fashioned police work,” he said.
Martin was unable to attend the news conference on Monday announcing Zandstra’s arrest and was not available for an interview this week. Tray, however, said the “case would not have been solved were it not for him.”
State police collected DNA from Zandstra when he was arrested, which could prove useful if there are additional victims in other parts of the country.
As part of that effort, the Christian Reformed Church in North America says it is reaching out to Zandstra’s former congregations. He served in Flanders, N.J.; Broomall, Pa.; Plano, Texas; and San Diego and Fairfield, Calif.
After settling in Georgia, Zandstra continued to advise clients of a pregnancy resource center, according to a 2012 religious newsletter in which he wrote a small section titled “Peace to you.” A photo shows him smiling, with gray hair and a closely cropped beard.
“The prospect of peace was and is badly needed in the uncounted and constant conflicts of our world,” he wrote. “Only believers in Jesus are able to find real peace with God.”
“Who knows? This guy was a monster,” Stollsteimer said. “Nothing would surprise me.”
Sullivan, the author of the book on the Harrington murder, has been fielding calls and Facebook messages this week from people in Marple who might have information about other cases of abuse.
“I don’t think it was an isolated case,” Sullivan said.
As for whether the book helped lead to the break in the case, that depends on whom you ask. Some law enforcement officials are convinced that it did. Others cautioned against such speculation. Regardless, a new chapter is planned if the book goes to another printing: Case solved.
On Friday, the Delco DA’s office got word that Zandstra would waive an extradition hearing and agree to be transported from Georgia to Pennsylvania. But his defense lawyer later sought to have the waiver recalled because he was not present with Zandstra when it was signed. Authorities are awaiting a judge’s ruling.
The Harrington family released a statement this week, thanking police for their work and community members for their support over the years. Gretchen’s father, Harold, died in November 2021 at the age of 94.
“If you met Gretchen, you were instantly her friend,” the family wrote. ”She exuded kindness to all and was sweet and gentle. Even now, when people share their memories of her, the first thing they talk about is how amazing she was and still is. At just 8 years old, she had a lifelong impact on those around her.”
Just before midnight on March 4, 1990, 15-year-old Darius Lamont was pulled through the back door of a friend’s home in Charlotte, N.C.
His attacker wanted the teenager’s green-and-white Eagles Starter-brand jacket, valued at $125. During their struggle, the attacker pulled out a gun and shot Lamont in the face.
When police arrived, the jacket was gone. Lamont died 10 hours later.
His death — like the jacket — was part of a trend.
The growing popularity of professional sports in the late 1980s and early ’90s spawned a new cultural status symbol: expensive sports gear lined in team colors and affixed with hulking logos. The apparel was marketed to the eager-to-impress in their teens and early 20s. But the gear was so popular that some young wearers became crime victims.
As the 2017 NFL season kicks off and sports stores start to push their cold-weather gear, we look back on the chaos that followed the rise in sports-gear popularity and crimes spurred by the Starter-brand jacket trend.
In the 1980s and ’90s, the jackets were manufactured by the Starter Corp. of New Haven, Conn. The company was licensed to produce gear for all the major professional teams, including baseball, hockey, basketball, and football. While the brand still exists, it’s now an underutilized subsidy of Iconix Brand Group, which continues to sell the jackets for about $100 each.
Starter’s business peaked in 1992, when the brand made $350 million in sales.The most popular product was the winter-weight jacket, worn by gangster rappers and Hollywood superstars alike.
But the status symbol also led to a secondary industry: jacket theft. In Philadelphia, especially in the lower Northeast, some who couldn’t afford one turned to violence.
Two and three times a week, the police blotter was full. On one week in 1993:
– “14-year-old boy was jumped by a group of four men at 8:45 p.m. Jan 23 in the 6300 block of Charles Street and robbed of his $100 warmup jacket”
– “14-year-old boy was punched and robbed of his $100 Starter jacket at 9:15 p.m. Jan. 22 in the 4100 block of Levick Street by a group of three teen-age boys”
– “A 13-year-old boy was robbed of his $100 Starter jacket at 3:15 p.m. Jan. 21 in the 1500 block of Foulkrod Street by a 15-year-old boy”
Philadelphia police went so far as to send the freshest-faced cops undercover as decoys to catch would-be thieves. A Mayfair neighborhood group offered to put jackets on a registry, scribbling assigned serial numbers in three separate and secret locations on the jackets. But the thieves caught on, cutting out the serial numbers after they were lifted.
In 1993, when Robert Levins was inspector of the Northeast Police Division, he told then-Daily News columnist Jill Porter that he would lecture parents.
“I tell parents that I wouldn’t buy one for my child because of the fact — why put a target on your kid?” he said. “Why make your kid a victim? Buy him a nice coat, but it doesn’t have to be a Starter jacket or a sports team jacket.”
Porter wrote in response: “Sounds good to me, but try telling that to your kid.”
James Lamont, Darius’ father, told the Charlotte Observer that he had given his son money for Christmas to buy the jacket.
“It’s a shame you can’t buy something for your child,” he said, “without worrying if he’ll be safe to wear it.”
