The City of Chester and Cyclomedia Complete First-Ever City-wide Parcel Condition Survey Results Reveal 92% No Blight Rate Among 12,787 Properties
Chester, PA, January 9, 2025 - The City of Chester announced the completion of its first comprehensive parcel condition survey to assess and analyze property conditions across the city. The study, including 13,828 Chester properties ranked each property on a blight severity scale from zero to five with zero being no blight and five being considered an unsafe structure. The report found that 12,787 or 92.47% of properties were ranked as a zero or no blight and presently 27 properties (0.20%) ranked as a five or considered an imminent public safety threat.
The study will provide valuable insights to support blight remediation efforts while also providing important data for interested developers and investors in the city. The first-time study was conducted by Cyclomedia, a leading provider of large-scale systematic visuals of physical environments. Cyclomedia captured the data by scanning city properties using a specially designed car with LiDAR camera technology.
The study, part of Chester’s ongoing commitment to revitalization, was designed to identify areas in need of immediate abatement and to help make strategic decisions for community improvement. The project collected high-resolution visual data, showing the current state of properties within the city. With this data the city will be able to clean up the blighted areas and buildings that will improve community safety and help increase real estate value, eventually leading to higher tax revenue for Chester. The data can also be used for community development planning, street maintenance, verifying zoning plans, code enforcement and tactical planning for handling emergency calls related to police and other public events. This quantitative data set will also help identify key areas ripe for development, identifying where there are swaths of vacant parcels to be redeveloped.
“This study represents a significant step forward in our ongoing mission to address blight and invest in the revitalization of our neighborhoods,” said Mayor Stefan Roots. “Thanks to Cyclomedia and its geographic information System (GIS) technology, we now have a better understanding of property conditions that will allow us along with our county and state partners to address these issues around the city. The goal is to continue to create a welcoming and safe place for residents and newcomers to live, work and play. We now have the data to target areas most in need and most available for immediate development.”
In conjunction with this study, the City of Chester Receiver’s team will also be undertaking a market value analysis study as an essential next action step to analyze of the city's housing market. This information will be used to objectively inform future municipal budget decisions on how to prioritize resources and services to spur reinvestment into strategic development areas throughout Chester. This baseline of data will be collected by The Reinvestment Fund, and is critical for the proper disposition of blighted properties and the ongoing revitalization of Chester.
Below is a chart which summarizes the blight and vacancy data according to the rating scale:
For more information on the city’s financial recovery plan, visit the Receiver for the City of Chester’s website.