Executive Vice President John Fry had a number of unexpected visitors to his Franklin Building office yesterday, including a mysterious messenger delivering a package from Neighbors Against McPenntrification, followed by the Philadelphia Police Department Bomb Squad.
Plus, on one of the hottest days of the year, Fry and his assistants had to evacuate their air-conditioned seventh floor suite for over an hour.
Shortly before 11:15 a.m., a courier delivered a clumsily-wrapped package that was smaller than a shoebox. It was addressed to Fry and bore a King of Prussia return address for McDonald's Corporation.
After it had arrived, one of Fry's assistants called to get his attention.
"I said `Put it down in the corner and call the police,'" Fry said. "McDonald's Corporation doesn't send you a package with their name spelled funny in the corner, so I knew right away that it had to be some sort of hoax."
The University of Pennslvania Police Department responded, along with a "skeleton crew" from the city's bomb squad. In all, nearly twenty officers were on the scene of the emergency, which cleared the top two floors of Franklin Building.
"We were pretty confident that is wasn't anything serious, but we followed protocol and made sure that it was handled the way it should be handled," UPPD Deputy Chief of Investigations William Danks said.
After an X-ray of the package failed to reveal a bomb, it was carefully opened and found to hold a bag filled with a "dirt-like substance," presumably from the contaminated site at 43rd and Market streets that is to become a McDonald's restaurant. NAM had earlier threatened to make such a special delivery to Penn's campus.
The box was then carefully wrapped in newspaper for protection and was returned to Penn police headquarters where it will undergo fingerprinting tests today, and its contents will be chemically analyzed.
Danks said that the return address does not appear to be valid, and that an investigation into the sender and the messenger is underway.
But Fry already had thoughts as to the identity of his secret admirer.
"It's the acts of bullies and cowards," he said. "It certainly didn't intimidate me."
Neighbors Against McPenntrification de facto head Rev. Larry Falcon said that while the box did not come from him personally, it was sent from a member of his group.
"I realized that the soil was going to go out," said Falcon, who was not among the NAM members who picketed Franklin Building during the scare. "I wasn't sure of all the details, and it wasn't my idea."
Falcon said he had seen the package earlier yesterday morning at the store he runs, the Toviah Thrift Shop, at 4211 Chestnut Street. He opened up his business at 8:30 a.m., left, and then when he returned at about 10 a.m., the package was on the counter beside the cash register, with several dollars in an envelope.
Shortly after that, Falcon said, a bicycle messenger appeared to pick up the package, as well as his $8.01 delivery fee, which was in the envelope.
NAM has been up in arms about the McDonald's project, saying that McDonald's has failed to protect surrounding residents from contaminated soil during construction.
"It is really infurating that they say the the stuff is harmless, and then their reaction to it is that it's not harmless," Falcon said. "Their reaction to it was like it was a bomb or something."
After taunting the City Solicitor's office with a similar bag of tainted soil last month, Fry was the target yesterday for his role as the interim head of the University City District, which NAM considers to have a role in McDonald's decision to open at its new location.
However, Fry disagrees.
"The UCD focuses on making neighborhoods safe," he said. "It doesn't conjure up deals with McDonald's at 43rd and Market."
