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Archive: September, 2012
Mid-Century Furniture Warehouse has been operating on Columbia Street in Fishtown for a while now, attracting fans of moderately priced retro goods from Philly and beyond. Well, that's probably about to change. It turns out that the property that houses it, a 200-year-old barn at 1217 E. Columbia, was zoned residential, and the owner never got — apparently never realized he needed to get — a variance. And so, the Department of Licenses & Inspections cited the business for operating without the needed usage permits. Landlord Robert Bitros went through the zoning variance process, got approval from residents via a vote at the Fishtown Neighbors' Association — and was, this week, denied by the Zoning Board of Adjustment.
Brian Lawlor, who runs the furniture business, says he's not sure whether he'll try to appeal the decision or start looking for another location. He says one or two neighbors had raised the fuss despite general community support, and that he hadn't been allowed to address the ZBA. "Parking has become an issue in that neighborhood and it's the only thing [the peeved neighbors] can fight. They can't fight that six hipsters live next door to them. But they're retired and this is something they can sink their teeth into."
Business will continue for now with a sale this Sunday. Lawlor says he hopes that the warehouse — with no kitchen or heat, yet with residential zoning — won't end up just one more piece of blighted property. "I'm paying business privilege tax, I'm collecting sales tax and paying all these other fees. We employ three people there, and you're essentially putting us out of business with the zoning thing."
The city and homeless advocates who had sued the administration over a ban on serving meals outdoors to the homeless have entered an agreement to sit down and negotiate a solution on providing food to the homeless. US District Court Judge William Yohn Jr. today approved an interim agreement, which lays the groundwork for negotiations between the city and the groups. While the agreement stands, the city will withdraw its appeal of Yohn's previous decision, suspend implementation of the feeding ban and remove signs indicted that "outdoor serving of food" is not allowed. The city also agreed to pay the advocacy groups' legal costs.
Cranford Coulter of The King's Jubilee says this will hopefully be way bigger than just restoring, for now, the rights of groups to serve meals outdoors. "Hopefully starting the week of Oct. 8, we will sit down at the table and start negotiating for a plan that will end homelessness in Philadelphia, a plan where we can work with the people that we work with to persuade them to move into attractive housing situations, and to take people that are just hitting a rough spot and get them housing vouchers, so they don't have to hit rock bottom, hit the street and end up in a shelter like they do now. And it ends up a very expensive situation, so we can find better ways to deal with things that are actually cheaper."
One twist in Mayor Nutter's favor: According to Coulter, if negotiations are successful and a real solution is reached, the ban on outdoor feeding will actually be restored. "On one score, we don't like it, because it kind of violates our rights," Coulter says. "But on the other hand, it becomes kind of a moot point if no one's out there that needs our services."
Last May, with little fanfare – with no fanfare at all, in fact – the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed HB2224, a bill which, on its face, made it easier for municipalities to sell off unwanted/unused land.
That, at least, was the purported purpose of the bill – and that's what several conservation-minded Pennsylvania lawmakers understood the bill, which was sponsored by Republican State Rep. Adam Cutler, to do. The bill passed the House unanimously, without dicussion or debate.
Conservationists and some lawmakers are now saying that might have been a mistake.
According to various conservation groups (and hunting clubs) around Pennsylvania, the bill's real effect (and maybe purpose) is to strip away a protection long held by city and town parks: a requirement that any sale of such public park lands be approved in Orphan's Court. HB2224, these groups say, would strip that protection and give city officials the ability to sell off parks willy nilly.
Philadelphia Deputy Mayor for Environmental and Community Resources and Parks & Rec Commissioner Michael DiBerardinis says that the bill, if it in fact does what its opponents say it does, "is ia disaster. A lot of this land was donated and bought with the assurance that these gifts [were] for perpetuity. ... This bill basically opens the door for local government to dispose of parkland based on a whim."
And that, say some state reps, isn't what they meant to vote for.
Take Rep. Kate Harper, a Republican representative from Montgomery County, and well regarded among land conservationists. Harper, like the rest of her colleagues, voted “yes” on HB2224 because “it appeared to me that parkland was an exception to the bill.”
But after re-reading the legislation on the phone with City Paper, Harper admitted that “I now believe that maybe the bill was written wrong.”
State Rep. Greg Vitali, a staunch environmentalist who lead the House campaign to impose a moratorium on the leasing of state forests for natural gas drilling – and who voted “yes” on HB2224 – appears to be having a similar moment of buyer's remorse.
“If you read the bill on its face, there is really no language to alert you that there is any problem,” says Vitali. But now, he says, “there seems to be a uncertainty about how broad, how much of a problem this is for people who value parkland in municipalities.”
Anyone who sat through budget hearings this spring observed a lot of frustration on the part of City Council over the budget proposed by the administration. So Councilman Mark Squilla in Council this morning said he has an idea of how to alleviate some of that: Legislation that "will allow Council members to write about 10 percent of the budget and thereby mandate the administration to spend in a way that Council sees fit." He added, "since people come to us all the time [with requests] ... this would now allow us to be able to" accommodate some of them.
Among the hypothetical examples of how Council could use that money, Squilla mentioned kicking "a couple extra dollars" to the District Attorney's Office to fund "legislation for, say, nuisance properties."
But that's not exactly a hypothetical. In fact, Squilla is currently working on legislation with fellow Councilman Bobby Henon (who has taken up turning around problem properties as one of his pet causes). Squilla told CP, "We're looking to be able to redefine the nature of nuisance properties: What makes a nuisance property? If we have residents that require multiple police attention, what process do we need to do to maybe start forfeiture or at least be able to go after them, in that they're using so much of the city's resources."
With all the advocacy efforts by numerous civil rights and community organizing groups around the voter ID law — and despite a frankly lame and only recently breaking public-information campaign by the state inciting would-be voters to "Show It" — you'd think that tens of thousands of voters would have taken themselves down to Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to get the free ID cards they'll be required to display on election day this year.
But according to PennDOT, just over 10,000 free licenses — including PennDOT non-driver IDs and Department of State (DOS) IDs that were introduced in August as an alternative — were distributed statewide as of Sept. 20. In Philadelphia, there were 3,878 PennDOT IDs and 642 Department of State IDs distributed.
Whether that's a sign that people have the IDs after all, that word isn't getting out sufficiently, that they can't be bothered to go get them or that they're actually having difficulty obtaining the IDs is hard to say. The state, looking to avoid an injunction against the law, yesterday announced that it will make obtaining the IDs easier still. However the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, which sent out observers to the PennDOT centers across the state this month, reports that imperfect information may be a problem.
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena around Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Penn's Landing... is it cursed? No matter what the proposal for its redevelopment is, practical or impractical, kick-ass looking or silly-looking, none of it ever happens... ever. This city has been trying to get this little spot on the waterfront developed since the 1950s and has either failed miserably or only gotten the initial pre-phases built every time. I wonder if it has something to do with that gigantic interstate highway running alongside?
Penn's Landing's Dead-Ass Proposals are so numerous that you have to separate them into small stages on the timeline just to figure them all out. One particularly crazy stage was in the early 21st Century. In 2003, right after Simon Properties' decade-long Penn's Landing development debacle of the 1990s (which itself followed the Rouse debacle of the late '80s), the city made a call for new proposals for the city's most Development Kryptonite-laden spot. A series of public forums organized by the Inquirer and Penn Praxis invited the community to submit all their own whacky ideas of what our sad waterfront should become. Lots of excitement came with it... Penn's Landing would finally prosper! Finally!!!
Four developers submitted outrageous super-plans for the waterfront, each more crazy than the next. Among these, the most insane was Penn's Landing Atlantis.
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| HOOOOOly fucking dogshit!!! |
OK, so it looks nice in a rendering, but once you find out what its all about, the whole plan is hilariously impractical. The developer was the Harry Eng's Atlantis New York. In fact, this beast of a complex was based on a Dead-Ass Proposal for NYC. This $3 billion project (that's BILLION with a B) would include a huge amphitheater, an art gallery, enclosed year-round gardens, a cap over I-95, at least 15 restaurants, a bowling alley, a 300,000-square-foot food court, a maritime museum, a 20-screen movie theater, and an enclosed water feature with canoe rides and aquatic shows ... all topped off with a residential/commercial tower shaped like a sail, Dubai style. Despite having so much shit in one place, the developer claimed that the complex would have more outdoor space than Penn's Landing currently has, empty lots and all. It was designed by the San Fransisco-based firm Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz.
When the renderings for this and the other three plans were put on public display on Sept. 10, 2003, people went fucking apeshit over them, forgetting all the previous decades of failed waterfront proposals. Atlantis, however, took a lot of heat. It was seen as non-compliant with the demands made in the public forums earlier in the year: instead of connecting the city to the waterfront, it seemed to wall it off even more. It would have competing attractions with Center City and was perceived as having the potential to fail even worse than the 1990s plan.
The only big advantage seen within this project was that it was set to be completely privately funded, while the three other proposals were all asking for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of milk from the public teat. After the city had recently wasted over $50 million of public funds on the failed Aerial Tramway and Disney Quest plans, Philadelphians were wary of new projects that wanted their tax monies.
In the beginning of February 2004, only a few months after releasing renderings to the public, the city decided to narrow the competition for the waterfront's development from four proposals to two. Atlantis was one of the two getting axed. The reason given? Simple impracticability. Just look at it... it's HUGE!!! The other two proposals would get nixed in October 2004. The reason given? The two remainders wanted too much public money and one of them was involved in that whole FBI wiretap scandal related to the "Mayor" we had at the time.
Though Atlantis was an outright illogical proposal, there's a pretty good chance that it would have improved the waterfront if even partially built. Maybe they would have gotten the cap over 95 and part of the complex done before the economy tanked. Oh well, it doesn't matter now: all those proposals are DEAD. The current Master Plan for the waterfront is less actual plan and more of a suggestion; maybe that's the best way to finally get our shitty waterfront developed. Bah.
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Gov. Tom Corbett quietly appointed Republican City Commissioner Al Schmidt to the Philadelphia Parking Authority board on Friday, delivering a boost to insurgents taking on the Republican Party establishment led by Michael Meehan. The PPA has been known as a hotbed of Republican patronage since then-state Rep. and now-prison-inmate John Perzel orchestrated a state takeover in 2001.
“On the list of people Michael Meehan would not like to see on the Parking Authority Board, Al Schmidt would be on the top,” says Matthew Wolfe, the Republican 47th Ward leader and a lead dissident. “There was an agreement between the Republicans and the Democrats for some sharing of that patronage. ... Over time, the Democrats took it over. And then John Perzel got a bill passed and basically put it under his control. And then the Republicans' began to share again in that patronage.”
Republican politics in Philadelphia are defined by a split between reformers, who complain about party decline and patronage, and the party establishment led by Michael Meehan (technically the party's “legal counsel,” he is the third generation of Meehans to run the city party). Vito Canuso Jr., an attorney and establishment candidate, was voted party chairman in 2010 in an election later overturned by the state party. In May, the insurgents elected Rick Hellberg chairman. But Meehan supporters boycotted the meeting. Both men claim to be chairman.
In 2008, Act 129 went into effect, requiring Pennsylvania’s seven major electric utilities, including PECO, to reduce their customers’ energy consumption and peak demands. As a result, utilities are now offering opportunities for customers to receive rebates and other incentives to improve energy efficiencies — and the programs have worked exceptionally well. Not only did PECO praise its own efforts in a March 2012 press release (“In response to Act 129, Peco has implemented energy efficiency programs dedicating over $50 million dollars to programs and products that increase energy efficiency”). But people in the environmental community also give kudos to Act 129; PennFuture’s Andrew Sharp calls the act’s first phase “an unqualified success.”
But the Public Utility Commission recently issued regulations for phase 2 of Act 129, scheduled to start in May 2013, and PECO is challenging them. PECO’s “Petition for Reconsideration” specifically objects to the phase 2 energy-reduction goal of 2.9 percent. The company wants to reduce spending on the program, thus reducing energy efficiencies.
As of Nov. 7, the Roxy — the last movie theater standing in Center City west (provided you don't count the Forum) — is scheduled to shut its doors, according to Joe Mitchell of San-Mor, the company that owns the theater as well as the Adrienne just across the street. He says San-Mor has terminated the lease of longtime operator Bernard Neary, who wasn't able to land the kind of independent films San-Mor had envisioned, instead showing mainstream, major-studio movies. "We're reaching out through the media to find someone to keep an independent theater alive in the city," Mitchell says. He says they could probably sell the theater pretty easily, but they hope to avoid that.
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The bitterly contested Chicago teacher's strike is over and both sides have declared victory. But in a little noticed statement, The U.S. Conference of Mayors has announced that it backed the city's tough fight against the union, “strongly commend[ing] Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for achieving an historic education contract” and “commend[ing] Mayor Emanuel for his commitment to the children in his great city.”
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