Along a corridor of progress
Not long ago, the four blocks along Lancaster Avenue in West Powelton were seen to be in decline. Now, the happy din of construction fills the air.
By Alan J. Heavens
Inquirer Real Estate Writer
PETER TOBIA/Inquirer Staff Photographer
LaTonya Furman, owner of the New Angle tavern, has plenty of reasons to smile. Her place of business is at the center of an ambitious plan to bring the neighborhood back by emphasizing both residential and commercial aspects of redevelopment - to keep people and money in the community.
If you're looking for quiet time, 39th Street and Lancaster Avenue in the West Powelton neighborhood of West Philadelphia may not be the place to go.
At 11 a.m. on a recent warm morning, the neighborhood was resounding with the din of reconstruction, with more than a dozen residential projects in various stages of completion.
Unlike the rumble of the Route 10 trolley, the cacophony of construction is new to this neighborhood. Just 13 years ago, the city plan for West Philadelphia described Lancaster Avenue as a "corridor in decline." But while there are certainly long stretches that still fit that description, this part doesn't appear to be one of them.
All the activity hasn't been lost on LaTonya Furman, who for the last 20 years has run the family-owned New Angle tavern on the triangular piece of property created by the intersection of Lancaster and Haverford Avenues and North 39th Street. In her words, that "puts us in the center of everything."
Furman wants to turn her tavern into a full-service restaurant and jazz club. She's getting help with architects and historic-preservation issues from the People's Emergency Center Community Development Corp., which has leveraged $20 million in public and private funding over the last decade to turn 78 blighted properties into 100 units of housing, four social-service facilities, and a tot lot, says the organization's Main Street manager, Erin Trent.
Urban planners have learned, after years of trial and error, that residential and commercial development have to go hand-in-hand. So in January, the citywide Community Design Collaborative, a volunteer group that offers free advice on design issues to nonprofits, launched "Infill Philadelphia," a five-year, three-phase initiative to promote workable solutions for redeveloping vacant tracts through innovative design.
The first phase, called Commercial Philadelphia, focuses on just the kind of project Furman and the People's Emergency Center group want to take on. It is funded by an 18-month, $175,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation.
"Commercial corridors are truly a pulse point of strong neighborhoods," said Mark Edwards, program director of the Philadelphia Local Initiatives Support Corp., which has partnered with the design collaborative on the initiative. He called these corridors "critical zippers" that bind neighborhoods and keep residents and business dollars local.
Beth Miller, executive director of the design collaborative, said such efforts "knit communities back together."
Furman's project is one of three in the city that are part of the "design challenge" phase of Commercial Philadelphia. A jury of 10 experts is serving as adviser on that project and two others - the reuse of the Imperial Theater in the 60th Street commercial corridor between Walnut and Spruce Streets in West Philadelphia and creation of a new "gateway" to the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District at the intersection of Broad Street, East Passyunk Avenue, and McKean Street in South Philadelphia.
Three design firms volunteered to work directly on the projects: CICADA Architecture/Planning Inc. with Furman and the People's Emergency Center CDC; Terra Studio with Partnership CDC on the Imperial, and Brown & Keener Bressi Urban Design and Place Planning on the East Passyunk District gateway.
Furman is enthusiastic about what's been going on along her stretch of Lancaster Avenue, from 38th to 42d Streets, noting the diversity being achieved as artists and art galleries move in.
"We work with artists, and others to try to find them affordable housing," said Trish Downey, who has been with the People's Emergency Center group for seven years. "We started seeing great changes in the neighborhood about 2002 and an increase in community participation. We've spent a lot of time coming up with our own ideas to make that revitalization smoother, and they've been working."
Though Trent's job is to get a variety of businesses into the four-block corridor, she acknowledges that the artists' collaboratives especially have come with very workable business models.
Business owners are connected to the neighborhood, even if they don't live there, Downey said, and they work with the People's Emergency Center's community-development operation because they know it will help them grow.
"There's been a lot of change, especially in the last two years, with all this building," Furman said as she greeted regulars from behind the bar. "From here to Market Street, to Drexel University and Penn, condos and townhouses are coming in, and new people, too."
Housing prices have increased as real estate investors have begun looking favorably at the neighborhood, with the median sale price reaching $101,500 in 2006, a 12.5 percent increase over 2005, according to Prudential Fox & Roach's HomExpert survey.
Furman said the University of Pennsylvania's contribution to West Philadelphia's revitalization over the last five years cannot be overstated.
"Because of Penn, this has become like another little section of University City," she said. "Eventually, it may be like what Temple University has done [along North Broad Street] and go all the way up," she said, pointing west.
Others also have contributed to the neighborhood's revitalization.
For example, a $25,000 grant from Bank of America's Charitable Foundation (there's a bank branch in the neighborhood) helped fund a streetscape project by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in September that included planting street trees, removing diseased species, and pruning extensively.
The Mural Arts Program completed a work called Just Before Fall, depicting an awe-inspiring tree, at 3911 Lancaster Ave., Trent said. The program also came up with the mosaic tiles surrounding each of the new trees.
There's a police station across Lancaster Avenue from the New Angle, and, aided by a community-watch organization, crime seems to be well in hand, Furman said. Officers are "very responsive," she added.
Furmans have owned the New Angle and the block since 1972, the same year that People's Emergency Center CDC began its neighborhood efforts. (The tavern was called the Triangle until 1992, when LaTonya renamed it; she took it over in 1987, when she was in her early 20s.)
In May or June, Furman said, she expects construction to start on the first-floor restaurant and the second-floor jazz club. There also will be a sidewalk cafe.
"We are hoping we can do the work so that we don't have to close, by doing the work on one side at a time," she said. "Because sometimes, when you shut completely down, there's a chance that you can lose the regulars."
The New Angle's regulars are very much like the cast of Cheers, she said with a laugh, "a very diverse group. Actually, better than Cheers. Unbelievable. Everybody's their own person, their own character.
"There's really more than enough here for a TV series."
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