University City High School site purchased by Drexel (Click to enlarge).

Demolition of the former University City High School building is scheduled to begin in late February, but it is still unclear what Drexel University, which purchased the site from the school district last year, and their partner, Wexford, plan to do with the site.

Drexel had originally indicated that it hoped to build, among other things, a new public school on the site, which would help ease the sting felt by local residents from losing the high school and Charles Drew Elementary, which sat on the same 14-acre site. Demolition of Drew started earlier this month, and the Walnut Center has already been demolished.

“We are continuing our efforts to engage the community on the vision and plans to transform this site,” said Drexel spokesperson Niki Gianakaris.

She said the university plans to create a “mixed-use environment where the community and private sector will come together in a work, live and play environment.”

Charles Drew Elementary demolition underway (Photo by Marina Krikorian).

Demolition is expected to be complete later this year, she said, adding that plans for the site had not been finalized.

As part of its bid to buy the property from the School District of Philadelphia last February, Drexel presented a plan during a public meeting that included an enlarged Powel Elementary School and a middle school on the site.

The plan also included residential housing and retail space.

The plan met with some skepticism among residents of the Mantua neighborhood, where many University City High School students lived. Several Powelton Village neighborhood residents who attended that meeting last February voiced approval of the possible expansion of Powel Elementary.

– Mike Lyons

Fresh, healthy food is a luxury a lot of folks can’t afford, but the Powelton-based People’s Emergency Center and Drexel University have come up with a way to combine healthier food and economic opportunity with the recently launched Fresh Start Foods West Philadelphia.

The program provides unemployed young adults an opportunity to build skills through paid food service apprenticeships through Drexel’s Department of Culinary Arts and Food Science. The apprenticeships will include culinary preparation training, nutrition, meal planning and recipe development. The first cohort will begin in March.

Once fully operational, the program will be able to provide some 2,000 healthy meals each day to neighborhood school children. Organizers also plan to open a retail store next fall at 3945 Lancaster Ave.

Fresh Start Foods West Philadelphia has received more than $700,000 in federal and state grants.

On Tuesday, Sept 23, the local Red Cross and its partners will hold a major fire safety event in two West Philadelphia neighborhoods in an effort to reduce fires and fire fatalities.

On Tuesday morning, from about 10 – 11 a.m., more than 1,200 fire safety kits will be handed out to residents at Drexel Park (33rd and Powelton). The kits contain valuable, potentially life-saving information on the importance of smoke alarms, how to prevent fires, what to do if there is a fire, and how to create a fire escape plan for the entire family, including pets. Each year, the local Red Cross distributes more than 10,000 fire safety kits.

After handing out the kits, a dozen Red Cross personnel along with over 100 NRG Energy employees from across the country will conduct fire safety walkthroughs in the Powelton Village and Mantua neighborhoods. Mantua typically sees a high number of fires each year.

It’s one of the largest fire safety walkthroughs the Red Cross will conduct in Philadelphia this year. The walkthrough is part of national preparedness month and a precursor to October’s fire safety awareness month.

Hawthorne Hall (Photo from grayareaphilly.org)

Down every street, and around every corner, we see Philadelphia’s history chronicled in the old brick roads, the abandoned trolley tracks, and every lot overrun by foliage.

Most of all, we see the city’s history in the timeworn foundations of its older buildings. Be it the imposing Provident Mutual Life Insurance building or the grandiose Divine Lorraine Hotel, Philadelphia’s antiquity is forever sealed in their unique brickwork and beguiling design.

But how we preserve the architecture of that history has become uninspired, if not non-existent. Instead, Philly’s historic buildings are bulldozed to make way for shopping centers and luxurious townhouses. Or they’re left abandoned—nothing more than waning icons relegated to the pronoun of “I wonder what that used to be.”

That’s where GRAY AREA comes in. Supported by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, GRAY AREA is an experimental project launched by the University of the Arts and DesignPhiladelphia of the Center for Architecture that looks at “historic preservation in the modern city.” Currently in its third phase, GRAY AREA aims to engage both design and development experts and the public at large in envisaging creative ways to maintain and repurpose the city’s older buildings so they’re moments of revitalization in their communities.

As part of its third phase, known as GRAY AREA 3, a multi-disciplinary cohort of experts and community partners spent most of last year studying two historic buildings: Hawthorne Hall (3849 Lancaster Avenue) in Powelton Village/Mantua, and the Max Levy building (212-220 Roberts Avenue) in Germantown. Armed with a series of questions raised during GRAY AREA’s first two phases—a panel discussion and a facilitated conversation, respectively—the team researched the buildings’ history and their cultural significance in an effort to cultivate ideas for “eventual interpretation, reuse and design.”

This Wed, May 28, the GRAY AREA 3 team will gather at the Catalyst for Change Church (3727 Baring Street) to share their findings on Hawthorne Hall with the West Philly community. The event, which begins at 6 p.m., will serve as the third phase’s final community meeting in which they will test a preservation toolkit developed for “encouraging meaningful dialogue, making unexpected and new connections, and generating ideas,” GRAY AREA Project Director Elise Vider told West Philly Local.
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The remnants of the “Fake House” which was demolished last month to make room for a new apartment building. Photo: Mike Lyons/West Philly Local.

Last month, a graffiti-covered building at 3862 Lancaster Avenue was demolished to make way for a three-story, 22-unit apartment building to be developed by Turn Key Realty LLC, according to city records. The building sat vacant after its residents were evicted last December.

The building was formerly a venue and makeshift apartment for artists called the “Fake House.” It was first occupied by a group of artists in the late ‘80s, according to an article by Philadelphia Weekly, and had occupants and musical performances up until the evictions.

The building was known as Fake House because the word “Fake” was painted in large letters on the front of the building. Much of the graffiti on the building enforced its counter-culture reputation, as there were strong anti-gentrification and anti-corporate messages.

The occupants never signed a formal lease, and as one resident admitted to Philadelphia Weekly almost a decade ago, “We know we’re all this close to losing our space. Anything could change at any time.”

He was right, of course. But the fascinating and somewhat subversive alt/punk hub still got another decade under its belt. The final punk show took place just a week before the evictions.

–Alex Vuocolo

Community Connector program volunteers. Photo courtesy of PEC.

There are a patchwork of community groups, improvement districts and major institutions trying to distribute news to their constituents in West Philadelphia, from fliers piled in the entranceway of a local church to email chains and Facebook pages.

Some of these efforts, such as the University City District’s (UCD) printed newsletter, have achieved widespread distribution and are commonly seen at coffee shops stacked next to the latest weekly newspapers.

But without the resources of the UCD, how can community groups get important news like road closings or information about available services out into the community?

The People’s Emergency Center (PEC) is experimenting with a model that enlists members of the community to distribute the news themselves.

PEC’s Community Connector program drops off informational materials on a bi-weekly basis to volunteers located in the neighborhoods of Belmont, Mantua, West Powelton, Saunders Park, Mill Creek and Powelton Village.

The volunteers then distribute the materials to every house within a four block radius of their home. Volunteers must also hand in a completed log sheet when new materials are delivered and are invited to attend monthly meetings.

“We believe that direct face-to-face interaction is one of the most effective methods for disseminating information and building credible relationships with a community,” said Cassandra Green, manager of community outreach and partnerships at PEC.

The idea for the program was pioneered by The Enterprise Center in the Walnut Hill neighborhood. PEC was able to replicate it through the support of the Philadelphia Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a local branch of the federal community development organization.

PEC was intent on figuring out a way to better get news out to the community because it wanted residents to know about its wide variety of programs addressing housing, unemployment, financial counseling and social services.

“Without knowing what assistance is available many residents who are eligible simply miss out,” Green said. “Information about these resources should be disseminated in the most direct way possible – through one-on-one human contact.”

For more information, contact Cassandra Green at 267-777-5893 or cgreen@pec-cares.org.

–Alex Vuocolo