Current Cedar Park Neighbors Board members (Photo courtesy CPN).

Cedar Park Neighbors (CPN), the community association for the Cedar Park neighborhood, is recruiting candidates for its board of directors.

The deadline for nominations is March 27, 2015. The openings are for two-year terms starting in June. To qualify you need to live in Cedar Park (here is a map) and register as a CPN member by April.

Responsibilities include participating in monthly two-hour board meetings and committee work. CPN handles a number of neighborhood initiatives, including block organizing and a scholarship fund, and consults with the city on zoning matters.

Contact Meg Ferrigno at skyflowers0@gmail.com or 267-241-7606 with questions. To be considered, e-mail a “concise” (under 500 words) biography to the address above.

Board elections will be held at the annual membership meeting on Monday, April 20, at 7 p.m. at the Calvary Center at 48th & Baltimore.

More information is available on the CPN website.

You still have one more chance to see the inside of the enigmatic St. Andrew’s Chapel, the beautiful church at the corner of 42nd and Spruce that hasn’t been regularly open to the public for 40 years.

Earlier this month the chapel hosted the temporary art installation “Ci-Lines” by Aaron Asis. The installation’s closing on Saturday will include “Stories of St. Andrew’s,” a discussion featuring three experts on the history of churches in the city.

St. Andrew’s was built in 1923 by the Philadelphia Divinity School to educate Episcopal priests and has not been open to the public since 1974. Learn more about the church’s history during the talk, which runs from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Speakers will include:

• Davis d’Ambly – A liturgical artist who has worked in churches all over the city.

• Michael Krasluski – A librarian and professor at the University of the Sciences who curated the Philadelphia Studies blog, which tells the history of the city’s Episcopal churches through parish archives.

• Bob Legani – A member of the last graduating class of the Philadelphia Divinity School and a sacrastan who prepared the chapel for daily services for three years.

Fresh, locally grown fruits and veggies are just a couple of months away! Local summer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs will resume in May and already started accepting applications. CSAs usually work as a seasonal subscription programs where subscribers purchase a share of the produce grown on a local farm.

Urban and rural farms, food entrepreneurs and restaurants are participating in this summer’s CSA programs by supplying locally grown or prepared items, including produce, dairy, meat, honey, baked goods, coffee, beer, and more! Here’s a list of assorted CSA programs, which offer share pick-up location in West Philadelphia. Please note that Greensgrow Farms is currently offering early bird CSA sign-up discounts.  Continue Reading

A large building project has just been completed in West Powelton. A ribbon-cutting ceremony took place Wednesday for Bigham Leatherberry Wise Place, a new affordable housing project, which includes eleven units. A vacant lot and an existing structure at 4226-32 Powelton Avenue were transformed into the homes, seven of which are for formerly homeless women with special needs and their children. The housing includes six two-bedroom and five three-bedroom units, two of them will be fully accessible to people with disabilities and one will be accessible to individuals with sensory impairments. Bigham Leatherberry Wise Place also features a courtyard containing a rain garden and a large rear yard.  Continue Reading

Fire officials are investigating the cause of a fire that broke out early Thursday morning at Café Renata (4305 Locust St.), sending one woman to the hospital.

The woman, who has not been identified, lived in an apartment above the café and suffered from smoke inhalation. She was listed in stable condition this morning. Café Renata was heavily damaged in the fire, which firefighters brought under control after about 30 minutes. The U Do We Do Laundromat next door to Café Renata also suffered some damage but was open this morning.

Café Renata co-owners Kate Steenstra and Yasser Aiq rent the space for their restaurant. It was not clear this morning when it might reopen.

Vacant lots in some parts of Philly are suddenly a hot commodity, meaning that the makeshift community gardens that residents have tended, sometimes for years, are disappearing. One that is in a fight for its life right now is the garden adjacent to the Ahimsa House on the 5000 block of Cedar Avenue.

Photo from the Ahimsa House’s Facebook page.

The property at 5005 Cedar was vacant until earlier this year, when a developer snatched it up just before it was to go up for sheriff’s sale. The likely buyer in that sale would have been Meg Ferrigno, who runs the Ahimsa House next door at 5007 Cedar, a community space focused on environmental sustainability and community mindfulness. A couple of years back the Ahimsa House began cultivating vegetables on the vacant lot and started a program to help students at nearby Samuel B. Huey School learn how to grow food.

“My neighbors helped shovel over a ton of compost mix onto the lot so we can grow organic veggies and fruits and have the space be 100 percent lead-free,” said Ferrigno in an e-mail. “The garden provides food for anyone who wants it and it provides a point of human-nature connection for our neighborhood. Everyone can plant, compost and harvest and we simply keep track of what is where on the chalkboard on the side of the house.”

As the owner of an adjacent property, Ferrigno had been advised to request that the property be put up for sheriff’s sale. The last owner died in the 80s, she said. But just before the sale a developer bought the property, brought the taxes up to date and then sold it to another developer for $62,000. That developer is willing to sell it to Ferrigno, but for no a dime under $80,000.

So now the fundraising has begun. Ahimsa House raised nearly $5,000 in a recent Indiegogo campaign. Now they have a GoFundMe campaign, which you can find here.

Once the garden is purchased back, Ferrigno plans to place it into a land trust. You can talk to Ferrigno about the garden by e-mailing ahimsahousephilly@gmail.com or calling 215-488-7772.

– Mike Lyons