Courage, Anyone?

 

OK, we all know that the politicians and Emanuel Freeman had a stranglehold on development in Germantown for the last 25 years. You other developers only got what Freeman did not want or Miller, Evans, Rendell, Street, or Chaka did not bother to give him.  Occasionally, something that needed no public funding, zoning variances or input from the Council office might slip through, but you all kept your mouths shut and lived with it.  Everyone in Germantown over 12 knows that.

 

But Miller is a lame duck and there is an opportunity to actually create something like a functioning honest democratic system of development in Germantown. But, at the first opportunity, those who might have a major impact on preventing the restart of the same back door dealing in the dark between elected officials and an inside developer walk away in silence.

 

Take a look at every major intersection where development was done in the last 25 years and what do you see?  Substandard poorly designed misuse of key locations that don't serve the community, cost millions more than they should and still went bankrupt, were done for quick profits for "friends of politicians", or are an insult to architecture and engineering that would never have been built anywhere but Germantown.  Would anyone really want to send their children to a school like Pickett where every effort was made to make it resemble a federal maximum security prison?   Across the street is a waste of a key intersection and city block.  Freedom Square ! a multi-million dollar failure financed twice, and Debary Square built around an auto parts store? 

 

Well, the Burgess Center has some curb appeal and at least the parking is not its most prominent feature, but how many times will we spend two or three times what something is worth to get something that serves the developer first and then the community only as an afterthought?

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, get some courage, unify and send a message to all those in political leadership, that the planned use of the only vacant major area in Germantown must change the pattern once and for all and make the best long range use of all those assets already in place.   The Chelten & Pulaski project should be named the Germantown Gateway and include City Planning, SEPTA, serious developer participation and the community to at least make up for all the damage done to what once was a vital self-serving self-supporting community  that was open 24 hours a day in some cases; not shut down at 5:30 out of fear.

 

Do I have to tell developers at your level that a rising tide lifts all boats?  Don't you think folks will want to live near a combination transit and commercial center that has at least mid-range stores and services?  Would it not make all adjacent areas more valuable and raise rents over a period of time?  The lies told by the developer that no one would come to Germantown except for low end purchases are bogus. East Falls is minutes away as are other neighborhoods, and with good transit, folks might just stop there from center city and then get back on. The options are manifold.

 

It is unreasonable to expect only the community association to carry all the water when the politicians dial them out with complete silence and no advance notice of the back door deal they made. In no other community would someone give absolutely no notice to the public of a major project like this until three or four days before shut down and reconstruction.  The City Planning Commission should be announcing this, not a clerk at a low end failing food store.

 

Take a look at the "build-date" on the largest commercial building in Germantown, at the corner of Germantown and Chelten.  The huge Rowell building proudly tells everyone it was built in 1950.  Obviously the developer then did not think that Germantown was "on its way out" to invest the kind of money it took to build that when many areas were already thinking "suburban".  Yet, within 15 years, the worst misuse of a city neighborhood began and 10 years later the rape of Germantown was well under way.

 

Unify and do something as a block of developers.  Join the community types and stop this outrage.

 

Jim Foster

Editor/Publisher

Germantown Newspapers Inc.

6661 Germantown Avenue

Philadelphia Pa 19119

215-438-5171