Chelten & Pulaski:

A Wake Up Call for Developers

 

 I like to call the proposed Chelten and Pulaski Avenues development project the Germantown Gateway Project, for it is already well suited to urban planning in the 21st century. You don’t have to be a city planner to visualize its potential. It has all the elements to jump start a long-dormant economy with what is in place and available for the fraction of the cost in time and money compared to what is spent elsewhere to achieve similar results.  What you have is a main commercial corridor, rail transit line to center city virtually on premises, two bus routes that terminate at the location and two more a block away.  This is not to mention the renovated housing developments and upscale high rises in the immediate area.

 

The extraordinary community turnout at public meetings held by Germantown’s predominate Community Organization (GCC) after learning of the carefully-hidden agenda of the political structure and a single developer and his affiliates put front and center in no uncertain terms that the development plans as presented fall so far short of well-planned and balanced utilization that almost no one supports them.

 

The push-back from the developer and his legal arm has only exacerbated the problem and in some cases pushed the community into fractionalizing over what should be secondary considerations and missing the fundamental issue that this “deal” represents.  It is essentially a retread of how business has been done in the Northwest, and particularly Germantown, for the last 25 years.  The moment could not be better to put facts, history and demands on the table with the changing of the political guard next week and a major city election only months away.

 

At this very moment who leases the stores, how many there might be, who shows interest and who does not should not be prioritized.  The insight and planning, proper utilization of existing assets, inclusive partnering with all who have something to contribute, is where the emphasis should be.  This should not be confined to the huge response that has taken place at two community meetings, but should include all those who have development interests in this community and all those who might want to.  Two quotes sum up my point: “If you build it they will come” and “A rising tide lifts all boats”.

 

Few in Germantown trust developers or politicians of any stripe; and why should they?  The real estate assets of Germantown and also nearby Mt. Airy and adjacent communities have been cherry picked, given away, and financed into failure with public money through the political structure in a manner that everyone became aware of but has been powerless to stop.  Only now are the horrifying details of how much money was wasted and misspent with a few insider developer types, and there is much more to learn. What must be understood is that almost everyone who developed anything of any substance in the Northwest played the game with that political structure and the desired outcome for the developer almost always far outran any organized community input.

 

Now there were a couple of significant exceptions, but even those that seemed to have been more comprehensive most often were decided in favor of and funded  for the same insider group, if you peeled back the first layer of propaganda.  Two exceptions I can think of were the Acme at Germantown Ave and Sedgwick where community pressure actually had the entire building and its layout changed to suit a view divergent with that of the developer, and the Presser Home on Johnson Street where public pressure stopped a mayor and councilperson sponsored demolition project and had the property developed under open bidding with a use that suits community need and set a new standard for local development. Despite those situations, several in-process projects in the Northwest that are ongoing presently were engineered with the same kind of back-room dealing often under the regulatory radar.

 

That is exactly where Chelten Plaza was headed.  Despite the extensive website presentation that Fresh Grocer’s multiple City/Suburban developments are “Community Partnerships”, this one was hatched in that “Germantown Settlement Mold” that we all know and love. You know - - you are told at the last minute what is going to happen so there is little time to learn and participate as a community,  then you are patronized regarding some minor details, and then bulldozed into submission by increasingly higher level elected officials if the public interest gets too vocal. Just about every developer learned to keep their mouths shut even if they saw something coming that was rife with poor planning or wasteful misuse of assets; as the message was out there for when they needed help or public money for one of their own deals. Sadly, many of those projects that were supposed to become self-supporting after some initial public money are still on public triage many years later; often under new names and corporate identities.

 

This is the moment for all those long standing and newly minted local developers who have bought into the Germantown and the Northwest community to “Get Religion”, unify, take a stand and give this community the opportunity to rebuild from this day forward with motives that are far beyond inside deals with short term profiteering as the primary motive.  Residents who don’t know should be aware that some of the most recognized local developers have all acquired properties either directly adjacent to, or nearby this last undeveloped parcel of Central Germantown.  The right kind of composite transit oriented mid-scale competitive development here should be seen as the best thing that could possibly happen by both residents and those developers - - but the latter group is strangely silent.

 

We are going to have a new City Council person in this district and that alone has been reason for many to rejoice. The largest and most invisible politically-supported developer of all has just had his primary assets taken from him by Federal Court and the power base that he ruled is over, if not yet fully exposed.  The time is right for those who “played ball” to keep their own individual agendas alive to be part of a new day and new way.  Contrary to popular belief in Philadelphia, there is nothing wrong with some transparent competition and plenty wrong with “Pay to Play”.

 

Form up Business Types, take your message to the city/state/federal leadership and organize to put the brakes on what is presently on the table.  Start over with something we can all be proud of and participate in.

 

Remember: "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”

 

 

Jim Foster

Publisher

Germantown Newspapers Inc.

5275 Germantown Ave.

Philadelphia Pa.

215-438-5171