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After decades of population and job losses, developers and community leaders have hope that Brewerytown can take advantage of its proximity to Center City to become a thriving area for small business owners. New shops have begun moving into the neighborhood and with them, come more jobs.
“The more people that live in this area, the more retail, the more jobs it will help create,” said Mario Presta, president of the Girard Business Association. “It’s a win-win situation.”
The businesses that make up the heart of Brewerytown range from barber shops, salons and Chinese restaurants that have been in the neighborhood for years, to newer stores like Rita’s Water Ice and the planned Mugshots Café. It is that dichotomy that both excites and concerns residents.
Rodney Henry lives in Brewerytown and is the manager of Center Stage, a clothing store on Girard Avenue that he has run since 2005. While times remain tough for small business owners like Henry, he believes that the new stores opening up around him will lead to more foot traffic along West Girard Avenue. “I’ve put too much time and effort into this [business] to go back to working nine to five,” said Henry. “I know it’s going to turn around.”
The recession hit business owners in places like Brewerytown, where the effects of crime had already scared away many people from the stores. The lack of adequate street lighting also helped to keep people away from the businesses. “People were scared to come around [at night] because it was dark,” said Presta.
So the city of Philadelphia used money from the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, a total of $1.2 million, to install new street lamps along the West Girard Avenue business corridor. Private investors accelerated neighborhood transformation by acquiring property shells and renting them to small business owners. MMPartners LLC. put up the $50,000 start-up cash so that the café, Mugshots, could open up its third location along the Girard Avenue business corridor. The population started to grow. But there was still a lot of work to do.
According to the Brewerytown Neighborhood Plan compiled by the Brewerytown and Fairmount Community Development Corp,, one in five residents left the neighborhood from 1990 to 2000. The population fell from nearly 28,000 in 1970 to little over 12,000 in the year 2000.
Presta believes that the threat of crime has been the No. 1 factor in the severe population drought. He also thinks the city should do more to fix the blighted housing problem, present in not just Brewerytown, but in neighborhoods all over Philadelphia.
“A lot of the property was PHA housing, that created a problem because there was a lot more vacant property,” said Presta. “They didn’t want to keep up with it.”
Presta believes the city should embrace the private investors looking to buy up property in Brewerytown. “A private investor will keep up with it.”
In a survey conducted by the Brewerytown and Fairmount Community Development Corp., nearly 20 percent of residents say they make $10,000 or less, while that same survey reported that 25 percent make more than $50,000 a year.
That same survey showed that 42 percent of residents think that crime is the worse part about living in the neighborhood, with the lack of jobs at 22 percent.
So what needs to happen in order to keep the revitalization going in Brewerytown?
“The city needs to have a more speedy development process,” said Presta, who owns multiple properties in Philadelphia. “People have to wait too long to go to the zoning board to have issues fixed. They only need one person to disagree with a new business to hold up development.”
According to Presta, if anyone were to interfere with a development plan, that plan could fall apart. “That’s a problem,” said Presta. “We have to be concerned with what everybody says, but we have to be more active for people who have the investment. In this area we lost two years of development. The neighborhood suffers. The businesses suffer, there’s less population. If the two years were more active, let’s put a house here, or a parking lot over there, why do we have to wait so long for it?”
So why the hold up? Presta says people were holding up the proposed projects. Once someone from the neighborhood voiced opposition, there had to be an appeal, which could take up to a year to yield a decision. “You waste money and time, and during the boom time of the economy. It’s wrong. And you’re not serving the population.”
The past 10 years have seen numerous private investors coming into Brewerytown with plans of either buying up property shells or vacant land to turn into new businesses or residential housing. One developer, John Westrum, had plans to build an upscale town home development that catered to young urban professionals. The homes sold for around $250,000, causing the average home price to skyrocket 163 percent higher in Brewerytown than it was a decade ago. However, the planned 400-unit development has halted with just one phase of the project, around 140 homes, completed.
Other investors are more concerned with buying up the blighted houses, fixing them up and attracting small businesses. “We employ a lot of people from the neighborhood,” said Jacob Roller, co-manager of MMPartners LLC., a development company that has been an integral part in attracting more businesses. “With all the new construction we are doing here, there are a lot of employment opportunities with that.”
Still, there is a concern in Brewerytown that the wealthy developers coming into the area are seeking to gain by gentrification, forcing the low-income residents who have lived in the neighborhood for decades out. Development has been tough,” said Fairmount CDC President Rebecca E. Johnson, “there has been some opposition.”
There are many people, like Presta and MMPartners LLC., who think the key to Brewerytown’s reclamation lies in the hands of the developers and residents working together. “The more businesses that come here, the more opportunity for jobs for people in the neighborhood,” said Presta. “Everything goes hand-in-hand.”
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