The past year has brought a lot of hope to Lancaster Avenue’s commercial corridor. The historic street has been seeing a lot of growth with the addition of new businesses and the creation of community initiatives.
With the addition of after school program, Mighty Writers, new businesses and new low-income housing provided by People’s Emergency Center, the West Philadelphia community is seeing rapid development.
This past January, the Obama Administration designated a portion of West Philadelphia as one of its first set of Promise Zones. These assigned areas have been chosen to receive support in creating jobs and investment in initiatives that will help communities thrive. Lancaster Avenue’s commercial corridor falls in the center of the assigned area and therefore, will also be eligible to receive some of these benefits from the Promise Zone designation.
“Because our work has primarily been around the Lancaster Avenue corridor, and around building affordable housing for our families, ” said president and CEO of People’s Emergency Center, Farah Jimenez, “we are anticipating that our emphasis is going to be around those kinds of funding requests.”
Lancaster Avenue has historically been a commercial district and organizations like PEC and Lancaster Avenue Business Association plan to keep it that way.
“We have this really strong emphasis now on Lancaster Avenue where we’re acquiring commercial buildings and we are tenanting them with ground floor retail and restaurants,” said Jimenez. “That’s our vision.”
PEC, founded in 1972, was initially established as an organization to serve homeless women and children. The organization eventually expanded its resources to serve low-income families in the community by providing cheap housing and financial education tools. According to a 2013 report by PEW Charitable Trusts, more than 40 percent of the population in the West Philadelphia and the University City District are living below the federal poverty line. PEC’s mission has been to serve this 40 percent.
Most recently, the organization opened six rental housing units for low to moderate-income families. According to Jimenez, the organization currently offers 240 housing units in total with subsidized rent in West Philadelphia.
While PEC has been buying up property on Lancaster Avenue for low-income housing, Drexel University has been purchasing land to create into student housing. The university, which has been expanding its campus over the course of the last few decades is seeking to increase their enrollment by nearly 7,000 students by 2017 and by 2021, they are planning to have a total of 34,000 students.
Due to this expansion, students have been slowly making their way north of campus, toward the Lancaster Avenue commercial corridor. Drexel recently broke ground on their newest dorm building in November of 2013, which is currently under construction on 34th and Lancaster Avenue. The building will be 24 stories when completed and will offer dining and student housing for university students.
With the mix of both longtime residents and university students living in the area, Jimenez said that Lancaster Avenue needs to become a place that suits the needs of both demographics.
“The ultimate desire is that this becomes a place of destination that knits together the community of need that we serve,” she said, “but also the larger, more resourced community that needs a place to shop and to dine and frankly needs places where they can have jobs.”
This revitalization on Lancaster Avenue represents centuries of change on the historic road.
Lancaster Avenue was originally known as Old Philadelphia Road in the early 1700’s and eventually became the Lancaster Turnpike decades later as settlers started to move out west to Lancaster, one of the country’s first inland cities.
Finally, in 1913, the road was paved and created as the Lincoln Highway, which became the first highway in America. The highway started in New York City, passed through Philadelphia, and ran west out to San Francisco.
It was because of both Lancaster Avenue’s location as a hub out to the West and it’s proximity to the trolley lines that it became a bustling area for businesses in the 1900’s.
The avenue started to see a decrease in business as stores and buildings became desolate at the end of the 20th century.
With the expansion of the West Philadelphia universities and new government interest in supporting the area, this appears to be an exciting time to be on Lancaster Avenue.
– Text, video and images by Katelynn Luczkow and Milena Corredor.
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