University City District: 20 Years, 20 Stories

U N IVERSIT Y CIT Y D IST RI C T presents

20 YEARS

20 STORIES

UNIVERSIT Y CIT Y DISTRICT presents

20 YEARS 20 STORIES

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Contents 1 2 3 4 5

Introduction

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A Clean Neighborhood

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Manakeesh Café

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The Dirt Factory

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University City Arts League

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UCD’s Leaders

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6 The Mayor of The Porch at 30th Street Station 7 Clark Park 8 Dahlak 9 Judy Wicks 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

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The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative

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Dock Street Brewery

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Philadanco

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The Enterprise Center

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The University City Review

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University City District Founders

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Safety Ambassador Shaun Loadholt

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UCD’s Mr. Fix-It

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Mariposa: The Little Co-op that Could

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The Rise of Philadelphia’s Second Skyline

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A Look Back - and Forward - from UCD’s Chairs

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UCD Milestones

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Afterword

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Introduction

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t is said that the only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come. In 20 years, University City and University City District have come a long way.

As UCD caps its 20th anniversary celebration, it is especially meaningful to reflect on our founding principles: community, partnership and possibility.

This compendium shares stories that mirror these principles through individual and collective efforts to shape and advance a special place.

In 1997, neighbors, businesses and institutions organized under a simple but powerful idea: together, we could make an enduring impact on a place that so many cared about. In our earliest days, this notion was put to the test on issues of existential bearing to the health of a community: grappling with public safety crises; reimagining forlorn commercial corridors; recasting the story of University City to attract businesses and entice residents and consumers.

By every objective measure, this foundational work was a success. The passion and steadfastness of residents, the drive of small business owners and cultural institutions, the vision of anchor institutions and the hard work of the team at UCD and so many other organizations have shaped a neighborhood of choice, exceptional not just in the city and region, but anywhere.

The stories in this book provide a look into the actors – both here at UCD and throughout the neighborhood – who have made this transformation possible. From world-renowned dance troupes to food system trailblazers to local nonprofits that make an impact on local residents every day, 20 Years, 20 Stories reflects the unique, diverse and entrepreneurial character of University City.

This book also introduces you to those individuals who have made UCD what it is today – the founders, leaders, and staff who have allowed us to grow and evolve with the neighborhood, to take on new challenges and budding opportunities. And as we turn twenty, we are so gratified to see that the fruits of our collective efforts have taken hold.

The Porch at 30th Street Station, neighborhood parklets and Trolley Portal Gardens combine the wishes and the willpower of residents with the commitment of institutions to conjure up beautiful green spaces where once there was only uninviting concrete. Project Rehab was similarly born of the will of the neighborhood, in this case to address long vacant and abandoned properties and bring them back on the market. The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative shifted UCD’s approach while reinforcing its values. Asking ourselves what we could do to contribute solutions to the crisis of economic disconnection, we built bridges to life-changing jobs with our institutional partners. Finally, Green City Works – started in UCD’s 19th year – weds the tenets at our core: first, to make University City more beautiful and, second, to connect West Philadelphians to opportunity. Green City Works employs West Philadelphians who had previously faced hurdles in their careers, and they work to create a greener, more vibrant web of public and private spaces across parks, institutions and new commercial developments.

As the neighborhood evolves and advances in ways that could not have been imagined in 1997, what possibilities lie ahead for UCD and for University City? Together, we will continue to explore and act on our highest hopes and aspirations for a decidedly magical place.

In the meantime, we were proud to celebrate 20 incredible years. University City District is nothing if not a collective of individual community leaders, and a collection of their tales of community, passion and possibility. We are proud to share these stories in the pages that follow.

Sincerely,

Matt Bergheiser President, University City District 5

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A Clean Neighborhood

Meet Janet Walker and Debbie Ross, who have been with UCD since the start.

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CD was created to address concerns about safety and cleanliness within the district, and our Clean and Safe programs have been critical to our work in the neighborhood ever since. To honor the legacy of our fundamental work, we began our 20 Years, 20 Stories series with an interview of two remarkable people who have been with University City District since its inception.

Debbie Ross and Janet Walker have worked together as part of UCD’s Public Space Management (PSM) crew for 20 years, and it shows: the two women finish each other’s sentences, laugh in stereo, and have enough love for each other outside the workplace that they’ve watched each other’s children grow up. If you live in the neighborhood you might have seen them sweeping, operating an All Terrain Litter Vacuum (ATLV), or collecting trash.

Janet works along 40th Street, and you’ll find Debbie on Baltimore Avenue near Cedar Park.

now maroon – have changed over the years, but their commitment and smiles remain the same.

“We started on the same day,” Janet explains. “August 11th, 1997.” The two women were training for positions with ABM Janitorial Services in Center City when a supervisor asked the group if anyone lived in West Philadelphia and was interested in working outdoors.

“When we first started and people saw us cleaning, they loved it. They were like, ‘Wow, there’s really somebody out here cleaning?’”

Janet and Debbie are two members of a 20-person crew that works seven days a week, from 8am to 4pm, to clean more than 160 University City blocks. Their uniforms – originally navy blue, then green and gold, and

Janet, a lifelong West Philadelphian who grew up around 44th and Market, jumped at the chance. Debbie, who had moved to Westpark a year earlier and loves the outdoors, decided to give it a try too. They trained in Center City for two weeks and then joined the UCD cleaning team.

Debbie laughs at the memory of the early days. “When we started, some of the smaller streets? I didn’t even know they had pavement because of all the stuff on top.”

Janet agrees. “When we first started and people saw us cleaning, they loved it. They were like, ‘Wow, there’s really somebody out here cleaning?’”

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“They were surprised and thankful. They still are!” Debbie says.

The women both describe the crew as a family. “If it’s a family, then we’re like sisters,” Debbie says. She has her own family, too – she’s a grandmother to eight children. Janet’s job with UCD allowed her to put her son through college. He still lives in the neighborhood and works as an accountant.

Janet and Debbie have seen transformations in the neighborhood during their time working with UCD. Buildings have risen, restaurants have opened, an influx of new neighbors have moved in, but through it all UCD’s commitment to making the community cleaner and safer has remained constant.

“UCD does good work,” Debbie says. She’s particularly a fan of Green City Works, our landscaping social venture team that she sees planting flowers along Baltimore Avenue. She thinks the whole Clean and Safe program has been great for the neighborhood. “It’s picked the neighborhood back up,” she explains. She’s seen people move back who left years ago.

And Janet’s favorite part of the job? “I like to see the smiles on people’s faces when we come out there and do our jobs,” says Janet. “People come out and say they appreciate our work. I love doing what I do. I love to make people happy.”

When considering the twenty years they’ve worked together, Debbie can’t help but smile. “20 years,” she says and laughs. “I’m proud of us both for staying here for so long.”

“I hope we can stay for another 20 years,” Janet adds.

The rest of us here at UCD hope they do too.

“I like to see the smiles on people’s faces when we come out there and do our jobs. People come out and say they appreciate our work. I love doing what I do. I love to make people happy.”

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Manakeesh Café

We visited this popular spot that serves as an anchor for the Muslim community.

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5th and Walnut is home to three important establishments for University City’s Muslim community, all of which have become anchors for the entire neighborhood. On the southwest corner there’s Saad’s, an eatery that’s been specializing in falafel, shawarma, baklava, and halal sandwiches for over 20 years. On the northeast corner is the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, or AICP, a mosque serving as a spiritual home for Muslims from around the neighborhood and world. And on the southeast corner is Manakeesh Café, a business conceived from a desire to support the Muslim community.

Manakeesh is an establishment as diverse as the neighborhood surrounding it. It’s at once a café, juice bar, meeting place, bakery, and restaurant serving authentic Lebanese food. The customers are diverse, too: university students, neighbors, parents of children attending local schools, and worshipers visiting the mosque meet and mingle in the cavernous former bank.

“I basically grew up on this block,” Abd explains over coffee. “My father has been an imam at the mosque since it opened.” AICP, a congregation of about 300 members, formed in 1993 when a group of worshipers purchased an abandoned Methodist Church at 4431 Walnut Street. The building is evocative of traditional Islamic architecture, and it’s hard to believe that this neighborhood anchor wasn’t always a mosque.

While Abd is the face of Manakeesh, the original idea came from his partner, Dr. Wissam Chatila, a Lebanese-born pulmonologist and a longtime AICP member. He had a vision of a community spot where people could congregate and enjoy Lebanese cuisine. AICP, which owned the former bank at 4420 Walnut Street, encouraged Chatila to consider the space for his café concept in 2009. While the doctor had the idea and finances, he needed assistance to turn his idea into a reality.

“Community support is almost as important as getting construction permits and other details sorted out.”

On a rainy winter morning we caught up with Abd Ghazzawi, Manakeesh’s general manager and one of the founding partners. Abd (pronounced A-bid) acts as the face of the organization, whether he’s serving customers behind the counter, making juices, or promoting the restaurant to the larger community.

Ali Ghazzawi, a Lebanese immigrant and one of the imams at AICP, suggested his son Abd. “I had a background in sales, marketing, and real estate,” the younger Ghazzawi explains. “I’m the people person.” Chatila brought Abd on as a partner to focus on marketing, while he handled behind-the-scenes details with help from the community and University City District.

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From the start, the team sought to engage the neighborhood. “We knew right away that the community had to be on board,” Abd says. “We went out of our way to meet with people from Spruce Hill, UCD, the Merchants Fund.” UCD helped the new business owners connect with the community, which was instrumental in getting Manakeesh off the ground. The neighborhood was eager to turn the long vacant building into a business that could invigorate the block. “Community support is almost as important as getting construction permits and other details sorted out,” Abd explains.

Through 2010, as the restaurant was coming together, Abd felt like he was coming home. “It was nice to be able to come back and come full circle.

I was working a corporate job and didn’t get to spend as much time in the community as I’d like to. Manakeesh allowed me to do that again.”

Manakeesh was an instant hit when it opened in 2011. The opening menu featured traditional desserts like semolina cookies, baklava, French pastries, and - with an authentic brick oven imported from Beirut - a focus on Lebanese flatbread, Manakeesh’s namesake. Abd describes the café as a crossroads that connects the local universities with the Muslim community, and he’s right – according to UCD’s diversity index, the intersection of 45th and Walnut ranks among the most diverse sections in all of Philadelphia.

“At first, we were like a best-kept secret.

Now the word has gotten out so it’s more mainstream. On the weekends we get an unbelievable mix of people.”

He smiles. “I’ve had people tell me they come up once a month from DC or down from New York just to eat here. For them to come from a major metropolis that has tons of Arabs, and say they don’t have something like we do, it’s eye-opening.”

Manakeesh has worked closely with UCD throughout its existence. The café hosted one of UCD’s first Parklets, our small, temporary parks. They have participated in University City Dining Days, and were featured in our annual State of University City report. “UCD’s support has been essential to where we’re at right now,” Abd says.

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The neighborhood relationship has continued, too. Manakeesh hosts community events and supports local organizations like Parent Infant Center and Spruce Hill. They hire both locals and immigrants from around the world; their pastry chef, an Algerian immigrant who could barely speak English when he started, is now one of their top employees.

The support has been reciprocated. “We live in a very inclusive neighborhood and I never felt differently being here since we’ve opened. Any time something happens – not just here, but in general – the community goes out of its way to let us know they appreciate us, and see if we’re doing okay. It’s pretty awesome – somebody recently donated some flowers to us. Things like that, they’re really nice gestures.”

Manakeesh has come a long way in its six-year history. While Abd thinks it took over six years for the concept to come together, they’ve turned a profit every year they’ve been in business, a rare feat for a first time restaurant. The café’s “people person” is modest about the success. “It was all stumbling and bumbling, figuring out what we’re doing. Good food and good people have carried us.” Each year the owners introduce something new to drive business: outdoor seating the first year, the juice bar in their second year, an expansion into the adjacent space, and this past year a new charcoal grill.

So what’s next for Manakeesh? “At this point, we’re getting close to maximizing what we can get out of this space,” Abd says. “Maybe we can do something on a smaller scale at a second location. We have a solid staff where everyone knows their role, we have a good grasp of our concept, so now we’re thinking about branding the name we’ve established for ourselves and taking that next step.”

Stay tuned for more information on those plans. In the meantime, stop by to grab some coffee, a dessert, or one of their delicious sandwiches.

“At first, we were like a best-kept secret.

Now the word has gotten out so it’s more mainstream. On the weekends we get an unbelievable mix of people. I’ve had people tell me they come up once a month from DC or down from New York just to eat here. For them to come from a major metropolis that has tons of Arabs, and say they don’t have something like we do, it’s eye-opening.”

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The Dirt Factory

We traced the history of UCD’s Dirt Factory by profiling the man who created it.

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n his nine years working at University City District, Seth Budick was a man with two identities. During office hours, he was UCD’s Senior Manager for Policy and Research, the staff member responsible for compiling the data that informs almost every big decision at UCD. Should we reevaluate the LUCY bus route? Seth would study ridership statistics.

Would a pedestrian plaza calm traffic at an intersection? We’d check with Seth. What’s the breakdown of males versus females coming to The Porch at 30th Street between the hours of 2pm and 4pm on Tuesdays? Seth would definitely know.

But then, every Wednesday around 4:30pm for five years, Seth rushed into the nearest phone booth (or okay, the restroom) to change out of his office outfit and into his Dirt Factory costume of jeans, a t-shirt, and muddy shoes, ready to fight for sustainability, one pound of organic compost at a time. And what motivated him?

To be fair, Seth - who has since moved ont to a position at Pew Charitable Trust - has lots of obsessions. Restaurants with unique cuisines, many of which are found in University City, are one. Insects, which Seth studied in graduate school, are another. Data is, naturally, a big one for him. He delights in sharing complicated graphs representing the interesting things he studied, like the average speed of traffic after a snow storm compared to normal days (spoiler: people drove more quickly after the snow).

“People are just so grateful that we exist. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear from someone, or people saying they can’t believe that this is here.”

“I hate waste,” Seth said over lunch at Xi’an Sizzling on Chestnut Street.

“Half the reason I worked at UCD was because I couldn’t stand trash on the streets. Little quality of life things are my obsession.”

Seth’s road to UCD – and to running The Dirt Factory – was a circuitous one. A Manhattan native, he discovered Philadelphia during his college years at Swarthmore before pursuing a graduate degree in the evolution of insect behavior at Caltech. After grad school, he returned to Philadelphia and found an apartment in University City at 48th and Trinity.

He spent time working with a few different non-profits and pursuing community gardening before landing a position as a data analyst at University City District in 2008.

At UCD, his bosses encouraged him to explore different ideas and passions, knowing that these pursuits would be valuable to the organization. This sort of support originally spurred the creation of The Dirt Factory. Shortly 15

after starting UCD, President Matt Bergheiser came up with a novel idea after reading Seth Godin’s book Poke the Box: he challenged the staff to develop out-of-the-box ideas for UCD to invest in.

At the time, Seth was working on different sustainability initiatives, like rain barrel workshops, community leaf collection, and composting. He had organized a community gardeners’ summit and learned that local growers were lacking access to compost.

“We realized it was something we could help with,” Seth said. UCD had been giving away backyard composters and buying compost from Fairmount Park to deliver to local gardeners. “It made people so happy,” he recalls. “Hundreds of gardeners were able to take advantage of this, but it wasn’t the most sustainable solution.”

“To me composting is an incredibly elegant process, especially when you do it as an entirely closed loop process in the neighborhood. It’s just beautiful. It’s an environmental win-win-win every way you can measure it.”

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At the same time, another coworker had been engaging Market Street property owners about cleaning up vacant lots, and came across someone who was willing to let UCD his empty lot. Seth had recently learned that the University of Pennsylvania was looking to part ways with two large composting tubs. “We realized we had the two raw elements: leaves we helped collect in the community [through our Public Space Maintenance programs] and food scraps [that people were collecting using the backyard composters UCD provided them], and the demand for the finished product. We had a space available, composters from Penn, and the hunger from the community, so we said ‘Let’s just do it.’”

And thus The Dirt Factory was born. Seth’s team received $10,000 from the Poke the Box project to fund the program. They obtained the two composters from Penn; bought a generator, lumber, and soil; and held an opening event in 2012 with beer, ice cream, and a live band. The first ton of organic fertilizer was distributed in December of that year.

Since then, The Dirt Factory has built a core group of loyal users, some of whom are downright fanatic about their commitment to composting.

Seth described one a woman who used to work in a lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was so dedicated to eliminating waste that she would collect coffee grounds from a shared kitchen space at her office and bring them to The Dirt Factory each week. When the small kitchen switched to a Keurig machine, which uses individual coffee pods, she’d cut each pod open to extract the grounds.

“That’s the level of dedication we see,” Seth said. “It’s so inspiring. We’ve had some people who have been coming from day one.” He estimated there’s a pool of about 100 households who compost their food scraps at The Dirt Factory, with approximately 30 of them dropping off in a given week. An almost entirely different group of people shows up to collect the compost when it’s distributed at events like our annual Dirt Day held each spring.

“People are just so grateful that we exist. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear from someone, or people saying they can’t believe that this is here.”

Seth matched their passion with a dedication of his own, bringing his own food scraps from home on the days when he worked at The Dirt Factory. “There’s just something beautiful about of the idea of it,” explained Seth. “As a scientist, the thing I value more than anything in the world is elegance. To me composting is an incredibly elegant process, especially when you do it as an entirely closed loop process in the neighborhood.

It’s just beautiful. It’s an environmental win-win-win every way you can measure it.”

The innovation didn’t end with The Dirt Factory’s creation, either. Each year, Seth worked on new ways to increase the community’s engagement with the site. In 2016 we brought in The Soil Kitchen to offer soil testing at Dirt Day. In 2017, Seth worked with the Philadelphia Food Policy Advisory Council and Institute for Local Self-Reliance on an ongoing contest to design neighborhood-scale, in-vessel composting systems that could be used throughout Philadelphia and beyond.

“We’re in a similar boat to other organizations who want to do composting on the community scale, but there’s not good technology out there to do it,” Seth explained. “You go from small backyard composters straight up to giant, commercial-grade composters that cost tens of thousands of dollars. We were trying to inspire people to come up with designs to fill that intermediate niche.”

UCD is in the process of relocating The Dirt Factory to another site, due to the recent sale of the property to a neighboring business owner. We are excited to find a new home for our beloved program!

UCD ensures an even more closed-loop process by using some of the compost produced at The Dirt Factory for our own public spaces. We teach the members of Green City Works, our social venture landscaping company, the benefits of using natural, organic soil, which gardeners from our community affectionately refer to as “the good stuff.”

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University City Arts League

Exploring the 50 year legacy of The University City Arts League.

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f you’ve lived in University City long enough, you’ve probably come across the University City Arts League. Perhaps you’ve heard music spilling from the four-story Victorian twin at 4226 Spruce Street, where people take dance classes, practice yoga, or learn the Brazilian art of capoeira. Maybe you’ve enjoyed bottomless chili served in handmade ceramic bowls at one of their Chili Bowl events. Or perhaps your children have learned to draw, paint, or sculpt during the Arts League’s after school art program or summer camps.

If it feels like the University City Arts League has been around forever, you’re not far off: in 2017, the Arts League celebrated its 50th anniversary. For any organization to last 50 years is an accomplishment, but for an arts organization run by volunteers for most of its history? It’s nearly unprecedented. To learn more about the Arts League’s origins and current operations, we spoke with George and Phebe Shinn, two of the founders, and Annette Monnier, the current executive director.

because it was affordable, close to public transportation, and the schools were good. “We had an apartment on Chester Avenue and two little boys,” Phebe explains. “We never thought about moving out of this area. We had friends here.”

Some of those friends were involved in the art community. George, who says he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t making pictures, is an artist who has been featured in galleries throughout Philadelphia. His work – along with paintings from friends and people they admire – decorates the walls of their house, which is practically its own art gallery.

“It's been artists at the helm, which is part of what's kept it going with very little resources...It's a bunch of people who are really willing to put their sweat into it. ”

George and Phebe Shinn have lived in University City since 1954, and in their Spruce Hill house on 43rd Street since the early 60s, when they purchased the home for $8,500. The Shinns bought in University City

In the mid-60s, the couple was looking for a way to showcase the work of local artists, including George and their friends.

“Whenever they had the Spruce Hill May Fair we would set up a clothesline, and anyone who wanted to show their work could bring a painting in,” Phebe remembers. “Spruce Hill, Garden Court, Powelton Village – every single one of these places had their own an art committee.” But at the time, there was no organization representing artists across the whole community.

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George and Phebe came to know Sylvia Barkan, a commercial artist who felt that the various neighborhood art committees would be better served if they worked together. Sylvia brought the artists together; while they were originally loath to give up their unique neighborhood representation, they finally came to a consensus. “What the hell, let’s call it the University City Arts League,” someone finally proposed, adopting the name starting to be used for the neighborhood.

The Arts League experienced growing pains in the early days. “We were so disorganized for so long,” Phebe says. “Whoever’s house could host events 20

was president at that time.” They didn’t even consider offering classes – something the organization is now known for – until community residents suggested it, saying they’d enjoy doing art or having classes for their kids.

Classes were first held in people’s houses, and then for a time at 4601 Spruce Street. It was Jim Cox, a founding member and president in the late 60s, who made the Arts League into a real organization. “He helped to get money together, he pulled in people from Penn and he is the one who engineered buying the building,” Phebe explains, referring to the Arts League’s current home on Spruce near 42nd Street.

“We moved in and teetered along the edge,” she continues. “There was chaos, there was disorganization, and poverty.”

Early on the Arts League raised money any way they could. “We had fundraisers, we had parties, we even had dress-up dances there,” the Shinns recall. The dances caught on and attracted a wide array of people from all over the city. Phebe and George reminisced about a costume party that brought out famed jewelry maker Henri David, known today for his own extravagant galas. “He came wearing a big cape,” Phebe explains, “and after he danced a bit he threw his cape back and there was a live snake draped around his neck!”

UCAL’S offerings evolved over the years.

Speakers Bureau, their free lecture series, drew in big names like famed Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi, Scottish landscaping pioneer Ian McHarg, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Inquirer cartoonist Tony Auth.

In the 80s, the Arts League ran into financial issues and considered closing. After news of the impending disbandment was covered in the local newspapers, community members came forward to help prop it back up again.

“We would walk this line between solvent and poverty-stricken,” Phebe says. “The fact that they now have an executive director who makes a reasonable salary is just amazing.”

week. “Kids will come to us having never used scissors before, or doing that much artmaking before. People still need to use their hands. Just on that level we’re making a major impact.”

UCAL has made a big impact on the neighborhood and has a tremendous legacy to celebrate. They now offer classes and workshops for adults and children throughout the year, including photography, art and design, dance, pottery, and more. “The Arts League is obviously doing something of value in the neighborhood or it would have died,” says Phebe. “The fact that it’s been 50 years and we’re chugging along says we’re filling a need.”

“Not everyone who takes an art class is going to be an artist. But everyone who takes a class gets something out of it: relaxation, different ways of thinking about the world, different ways of using their hands."

These days, that executive director is Annette Monnier. Annette began in January 2015 after working as Outreach Program Director at The Clay Studio in Old City. Since accepting the position, part of her charge has been bolstering the Arts League’s programs in local schools. They currently partner with Powell, Henry Lea, Comegys, and the Science Leadership Academy, offering programs free of charge through artist residencies. She stresses the importance of this initiative and arts education in general.

“Not everyone who takes an art class is going to be an artist,” Annette says, “But everyone who takes a class gets something out of it: relaxation, different ways of thinking about the world, different ways of using their hands.”

Additionally, their after-school program serves about 200 children each

“There was a time when we were in danger of closing,” Annette says, echoing Phebe’s story.

“We’ve struggled financially. It’s been artists at the helm, which is part of what’s kept it going with very little resources, and very little outside money. It’s a bunch of people who are really willing to put their sweat into it.”

From the original board to the countless volunteers to the current leadership, that sweat has paid off in the form of a vital University City organization. The Arts League commemorated this accomplishment throughout 2017, starting with a Heart of Gold Gala in May where they honored local artists including Powelton Village’s own Leo Sewell, whose “junk art” created from Philadelphia refuse has earned him national acclaim. There’s no word yet on whether any live snakes were in attendance.

The Arts League also organized a Clothesline Art Show Initiative as an ode to the original grassroots art exhibitions put on by George, Phebe, and other founders. The organization set up clotheslines at various community events throughout the year and invited neighbors to create original works. All the pieces were displayed at an Open Hearts event in December. Annette says the pieces were meant to create a wonderful display to showcase the community. “We thought this would be a really free-spirited way to show art, and feel it really ties in with the spirit of what the Arts League is.”

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UCD’s Leaders

Meet UCD’s original Executive Director and current President.

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n a sunny March morning we traveled to Center City to bring together bookends of University City District’s leadership to discuss the organization, the neighborhood, and how their efforts and visions shaped UCD’s local impact. These men are Paul Steinke, UCD’s first Executive Director, and Matt Bergheiser, UCD’s current President, who joined the organization in 2009.

“I can’t believe it’s twenty years,” Paul says. The current Executive Director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia is tall, thin, and serious; he wastes few words when explaining his path to UCD and his role in getting the fledgling organization off the ground.

– finalized their plans, they asked Paul to serve as UCD’s first Executive Director. He accepted and began in August of 1997.

“When I was hired, we operated out of the 7th floor of the Franklin Building,” Paul says, referring to an administrative building on Penn’s campus. “My first office was literally a repurposed janitor’s closet.” The partners felt a sense of urgency about starting programs as quickly as possible, and although Paul was UCD’s only full-time staff member, he was immediately charged with replicating CCD’s successful on-street cleaning and safety services.

“Trash, graffiti, and crime all started to go down right away…A lot of people were glad to see something finally being done to try to reverse the neighborhood’s decline.

We quickly found allies out in the neighborhood.”

UCD was not Paul’s first involvement with a neighborhood district. He served as Center City District (CCD)’s finance director when the organization formed in 1991. Around 1995, leaders from the University of Pennsylvania approached CCD because they were interested in replicating the organizational model across the Schuylkill River in University City. Once the original board – comprised of representatives from Penn, Drexel, Amtrak, and others

“There was the early 90s real estate recession,” Paul explains, “And then several high profile crimes that were front page news, even national news. That was the environment we [UCD] were created in.

And that was a challenge.” But Paul’s biggest challenge was establishing the legitimacy of the organization. “University City is full of proud neighborhoods...Spruce Hill, Powelton Village, Cedar Park.” He says UCD had to win over the different community groups.

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The easiest way to do that was through results. “Trash, graffiti, and crime all started to go down right away…A lot of people were glad to see something finally being done to try to reverse the neighborhood’s decline. We quickly found allies out in the neighborhood.”

homebuyers toured different houses. While Paul moved on from UCD in 2001 to become the general manager of Reading Terminal Market, the couple still lives in the original house they purchased in Garden Court, with assistance from Penn.

After the Clean and Safe programs were staffed with safety ambassadors and cleaning crews, UCD turned to promoting the district. The organization launched a "Go West" series every third Thursday, bringing together local restaurants and art organizations to showcase the best of the neighborhood. The series garnered a lot of attention. “The media really responded enthusiastically to good news coming out of West Philadelphia,” Paul explains.

As Paul Steinke was building the foundations of University City District, the man who would eventually accelerate its growth was about to move to Philadelphia. Matt Bergheiser had been accepted to the Wharton School, and he remembers welcome materials from student groups cautioning the incoming class from going west of 40th Street, and saying “lots of tough things about University City.”

Next up was finding UCD a new office. Paul believed the organization would gain more credibility in a central location. He set his sights on a bricked-over, graffiti-covered space on the 3900 block of Chestnut; while someone else might have ignored it, he was certain that the large building and adjacent vacant bar would be a perfect center of operations for UCD and a police substation. After a capital campaign and some help from Penn, the team cut the ribbon on UCD’s new headquarters at 3940 Chestnut in April 1999. Paul considers the acquisition of the office on the 40th Street corridor as a high point of his time at UCD. As Paul became comfortable in his role, he began thinking about moving to University City. “As time went on and I started to get to know the neighborhood better, and was seeing the opportunity to live there – the kinds of houses there are, and the neighborhoods – I became intrigued.” He had to convince his now-husband David – who attended Penn in an era when students rarely crossed west of 40th Street – but Paul persuaded him, with the help of the “University City Saturday” event in which interested 24

“There was a very real public safety crisis in the neighborhood at that time,” Matt says, “but at the same time, there was this amazing, beautiful, dynamic, and diverse neighborhood behind it. As I began to venture into the neighborhood and into the city, you could see that clearly.”

After graduating from Wharton, Matt steeped himself in the community while working at The Enterprise Center, the economic development organization at 46th and Market. He moved on to focus on neighborhood improvement at the Trenton Downtown Association, and then public space and workforce development at The Knight Foundation. In 2009, three years into his role with the Knight Foundation, everything changed with two phone calls.

University City District was searching for a new Executive Director. “I got two phone calls, basically on the same day,” Matt says. “One was from my friend Della Clark at The Enterprise Center, who was my old boss and was on the UCD board. She said, ‘This role is opening up and I think you’d be perfect at it.’ Then I got a call from a search firm the same day saying,

‘This role is opening up and we’d love to talk to you about it.’

“I frankly wasn’t looking for a job, so it had to be the perfect opportunity,” Matt says. “As I got to know and understand the organization, got to know some of the board members through the process, got to understand the compelling and unique opportunity that University City as a place presented, I got more and more excited about it.”

On July 1st, 2009, Matt became the organization’s fourth Executive Director.

“UCD felt like the place I was destined to be in my career,” he says. UCD had started taking a more holistic approach to its mission, and Matt’s experiences in public space, community improvement and workforce development were a perfect fit. “At the time I came on board, the stars were all aligned to bring all that work together, to build on everything that had happened here, and to think big about some new issues as the economy and the neighborhood evolved.”

Matt believes UCD has built on the successes of those who came before.

When people marvel at the complex things UCD has accomplished, like the LUCY bus program (another Paul Steinke creation), or Trolley Portal Gardens, he says, “It’s all about partnership, it’s all about community, and it’s all about trust. It’s about the institutions trusting each other and a neutral partner.” He continues, “That trust came 20 years ago through Clean and Safe, and shared transit, and the revitalization of commercial corridors. Everything that’s come after used it as a building block.”

“It’s all about partnership, it’s all about community, and it’s all about trust. It’s about the institutions trusting each other and a neutral partner. That trust came 20 years ago through Clean and Safe, and shared transit, and the revitalization of commercial corridors. Everything that’s come after used it as a building block.”

“The organization at its heart was still about clean and safe, partnerships, and about community and institutions and businesses coming together. We’re able to leverage those partnerships, and the trust that was built over time, for different kinds of activities.” It didn’t take long to see Matt’s impact. Within his first two years, UCD had launched its flagship public space, The Porch at 30th Street Station; its job training program, the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative; and Philadelphia’s first Parklet program, among other things.

Reflecting on UCD’s formation and early days, Matt says, “In 1997 there was a hope and a dream that you could build on what the institutions were doing, and you could build a dynamic neighborhood economy that had ramifications and ripple effects for the entire region. The idea was to make this a neighborhood of choice. By every objective measure that’s been a success. This is one of the great neighborhoods, not just in the city and region, but that you can find anywhere.”

Paul sees a neighborhood transformed from the one he first discovered in 1997. He says you can see the changes clearly: “In terms of people on the street, on Baltimore Avenue, walking their dog, going to dinner on Baltimore or Lancaster Avenue. Neighborhood amenities continue to improve - more restaurants, more cafes, more shopping opportunities on the main avenues.”

This transformation is occurring all across the district, and UCD has evolved along with the neighborhood, doing more to ‘Change Places and Change Lives,’ as is the organization’s tagline. “‘Changing places and changing lives’ in 1997 might have meant something very different,” Matt says. “In 2017, it’s about a few things: ensuring the civic infrastructure, the streets, the public space, are as dynamic and beautiful as the buildings rising around us. It’s about the economic dividends of this explosion of growth being widely distributed, and that’s what the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative is all about. And on both of these fronts and on many others we could not have a better foundation because we’ve got amazing, progressive partners who care about these issues, who understand their importance, and who are looking for a vehicle or an intermediary like UCD who can enact this kind of change. I think that’s how we can succeed.”

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6

The Mayor of The Porch at 30th Street Station

We profiled the man who is in charge of The Porch at 30th Street.

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he Mayor. His Royness. The Guy in the Purple. Whatever you call him, if you’ve been to The Porch at 30th Street Station, you’ve probably seen Roy, the man who keeps the space running day in and day out.

Roy, who is officially an employee of Allied Universal. “We got very lucky that the first person we put into the role wound up being perfect for it.”

More than six years later, Roy is still in the position.

“I love The Porch,” Roy says. “I’ve been there forever. It feels like a second home.”

The Porch at 30 Street Station is UCD’s signature public space, offering a variety of comfortable and intimate spaces for people to lounge, unwind, and enjoy landscaped surroundings, festive lighting, creative programming, and food and beverages. When the weather is nice, upwards of 2,000 people stop by to eat lunch from rotating food trucks, hear live performances, or simply relax. th

When UCD first began reimagining the physical environment outside 30th Street Station in 2011, we realized we needed someone who could serve as an onsite concierge for the new public space: someone who could monitor the space, answer questions, give directions, and provide guidance to vendors, food trucks, and performers setting up at The Porch. After a competitive interview process, the role went to Roy Conlin, who had been working as a UCD Safety Ambassador for just a few months when he landed the position.

Like choosing George Washington as President or Sean Connery as James Bond, sometimes the first person in a role turns out to be an amazing fit.

“Roy really took ownership over the space,” says Alan Garry, UCD’s Director of Public Safety. Alan supervises all of the Safety Ambassadors, including

Roy serves as our eyes and ears at The Porch, which is 11 blocks from our offices at 40th and Chestnut. We rely on him to keep the space clean and orderly, while ensuring we’re informed of what’s happening when we can’t physically be on site. Each day Roy rearranges tables and chairs, wipes down the furniture, cleans, and sets up The Porch’s signature umbrellas.

Has a scheduled performer arrived? Roy calls and lets us know. See a picture of a daily food truck special on Twitter? Roy probably snapped it and sent it to our social media manager.

Because Roy is technically a UCD Safety Ambassador, he also keeps watch on the space to make sure visitors to The Porch – local employees on their lunch break, travelers passing through, members of the public seeking a place to escape the bustle of the city - feel safe.

“One of the most important jobs Roy does is to situate the food trucks each day,” says Margaret Starke, UCD’s event planner. “Monday through Friday we have lunch food trucks from 11:30am-2:30pm, and Roy does an expert job navigating the large trucks onto the site so they can set up for lunch service.”

“We used to have a nice, orderly system with just a couple planters and 27

chairs,” says Nate Hommel, our Director of Planning and Design. “But after our 2015 update of the space, we added decking, trees, swings, picnic tables, and that forces the trucks to do wild movements to get into the vending space. Roy has never complained – he just does whatever we ask.”

“Roy’s pride in his area of responsibility really sets him apart,” Alan adds.

“He constantly goes above and beyond what we ask him to do. He knows the appearance of the space is a reflection of himself, and also of the entire organization. He takes that very seriously.”

Roy is also integral to the data collection that informs many of our design decisions. Every day, Roy conducts pedestrian counts to track things like average hourly users at The Porch, gender breakdowns, seating decisions, and more. This information – which is stored on a tablet and then uploaded back at our office – informs our understanding of how users interact with the space. The team is routinely blown away by Roy’s meticulous data collection and accuracy.

“We’re increasingly realizing that the most important thing that a public space can be is welcoming,” says Nate. “We’re trying to reintroduce the idea of public space to people, to tell people ‘you can sit here, swing on a swing, laugh with your friends, and you don’t have to spend any money.’ Having someone there to let people know that that’s okay is really important. The vendors, the food trucks, the performers, the tourists, the people coming for lunch, they all feel welcomed by Roy.”

Roy has become a jack of all trades.

His position has evolved from a security presence to a concierge with a variety of responsibilities; he’s part safety ambassador, part hospitality representative, part cleaning crew, and even a budding horticulturist.

“The Porch is a good place to be.

It brings a lot of people together that you might not expect to be in the same place at the same time.

Different cultures, different types of people. You don’t usually see people sitting in groups – people like to sit in separate areas, but The Porch brings them together, even people who don’t know each other.”

“What makes Roy so good at his job is his attention to detail,” says Margaret, referring to all the tasks he manages in order to keep the site clean and vibrant. “Roy always has UCD’s best interests at heart. He wants to make sure that what’s happening at The Porch is representative of what a UCD public space should look like.”

Roy is known, and appreciated, by nearly everyone who regularly visits The Porch. “There are people who come out for lunch, people who walk through who know me because I’ve been there so long, they’ll say hi and start a conversation before they’re on their way home or wherever they’re going.

It’s kind of like having one big family. Once you get to know a lot of people, it’s like having a bunch of brothers and sisters.”

Need further convincing of Roy’s dedication to The Porch? When Roy got married in 2016, there was only one place he considered for the wedding.

See The Porch and visit Roy outside the southern side of 30th Street Station.

Roy has a background in customer service dating back to his days as a manager of a Hollywood Video. “I like interacting with all types of people,” Roy says. “The Porch is a good place to be. It brings a lot of people together that you might not expect to be in the same place at the same time. Different cultures, different types of people. You don’t usually see people sitting in groups – people like to sit in separate areas, but The Porch brings them together, even people who don’t know each other.”

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Before The Porch

The Porch 1.0

The Porch 2.0

The evolution of The Porch at 30th Street Station from parking strip, to activated sidewalk, to a lushly planted public space.

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7

Clark Park

Get to know University City’s most beloved green space.

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hat’s the first thing you think of when you hear the words Clark Park? We polled people and received answers ranging from simple things like sledding, dogs, drumming, trees, Charles Dickens, and soccer, to loftier responses like relationships, childhood, tranquility, and diversity.

This variety should come as no surprise to anyone who has visited Clark Park, one of West Philadelphia’s most beloved green spaces. The park is many things to many people: it’s a space for games of Frisbee, pick-up basketball, or Live Action Role Playing (LARPing); it’s a place to meet for an impromptu picnic, drum circle, or game of chess; it’s a venue for big events like yearly Shakespeare performances, UCD’s own outdoor movie series, or various music and art festivals throughout the year; it’s a welcoming oasis in the middle of the neighborhood.

estate at 42nd and Locust Streets and the land that would later become Clark Park. 123 years ago, an ordinance was passed condemning the land, which had been used as a public dumping ground. Clark gifted the land to the city, and in the deed specified that the property could not be used for anything other than park purposes. The park was dedicated on January 18th, 1895, and in 1901 Clark Park became home to an iconic statue of Charles Dickens and Little Nell, the fictional heroine of Dickens’ novel The Old Curiosity Shop. In 1961, a $40,000 investment provided for many of the park’s most well-used amenities, including a basketball court, the tot-lot, drinking fountains, and checker tables.

“This area lends itself to having a vibrant park. There’s so much here, so many different types of people. People really love it, and many people see it as their community backyard.

It just feels good here.”

The nine-acre park is nestled between 43rd and 45th Streets and Baltimore and Woodland Avenues. Clark Park is named for Clarence H. Clark, the first president of the First National Bank of Philadelphia, who owned an

While the volunteer group Friends of Clark Park (FoCP) was formed to oversee maintenance of the park in the 1970s, the sprawling green space struggled well into the late 1990s. The statue of Little Nell was vandalized in 1989, later repaired through a fundraising effort.

In her book The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets, former University of Pennsylvania president Judith Rodin described how, “Trash and broken glass surrounded the Dickens statue and littered the park. More than once, the neighbors fought the city just to 31

Sandy Sherman, the Director of Nutrition Education who helped launch markets in the early 90s, described Clark Park as an ideal location for a farmers’ market: the community was supportive; farmers felt comfortable onsite; there was ample space to display the food and for cooking demonstrations; and The Food Trust could collaborate with community partners like UCD and FoCP to make the market a success. Local residents “knew the farmers, they knew the educators, they knew the recipes and wanted new ones, they wanted to taste new things.” Other locations couldn’t compare to Clark Park due to the “community feeling and the space.” get the grass cut. Lacking lights, the park was off-limits after dusk except to drug dealers and their prey.”

Clark Park’s turnaround began in 1998, spurred in part by a farmers market operated by The Food Trust. Created as the Reading Terminal Farmers’ Market Trust, the organization was formed in 1992 to provide healthy food to underserved areas of the city.

Early markets involved Food Trust staff hauling food from the Reading Terminal Market out to housing developments. The model – and the markets’ profitability – changed once farmers began selling their products directly to consumers. Clark Park was one of the first such markets, and served as an early success story for both The Food Trust and the neighborhood.

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In 1999, UCD partnered with The Food Trust to produce an ad campaign centered on the market. “The Best Things in Life are Fresh” promoted healthy eating throughout West Philadelphia and other parts of the city.

The campaign helped catapult the market; today it is arguably The Food Trust’s most successful market, and it’s certainly the longest running.

“Farmers’ markets drive economic development and raise property values,” Sandy says. “People come and put money in and like it and feel safe. It’s a source of food for health, but it’s also a source of community and feeling part of where you live. Clark Park exemplifies all of that for us.”

UCD sought to build on the park’s momentum by partnering with Friends of Clark Park and the Department of Parks and Recreation to start Party in the Park, a fundraiser for supplemental landscape and trash removal

services. In its first year, the event raised $60,000 and Clark Park’s reinvention continued.

In 2001, FoCP, UCD, University of the Sciences, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Philadelphia Department of Streets, and various neighborhood organizations developed a master plan for revitalizing the park. With support from the William Penn Foundation, the Friends engaged Studio Bryan Hanes, owned by a University City resident, to redesign the northern portion to include a new gathering space while preserving existing trees.

“The Friends raised the money to support the redesign,” says Erin Engelstad. She chats about Clark Park’s history over coffee at nearby Green Line Café. “It really is unique; it doesn’t happen in many of the projects I work on.” Erin has a unique perspective on Clark Park: she organized events in the park as a community member, served as both a board member and former president of FoCP; and now works as a Park Stewardship Manager for the Fairmount Park Conservancy.

Erin moved to 43rd and Baltimore in 2004. “I came from Virginia and we had one park in my town,” she says. “There were just cow fields everywhere, so I never had that experience of having my local park. But here in West Philly, I see what it means to people, and how they take ownership over it.”

Erin and some friends discovered what it meant to have ownership in 2005 when they decided to organize a music festival. With help from Friends of Clark Park, Erin and her friends threw a concert called Best Fest, a gathering the website uwishunu described as “a weird basement show taken to its cosmic potential and most public extreme.”

“It was very DIY,” Erin says. “But we somehow got Stinking Lizaveta to play, an awesome, old school, West Philly band people were really excited about it.” The Best Fest continued for six more years and featured musicians like Kurt Vile and Meg Baird.

Erin recognizes the value of public parks. “There’s so much to be said about the impact of green spaces on individuals, and on communities,” she says. “Especially in Clark Park, we have the farmers’ market, which is the community market and also where people come to see each other. It’s a space to interact that ideally feels clean and safe; honestly, sometimes it can feel safer than home or school.” Given her vantage point of working at

Fairmount Park Conservancy, an organization dedicated to championing Philadelphia’s parks, she certainly knows what she’s talking about.

She describes Clark Park as home to a “cacophony of experiences happening at any one time: tons of kids playing, folks having a picnic, there’s dogs, there’s a guy practicing his whip routine, there’s another playing the flute, somebody’s walking their cat.”

“This area lends itself to having a vibrant park,” she continues. “There’s so much here, so many different types of people. People really love it, and many people see it as their community backyard. It just feels good here.”

Sandy Sherman agrees. “Whenever I go there I bump into people I know from different walks of life.”

Clark Park has evolved into a destination, both for casual visits and major events. Summers are packed with organized soccer games, arts and craft fairs, music, beer gardens, and the sounds of squealing children.

It’s become the neighborhood’s meeting place, its communal backyard, and a visual representation of the diversity that makes this neighborhood so unique.

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8

Dahlak

Learn the history of the popular Ethiopian restaurant on Baltimore Avenue.

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t’s like a love story,” Ephream Amare Seyoum says. While the 28 year-old is talking about his parents’ romance, which spanned two continents, Ephream could easily be talking about Dahlak, his family’s restaurant on Baltimore Avenue. Because the restaurant is like a love story: a romance between a family and a community as much as between the two people who opened the restaurant over 30 years ago.

serves as the general manager of Dahlak. Ephream smiles easily and speaks softly, and is a constant fixture at the restaurant. Although his mother and aunt started the restaurant, Ephream notes that his father was instrumental to Dahlak’s early success.

“It’s all about the ratios you use that make one berbere unique to others. My mom perfected her own berbere – it influences all the food we prepare, and all the stews.”

Ephream is the son of two refugees from Eritrea, a small country near the northern tip of Africa that borders Sudan, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Ephream’s father, Amare Solomon, and his mother, Neghisti Ghebrehiwot, knew each other in Eritrea. They fled the country at separate times when tensions were high between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and each wound up in Pennsylvania. They reconnected, married, and settled in West Philadelphia.

Dahlak, now a renowned Baltimore Avenue restaurant serving Ethiopian cuisine, was opened in 1986 by Neghisti and her sister Belinish. From the start it was a family business that employed relatives who came to America.

“This restaurant has been around all my life,” says Ephream, who now

“A lot of people from [the University of] Penn knew my father because he used to work there,” Ephream explains. “He was one of the chefs. Within the first couple of years of the restaurant opening up, he brought in a lot more Penn students.”

Amare marketed the restaurant, both at Penn and on the streets, and Neghisti served as the culinary expert, creating American twists on traditional Eritrean and Ethiopian dishes. “In Eritrea,” Ephream explains, “you wouldn’t have a chicken stew dish that’s not on the bone. She created something we’ve name-branded as Dahlak Tips, which is boneless chicken breasts chopped into a stew that uses berbere, a traditional Ethiopian flavor that blends spices like ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, garlic, and some other ingredients.” Ephream continues, “It’s all about the ratios you use that make one berbere unique to others. My mom perfected her own berbere – it influences all the food we prepare, and all the stews.”

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The majority of Ethiopian cuisine is comprised of stews, usually with an onion and tomato base, and served on a bed of injera, a spongy flatbread.

The food is meant to be eaten with your hands, although Ephream says, “We provide the forks if you need it.” The food can also be served over rice if you don’t like the injera. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t though,” Ephream adds. “Our injera is its own work of love by my mother.”

“Together they were good,” Ephream says about his parents. “We still get people from 20 years ago, alumni, who come by and say, ‘I remember when your father fed me by hand!’”

He’s referring to an act called gursha, a tradition in Ethiopia. “My father would hand-feed new people, people who didn’t know how to eat the food. Gursha is a sign a love, and a communal act.” In Ethiopia, friends or family tear a piece of injera, wrap it around some wat (the stew) or other ingredients, and feeding it into another person’s mouth.

The traditions and cuisine at Dahlak resonated here in Philadelphia, and the restaurant’s reputation grew. Ephream remembers a time he was visiting DC, and when someone realized he was from Philadelphia with roots in Eritrea, they asked if he knew Dahlak. “I laughed and said ‘Yeah, that’s my family’s restaurant.’”

And Dahlak truly is a family restaurant. When it first opened, Amare and Neghisti lived in rented rooms above the business. As the restaurant grew and began to prosper, they bought a house across the street to raise Ephream and his two siblings – a brother and a sister – who are also involved in the business.

“People would call Amare Solomon the mayor of Baltimore Avenue,” Ephream says about his father, who he believes is largely responsible for the growth of the Ethiopian community in West Philadelphia. “Running the restaurant the way he did, making friends in the neighborhood, adding the bar, that stimulated the area for business. Back then, when I was a kid, there weren’t many restaurants on this strip.

We were one of maybe three or four, and most of those were African restaurants. I might be biased, but I say it’s because of my dad. He convinced people he knew from Penn who might not have dared to come in this direction.”

“Me, my sister, my siblings, we’re all blessed to have this. My mother has put a lot of work into starting this business up. My father worked to bring in the crowds.”

“Me, my sister, my siblings, we’re all blessed to have this. My mother has put a lot of work into starting this business up. My father worked to bring in the crowds.” Ephream and his siblings have helped at Dahlak since a young age, first doing chores like sweeping and then graduating to more substantial tasks like unlocking the doors for the cooks. Dahlak expanded twice, first into an adjoining space that now serves as an additional dining room, and then with a bar and an outdoor patio in the early 2000s.

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“Almost immediately after the bar opened, people in the neighborhood were excited,” Ephream says. His father would spend hours standing out front “in this cool pose, just saying hello to everyone who walked by. I remember seeing him always in a conversation with someone. He pretty much made friends with the entire neighborhood.” Ephream says the bar enhanced Dahlak’s connection to the neighborhood, and with open mic nights and music events, it truly became “a community inside of a community,” as he describes it.

Amare Solomon’s untimely passing from heart disease in 2005 led Ephream to become more involved in the business. “I was 17,” he says. “I stuck around a lot more, spent nights closing up.” Ephream’s uncle Berekep Solomon helped steady things after Amare’s death.

Although Amare Solomon passed away, his legacy still looms large. A bench in Clark Park bears his name, and his likeness features prominently on a mural titled The Heart of Baltimore Avenue, located close to Dahlak on the 4700 block of Baltimore.

Ephream went to college and graduated from St. Joe’s with a degree in Organizational Development, where he learned business etiquette, group dynamics, leadership skills and how to work as a team. “I also learned a lot just by being here,” he says, gesturing to the restaurant around him.

“Through trial and error.” He has helped introduce a new, more American late night menu, including injera rolls and Ethiopian cheesesteaks.

Being a part of the community is still very important for Dahlak. The bar has hosted karaoke every Tuesday for seven years, local musicians play on weeknights, and Dahlak has been a participant in UCD’s Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll since it started. “At the Dollar Stroll, I see people I know, I see people I don’t know – it puts us on the map.” If you’ve ever sampled the injera rolls during the Stroll, you’ve probably met Ephream and his mother Neghisti. Dahlak adopted trees to support UCD’s Trolley Portal Gardens – our public space and restaurant at 40th and Baltimore – and their contribution will be honored with two plaques, one bearing Dahlak’s name, and one dedicated to Amare and Neghisti. In the summer of 2017, Ephream worked with local partners to expand his impact on the community with the opening of Pentridge Station, a community beer garden in southwest Cedar Park.

As we conclude our interview, Ephream leads the way to The Heart of Baltimore mural close to the restaurant to take some photos. It’s now Amare Solomon’s son who stops to chat with everyone outside, sharing greetings, handshakes, and hugs. It’s like he’s made friends with the entire neighborhood. On the wall above us, a painting of his father smiles down, overlooking a neighborhood he helped energize.

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9

Judy Wicks

We spoke with the woman behind Philadelphia’s farm-to-table movement.

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efore she was Judy Wicks the entrepreneur, author and speaker about sustainability and locally-based economies, she was Judy, a young woman fresh off a year of AmeriCorps’ VISTA, living in a remote village in Alaska with her childhood sweetheart-turned-husband Dick Hayne, trying to figure out what to do with her life. In 1970, Judy and Dick – originally from outside of Pittsburgh – realized they didn’t want to work for other people and decided to open a store.

“We were 23 years old,” Judy says. “We figured there was nothing to it – you just buy something at one price and sell it for a higher price.” Their idea was to open a sort of mini-department store that would cater to people under 30, selling everything from jeans and t-shirts to houseplants, records, books, bedspreads, and vanity earrings. On a trip to Philadelphia, they were encouraged to open up shop near the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, where Dick’s friend Scott Belair was attending Wharton for business school.

Judy and Dick visited storefronts and fell for one at 4307 Locust Street.

Judy drove home to Pittsburgh to pack a station wagon with their belongings, which were “mostly Levis jeans, Bob Dylan records, and two dogs,” while Dick stayed behind to work out the lease. And with $3,000 to their names, Judy and Dick moved into the back of what would become the Free People’s Store, a name that reflected their “anti-war, anti-establishment values.”

Early on, Judy and Dick furnished Free People by foraging for discarded wooden crates from Chinatown and buying second-hand merchandise.

They bought men’s plain white, long sleeve undershirts for $1.50, filled up trash cans with pink and blue dye from the local Acme, and resold the transformed shirts for $5. They scoured used clothing bins for leather jackets, dresses, and silk slips, buying them by weight and reselling at a markup. Scott Belair invested and the store expanded, serving as one of the first examples of a lifestyle shop, predating the trend by decades.

Although Free People was a success, Judy and Dick’s marriage did not last.

On the day she moved out of the store, Judy got into her car and made it as far as half a block away before running a red light and crashing. Nobody was hurt, but she wrecked the car. A man who witnessed the accident offered to help Judy get her bags home.

“I can’t go home,” Judy replied. “I just left my husband and I have to find a job.”

“Well,” the man replied, “I work in a restaurant called La Terrasse. They have an opening for a waitress, so why don’t you come work there?”

Today, when people ask Judy how she got into the restaurant business, she loves to answer, “By accident.”

(If you’re concerned about what became of Dick, don’t worry. He used 39

the shops and cafes.” Judy soon rented an apartment on the block, and her neighbors included artists, young professionals, students, Penn professors, and local employees.

In 1972, Judy learned that the entire block was earmarked for the development of a commercial mall by the University of Pennsylvania. She got involved with the Sansom Committee, a group that mobilized to save their block and the 3400 block of Walnut Street. They quoted urbanist Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which pushed for mixed-use buildings and walkable communities, and argued that Penn could preserve the houses and create a feel similar to Washington DC’s Georgetown, with brownstones containing shops, restaurants, and people.

In the end, a compromise was reached when a judge cut the block in half, giving Penn the Walnut Street portion for development, and granting the Sansom Street portion to the community members, who preserved the brownstones. It was through the Sansom Committee that Judy met her second husband Neil, an architect whose firm provided expertise in historic preservation.

the Free People Store model to open Urban Outfitters, and spun the lifestyle idea into a multi-billion-dollar operation. Later, he used the name “Free People” for a line of bohemian apparel that has grown into its own immensely successful brand. Things turned out pretty well for Dick.)

When Judy started working at La Terrasse, located at 3432 Sansom Street, it was one of the most popular restaurants in the neighborhood. “It was a neighborhood hangout,” she says, “a French café where the Gruyere cheese on the onion soup was so thick it had to be cut with a knife.”

Judy instantly fell for the 3400 block of Sansom with its quaint brownstones. “Night and day there was activity on the sidewalks: residents coming and going to work or to class, and customers going in and out of 40

All the while, Judy was learning the restaurant business. 1974, amid dipping profits and a general sense of chaos, Judy was promoted to general manager at La Terrasse, and at 27 suddenly found herself running a 120-table restaurant with over fifty employees.

She enrolled in an evening class at Wharton and, applying those lessons, soon helped get the restaurant back on track. Her management style, as she describes it, became a balance between “freedom and structure, individuality and conformity, and spontaneity and discipline.” She aimed to create an environment that “provided employees the maximum amount of freedom to be themselves within a clear framework of policies and job responsibilities.”

After ten years in the restaurant business, Judy decided it was time to start her own venture, and in 1983, she opened a muffin and coffee shop on

the bottom floor of her Sansom Street house. She called in the White Dog Café. She decorated with photos of people with their dogs and furniture from her own house, later growing the business into a restaurant focused on American cuisine.

At the time, American restaurants were not very inspired. “There wasn’t American cuisine other than steak and potatoes, or hamburgers and French fries.” Judy wanted to serve food she had grown up eating, like her mother’s shish kebabs or her Nana’s strawberry pie, all from fresh, in-season ingredients.

Just as she pre-dated the lifestyle trend, so too did Judy pre-date the farm-to-table movement. “We did it because we thought it tasted better,” Judy explains.

“It was more nutritious, since food designed to have a longer shelf life loses its flavor and nutritional value.

We wanted to know the farmers and the food system.”

business by these big corporate farms, then rather than keep this as my proprietary information, that I would share my list of suppliers with my competitors.” Judy says this was a real turning point in her life. “I realized that no matter how good your practices are – buying renewable energy, buying from local farmers, paying a living wage, composting – there’s no such thing as one sustainable business, that we can only be part of a sustainable system, and that we have to work in cooperation to build that system. Once I figured that out, I turned my attention from not just the White Dog, but how we could build a whole local food system, to build a region of local farms to supply all of the Philadelphia restaurants.”

“We did it because we thought it tasted better. It was more nutritious, since food designed to have a longer shelf life loses its flavor and nutritional value. We wanted to know the farmers and the food system.”

As Judy was developing practices that would define a food movement, she drew inspiration from Alice Waters, the owner of the Berkeley, California-based Chez Pannisse, who was gaining national attention for her approach to local, seasonal cooking. Judy hired a chef who had worked with Alice Waters, and White Dog soon gained a reputation for its fresh and delicious food.

Judy never stopped innovating at White Dog Café. After developing relationships with produce farmers, she applied the same standards to the acquisition of farm-fresh meats. After learning about the conditions of factory farms, she stormed into her kitchen and instructed her chef to remove all pork products from the menu until they found a farmer in Lancaster County who could offer whole pigs that had been humanely raised.

She then took the same approach for the eggs, chicken, and dairy products.

Judy thought this practice would give White Dog a competitive advantage, but she realized her scope was too narrow. “If I really did care about the farm animals, and about the small farmers who were being driven out of

Judy applied this commitment to locally-sourced goods in her second business, the Black Cat, a small, funky shop next to White Dog for over 20 years that featured locally made and fair trade gifts.

After more than 25 years, Judy sold White Dog in 2009, but the principles she established continue on at the original restaurant and the two others that have opened in the suburbs. “When I sold the business to the new owner we had a special contract that requires them to continue to buy from farmers, and that all their meat has to be grass-fed, pasture-raised, free-range, and cannot come from an animal factory. The owner committed to starting other White Dogs as long as they were 50 miles of his house and they are still under the same agreement, that they have to buy from local farmers.”

Judy’s many successes and innovations have led to many accolades over the years, including an induction to the University City Science Center’s Innovators Walk of Fame in 2015 for her work in social impact. To tell the rest of Judy’s story – to fully outline the three non-profits she started, or to give her the credit she deserves for supporting the local business economy – would require many more words than we’re able to include in this profile. Luckily, you can learn much more about Judy, her life, and her businesses by reading her book Good Morning, Beautiful Business.

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The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative

The story of University City District’s job training program.

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here are no typical days at the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative, University City District’s workforce development program that’s been connecting unemployed West Philadelphians to jobs with major local employers since 2011. Throw a dart at a calendar and a given day may feature on-the-job training with a future employer, a presentation on financial literacy, or mock interviews designed to prepare participants for the real thing with a potential employer. Is it a Friday? Then there’s a good chance that participants are celebrating the end of their programs with a closing ceremony that includes a vision exercise where they explore their growth since starting the program, and where they see themselves in six months or a year. These are great days, full of smiles, hugs, and a few tears as people leave our program and get ready to start new jobs after months or even years of unemployment.

was wrapping up, but Penn was still committed to the idea of a program that connected local residents to jobs.

“We decided to explore what it would take for an organization like UCD to organize a partnership around connecting people to jobs,” Matt explains.

“So we set off on what we thought was a one-year planning exercise that pretty quickly turned to action and impact.”

Encouraged by Ira Harkavy from the Netter Center and Craig Carnaroli, Penn’s Executive Vice President and UCD chair, UCD’s board voted to deploy resources from the West Philadelphia Partnership to run a two-year pilot around job training and workforce development.

“Our job is to provide the jobs for people who say they want to be in a different place.”

The West Philadelphia Skills Initiative grew as a seedling from the West Philadelphia Partnership, a respected program dedicated to serving the local community that the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center ran for decades.

When Matt Bergheiser joined UCD as Executive Director in 2009, he was presented with a unique opportunity: the West Philadelphia Partnership

Over the next year, UCD received support from the Job Opportunity Investment Network (JOIN) to hire a director of the Skills Initiative and funding from the Philadelphia Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to operate the first program. Then it was time to find that director.

“We had a vision, we had a set of principles, we had an amazing set of partners in place,” says Matt. “but it really needed someone to come on and wake up every day thinking about how to mold and shape this program. We needed someone to drive the car, and that’s what hiring Sheila Ireland brought.”

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Sheila came to UCD with extensive HR, organizational development and leadership experience, which collectively shape her unique approach to job training. As Sheila explains it, her initial charge was to do something about unemployment in West Philadelphia by leveraging UCD’s partnerships with the major University City institutions. Sheila came on board on June 2nd, 2010, and immediately set to understanding the greater neighborhood of West Philadelphia. (Since the original release of this piece, Sheila has gone on to a position with the City of Philadelphia, and Sarah Steltz, who served as a core employer partner at Drexel University, is now at the helm).

If you’re unfamiliar with the model, WPSI harnesses the hiring power of local institutions like Drexel, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania and others, and trains unemployed members of the community, using a unique approach that adds value to both jobseekers and employers. WPSI works with institutions on specific hiring needs, and launches new groups of trainees – or cohorts – only when the employer has a guaranteed number of open positions. The program provides both soft and hard skills aimed at the specific job opportunity with the employee partner, and also a greater career trajectory.

But it took some time to arrive at that model.

When Sheila started, UCD ran a summer jobs program for local youth, working with community partners to expose high school students to various career opportunities. When an opportunity arose to train local students for positions with Penn Medicine, she jumped on it.

“Because of the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative, I've got a more focused vision.

I can actually see a ladder to success. I got the opportunity to let my children see me doing something productive - it means a lot.”

While UCD committed to paying the students a wage subsidy during the training, Penn agreed to hire the students as full-time interns. Together, we embarked on a program that helped prepare high school students for meaningful employment in STEM positions.

This model was then duplicated with adults: we start by finding a partner looking to fill positions; we recruit unemployed West Philadelphia residents for our program and offer them a performance-based stipend 44

during their training; and finally we guarantee an interview with the employer partner at the conclusion of the program. This model has led to over 90% of the Skills Initiative graduates obtaining jobs. The success of this approach has led to significant growth each year. We now have over 800 West Philadelphians who are part of our alumni network, and we work hard to ensure that graduates aren’t left on their own: alumni can take advantage of six months of coaching, and many have stayed connected to the programs for years after their graduation.

Although the Skills Initiative program has received awards and national recognition, UCD isn’t about to rest. The ultimate goal is to serve 500 unemployed West Philadelphians a year. Sheila always made it clear that the Skills Initiative is not a charity. “We provide the tools for people, but we’re not trying to fix their lives.

If participants choose to be somewhere different, then we offer resources, techniques, insight, and awareness that may help you get to where you need to go. That’s your choice as an adult. My mother used to say, ‘You’re right where you’re supposed to be until you decide to be someplace different.’ Our job is to provide the jobs for people who say they want to be in a different place.”

For the participants who dedicate themselves to putting in the work that the program requires, the experience can be life-changing. Over the years we’ve collected hundreds of testimonials from participants who talk about how transformative the Skills Initiative has been for them.

Take Justin Bradley, for example: Justin joined a landscape program after being unemployed for nearly 18 months. He made such a good impression that we asked him to join Community Porch Revitalization (CPR), UCD’s pilot program focused on training people for jobs in the skilled trades. The CPR cohort learned carpentry skills in the classroom and workshop, and then put their skills to use by building a porch for a community member; Justin’s leadership and work ethic set a positive example for the program participants.

After completing the CPR program, Justin was hired onto our Green City Works landscape crew and has been working in a full-time position for over a year. "Because of the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative, I've got a more focused vision," Justin says. "I can actually see a ladder to success.

I got the opportunity to let my children see me doing something productive - it means a lot."

The Skills Initiative has come a long way from its humble beginnings, and has proven to be a tremendous benefit to both the institutions and the community members like Justin. “The West Philadelphia community has been wowed by the institutional commitment to this program,” says Sheila. “And then on the employer side of the fence, the employers are blown away by the level of talent that is literally in their backyard.”

“It’s been wonderful,” Matt says. Years after helping launch the Skills Initiative, he remains passionate about the program, and treasures his chances to speak to cohorts during their first week of training. “I like to share with them the vision statement on what we hoped we can be. Now almost eight years later, we are very true to that vision of connecting people in the neighborhood seeking opportunity to employers and anchor institutions seeking talent. I never could have imagined the human impact we would have, and the scale that’s beginning to take hold block-by-block, and neighborhood by neighborhood as people connect to work. That’s the real power of the Skills Initiative.”

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11

Dock Street Brewery

Dock Street founder Rosemarie Certo talks about her two loves: beer and West Philly.

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electing just one story to tell about Rosemarie Certo, the charismatic woman behind Dock Street Brewery, wasn’t easy. We could have told the story of an immigrant whose widowed mother left behind everything she knew in Sicily to settle in America. Rosemarie’s story could have been about a woman earning widespread acclaim in an industry traditionally dominated by men. But when we sit down to chat about the history of Dock Street, at first Rosemarie wants to talk only about beer.

promotions, Rosemarie Certo was making beers at home with Jeffrey Ware, her former business partner.

“Next week we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary with an updated version of our West of Center Ale,” Rosemarie begins, referring to a golden ale they first introduced about five years ago. For their 10th anniversary (celebrated in August 2017) Rosemary explains, “We’ve updated it with all local malts from a local maltster. We’ve really stepped up the whole production on the West of Center. For us it represents the real backbone to who we are, which is the same backbone as West Philadelphia.”

“We could tell what we were making was better than what was out there. My first instinct was to sell it. That’s would you would do in Sicily [where Rosemarie lived until she was 10]. You make something and then you sell it.”

Undeterred by a lack of business experience, Rosemarie forged onward, deciding they’d figure it out along the way. “If we’d known how difficult it was going to be, we may not have done it, but we had the passion and the drive that saw us through all of that.

“At the time, the US was a vast sea of bland beers.

We were home brewers.

We’d make dinners for 20 or 30 people, and then we started introducing the homemade beer.

People loved it.”

Decades before Dock Street became a West Philly institution and garnered worldwide attention both for the quality of their beer and their inventive

“I was a foodie and a gourmet cook,” Rosemarie explains. “We all had good taste and wanted to make something really good. At the time, the US was a vast sea of bland beers. We were home brewers. We’d make dinners for 20 or 30 people, and then we started introducing the homemade beer. People loved it.”

She and Ware opened the original Dock Street Brewpub in 1985 at 18th and Cherry, a location Rosemarie describes as a “very high end, very expensive space.” The first location featured a French brasserie menu to go along 47

with their original craft beer, the Dock Street Amber. “We were trying to elevate the status of beer, because no one was buying craft beer.” Not only were they competing against imports - because they had more flavor than American beers - but also against the American psyche at the time.

“People would say, ‘Why am I going to pay $20 for a case of American beer when I can get a case of Heineken for $20?”

Dock Street’s second beer, their Bohemian Pilsner, garnered the attention of acclaimed beer writer Michael Jackson. Jackson declared it “One of the finest Pilsners in the United States...as aromatic and soft as the best from Bohemia.” This attention helped legitimize Dock Street’s approach to one of the most difficult beers to make. “To me the perfect beer is a pilsner,” Rosemarie says. “It is all about balance, and it’s the nexus of beer and beermaking. It’s about a balance of enough malt, and enough hops creating a perfect marriage.”

“I always say West Philadelphia should be a utopian model for the way the rest of the world lives.

We have an environment and a neighborhood where everyone contributes, whether it’s dialogue or the food or the way they think.

It’s a really broad-minded, utopian model, a place that can embrace every culture, every idea, and leave room for more things to happen.

It’s exciting. It’s energizing.”

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By 1996, Dock Street had become the 26th largest microbrewery in the country. It produced over 25,000 barrels of beer a year, earned medals in some of the world’s most prestigious beer competitions, and was being distributed to 24 states. Dock Street was sold in 2000 when the brewpub closed, but Rosemarie reacquired the company two years later. When she decided she wanted to open another brewpub, she began to consider an old firehouse that she was told would be a “wonderful space” located at 50th and Baltimore in West Philadelphia.

Even as a risk-taker, Rosemarie initially worried that 50th and Baltimore might have been a little too far out. She visited the location, and knew it would be a fit right away. “After five minutes of standing outside and looking at the building, and seeing the diversity of people walking around, people who had been there forever, younger people, students, and everything in between in terms of race, creed, and culture – it was just so beautiful, and it felt really, really good.”

It may be hard to believe given its present-day success, but Dock Street faced opposition when they first sought to convert the old firehouse at 701 S. 50th Street into a brew pub. A local church did not want the business to move in, worrying that the sale of alcohol would lead to violence in the community.

“Everyone tried to tell them that’s not what Dock Street is about, that we were not people who were going to sell cheap beer,” Rosemarie remembers.

“They didn’t believe us.”

really, really good,” she explains with a laugh.

People from the neighborhood, Cedar Park Neighbors, and University City District lent their support to Dock Street. “We’d go to neighborhood meetings and the zoning meetings. We were turned down once. I guess I was a little naive because I couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want us. I figured we’d make our case, and they knew our history – it’s not like we were newcomers.” The second time Dock Street went before the zoning commission, they did so with the help of a local attorney. Once again, they were denied.

To say Dock Street succeeded at 50th and Baltimore is like saying beer is a somewhat popular beverage. The brewery has become an anchor at 50th and Baltimore, attracting more businesses around it every year. They renovated the old firehouse and installed a bar, a dining area, and the massive brewing operation in the back. Pulling from her Italian heritage, Rosemarie installed a wood burning oven, and Dock Street’s pizzas and beers quickly became a neighborhood favorite. At UCD’s annual Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll, they are always one of the most popular vendors.

After being turned down yet again, Rosemarie was ready to walk away.

“We had spent a year trying to convince people that they should let us come and be here. It was really heartbreaking.” Rosemarie started looking elsewhere, and came so close to moving into South Philadelphia that she wrote to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and instructed them to close the application on the 50th and Baltimore location.

“I always say West Philadelphia should be a utopian model for the way the rest of the world lives,” Rosemarie says of Dock Street’s home. “We have an environment and a neighborhood where everyone contributes, whether it’s dialogue or the food or the way they think. It’s a really broad-minded, utopian model, a place that can embrace every culture, every idea, and leave room for more things to happen. It’s exciting. It’s energizing.”

“That was that,” she says.

Except it wasn’t.

“I got a call,” Rosemarie says. “I forget who called, but they said, ‘In an unprecedented move, the City Zoning Committee has reversed its decision, and you can go to 50th and Baltimore.’” Rosemarie was shocked. She came to learn a group of influential West Philadelphians had worked behind the scenes to make Dock Street’s case.

Still, she wasn’t convinced. She had made progress on the South Philadelphia location, and wasn’t able to forget the sting of the neighborhood opposition. All that changed one night with a fateful visit.

“I was in the kitchen cooking some chicken cutlets,” Rosemarie recalls.

“There was a knock at my door and two UCD employees (former UCD staff members Carolyn Blackwell-Hewson and Gail Fisher) have a cake and a card and they say, ‘We want you!’ The card had a dog carrying a note in its mouth that read ‘Come back.’ I just started to cry.”

Rosemarie was thrilled to serve the West of Center beer at the 10th anniversary celebration, as a way of praising and thanking the neighborhood that has embraced them. At the event, 27 people proved their love for the brewery with permanent Dock Street tattoos by a local tattoo artist.

In 2017, the company opened the Dock Street Cannery + Lounge at 705 S. 50th Street, a converted garage that houses a cocktail bar and a new beer canning operation. UCD assisted Dock Street with their expansion through our Small Business Services, a program that helps businesses looking to open, grow, or relocate in University City. We helped the brewery access grant funding for the canning equipment, and obtain a zoning change to make their status permanent, meaning Dock Street is here to stay.

“We developed a very symbiotic relationship with the neighborhood and couldn’t have asked for a better home,” Rosemarie says. “It’s where we belong.”

“After they left I sat down, had a glass of wine, and thought to myself, ‘Maybe it can work.’” The next morning Rosemarie made phone calls to UCD and Cedar Park Neighbors and said they were in. “The cake was 49

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12

Philadanco

Founder Joan Myers Brown talks about PHILADANCO’s history and inspiration.

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he building that houses PHILADANCO, the West Philadelphia dance institution, isn’t terribly hard to find. Need a street sign to guide you? Search for a small block just north of Market Street with the name PHILADANCO Way. Still lost? Look for the brown brick building stamped with PHILADANCO in big white letters. You’ll know you’re in the right place if you can hear the sounds of rhythmic music inside; listen closely and you might make out alternating thumps and whispers of dance slippers on wooden floors.

Inside PHILADANCO’s headquarters you will find adults from any of the four companies rehearsing for an upcoming show or tour; students as young as four learning the basics of dance; or perhaps the founder of PHILADANCO, Joan Myers Brown, watching over the enterprise she founded nearly 50 years ago.

an instructor. Joan grew up in West Philadelphia at 47th and Woodland, and first took dance classes when she was six years old at a school run

by Essie Marie Dorsey, who was the only one to accept black children in the 1940s. Joan didn’t last long in her tap class, however. “The reason I stopped was because I lost my ballet slippers the first week and my mother said she didn’t have $1.50 for another pair of shoes.”

“When I walked into ballet club and there was nobody of color in there except for me, I had no idea what was going on.”

Although in her 80s, Joan Myers Brown still has a dancer’s figure: lean, lithe, and graceful. She limps a little these days, complaining about arthritis, but it’s not hard to imagine her springing up to perform arabesques or pliés.

“The last time I danced was probably 1962,” Joan begins. She means professionally, because she’s certainly danced during her fifty plus years as

Joan may not have returned to dance if not for a gym class at West Philly High. Her gym instructor, Virginia Lingenfelder, had been a ballet dancer with the Littlefield Ballet Company, which was headquartered in Philadelphia. In her gym class, students learned the basics of dance, and Ms. Lingenfelder noticed Joan’s natural ability. She told Joan that she should be a dancer, and invited her to attend an after-school ballet club.

“When I walked into ballet club and there was nobody of color in there except for me, I had no idea what was going on,” Joan remembers. She couldn’t attend any of the major dance schools in the city because they were still segregated. Joan, however, had a white friend who was attending Littlefield. “She taught me in the morning, so when I got to the ballet club in the afternoon, I kind of knew what I was doing.”

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In 1948, Joan moved on to study with Antony Tudor, an instructor from England. “He was the first teacher I knew of in the city who permitted black youngsters to take classes.” As the first black student in Tudor’s class, things weren’t easy for Joan, but she made the most of it. “If he used to teach something with two dancers, none of the men wanted to dance with me, so he was always my partner. So I learned from the master!”

Tudor encouraged her to study ballet in New York City and Joan earned a scholarship to the Katherine Dunham school in Manhattan.

Joan had dreams of being like Janet Collins, who broke ground as the first black ballerina with the Metropolitan Opera Company. But things didn’t work out that way. “Girls didn’t leave home then,” Joan explains. “They either went to college or got married.” She opted for the latter, and when her husband was drafted, she became a touring nightclub dancer for nine years.

As her professional dancing career wound down, Joan decided her next step was to begin teaching, inspired, in part, by her gratitude to Ms. Lingenfelder for introducing her to dance.

“There were lots of opportunities that fell in my lap, so I wanted more opportunities to fall in others’ laps.” She opened the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts in 1960 at 52nd and Walnut, where the majority of students were African American.

Joan taught dance at her school for nearly a decade before a problem arose. “The youngsters I’d started teaching when they were six or seven years old were now sixteen and seventeen, and they were asking ‘What are we going to do with this stuff?’” Joan sent them to Pennsylvania ballet companies but they didn’t get accepted. She was stuck with a group of girls who could dance, but didn’t have a place to do it. So in 1970, Philadelphia Dance Company, or PHILADANCO, was born to give opportunities to dancers of color.

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Joan had an easy time building the company. She didn’t need to hold auditions because she cast the kids she had trained, including boys recruited from West Philadelphia High School’s football team. She had access to dancers and funding because there was less competition in those days, compared to today’s more crowded market. Joan was able to build PHILADANCO into a respected company renowned for the fine training of its dancers and the high spirit and energy of its performances.

Before long, PHILADANCO was touring first the country, and then the world. “The UK, Budapest, Italy, Amsterdam,” Joan says, listing a few countries she has visited with the troupe. “I think we’ve been to every little town in Germany.” Joan enjoys touring because there’s so much appreciation from international audiences. “A lot of the towns we’ve been to, we’re the first American company [they’ve seen] – not just black company. They see so much on television that’s negative about African Americans, so for them to see young men and women dancing…it’s very good.”

In the nearly 50 years since its formation, PHILADANCO has turned out a high number of successful alumni. Some went on to the Dance Theater of Harlem, a few joined the prestigious Alvin Ailey company, one started an Aboriginal dance group called Bangarra, and many have gone on to choreograph for PHILADANCO or other companies. Recently a former member was on Broadway in Wicked.

In 2001, PHILADANCO became the resident dance company at The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, which is celebrating Joan's dancers Joan in the 2018 show Success Stories, a production featuring four ballets choreographed by former members.

Although Joan has had opportunities to leave West Philadelphia behind, she has chosen to stay in the neighborhood she loves, and continues to give back in large and small ways. When PHILADANCO occupied its

“I want to make sure my dancers are well trained, well-rehearsed. Alvin Ailey will say that when PHILADANCO dancers come in, they’re ready. They know how to comb their hair, they know how to put on their makeup, how to rehearse, how to be on time. It’s all the things we instill in dancers.” current location in the 1980’s there were 28 empty houses nearby, so Joan purchased a few with money from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and turned them into affordable artist housing.

Each year the Kimmel celebrates PHILADANCO Day, where hundreds of children from throughout the city come see the company perform for free. Joan has worked with Drexel’s Dornsife Center, sent dancers to local schools to teach, partnered with the African American Museum, served on the board of University City District, and she gives out 75 scholarships to local dancers every year.

on my way to Chile,” Joan said. But when she learned she was going to be honored by President Obama, she quickly changed her plans to attend a ceremony in which she received a National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest civic honor for excellence in the arts. President Obama cited Brown for carving out “an artistic haven for African-American dancers and choreographers to innovate, create and share their unique visions with the national and global dance communities.”

“I think my kids were more excited than me,” Joan says, describing her daughter snapping a photo in the White House bathroom. Even though Joan calls the occasion the highlight of her career, she missed the after-party, electing instead to join her dancers in South America.

When asked what makes her most proud, it’s not the accolades, the book written about her, or the trophy cases stuffed with awards in PHILADANCO’s office. No, for Joan Myers Brown, she says what makes her most proud is to “stand in the back of the theater and see people stand up and applaud the dancers,” something she’s been able to appreciate for almost 50 years.

Joan believes it is her mission to give more opportunities to dancers of color. “That’s still my objective,” she says. “I want to make sure my dancers are well trained, well-rehearsed. Alvin Ailey will say that when PHILADANCO dancers come in, they’re ready. They know how to comb their hair, they know how to put on their makeup, how to rehearse, how to be on time. It’s all the things we instill in dancers.”

Joan’s amazing career has not gone unnoticed. She’s received awards from Philadelphia’s African American Museum and The Philadelphia Tribune, membership to the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia Magazine named her one of the Top Ten Best Philadelphians in 2012.

Joan’s most notable honor, however, almost didn’t happen. In 2012, with her company about to leave for an international trip, she got a phone call inviting her to Washington, DC to receive an award. “I can’t go, I’m 53

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13

The Enterprise Center

President Della Clark describes the impact of the neighborhood non-profit that supports minority entrepreneurs and strengthens the surrounding community.

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s Philadelphians came together to celebrate Minority Enterprise Development (MED) week – when minority businesses are fêted and encouraged through city-wide events – we couldn’t imagine a better organization to highlight than The Enterprise Center. This West Philadelphia non-profit has been providing access to capital, capacity building, business education and economic development opportunities to high-potential, minority entrepreneurs since 1989. To learn more about the history of The Enterprise Center (TEC) and its role in the community we spoke with the organization’s president, Della Clark, who has led TEC since 1992.

The Enterprise Center provides assistance through three avenues.

Their business development efforts accelerate the capacity of minority enterprises to compete in any marketplace through business education, management support, and connections to industry. Their capital corporation provides access to the debt and equity that businesses need to start, grow, and succeed. And their community development corporation catalyzes benefits for businesses and residents that spark revitalization in distressed, low-income neighborhoods.

“I watched Noel grow.

He’s been a client that I have kicked in the butt, yelled at, nurtured, loved, hugged. He’s a local success story.”

The conversation with Della occurs at their 4548 Market Street headquarters, once home to the TV studio where American Bandstand was filmed. Since they share a last name, Della likes to joke that she was Bandstand host Dick Clark’s first wife. “This building is very significant,” Della explains. “In terms of 46th and Market, West Philadelphia, television, entertainment. It was a place where people would come hoping to hit it big in music and entertainment. We think of it today as a place to hit it big in business.”

When TEC launched, Della explains they “were mostly focused on starting small businesses, not scaling or accelerating. We certainly were not providing capital.” The mission has evolved over the years to keep up with changes in the business environment, just as they’ve helped businesses keep up with new technologies.

One of TEC’s earliest clients was FutureNet, a company owned by West Philadelphia native Noel Lowe. In the 90s, FutureNet’s business consisted of repairing typewriters, and SEPTA was their largest company.

The Enterprise Center worked with FutureNet to adapt their business 55

“We see this building as our lighthouse for entrepreneurship.

In terms of putting our stakes in the ground at 46th and Market, it’s been a huge community investment. We’ve been in this building 20 plus years, and we’re very proud of how we’ve been able to help small businesses in this community.” model to focus on information technology. “I watched Noel grow,” Della says. “He’s been a client that I have kicked in the butt, yelled at, nurtured, loved, hugged. He’s a local success story.” Today the company does over $2 million in revenue a year and has two major contracts with the City.

With TEC’s help, Donna Miller of DeBose Printing & Business Services similarly learned how to adjust to changing technologies. When she first came to The Enterprise Center, she had been doing typing work for colleges and universities, but she knew that the decreasing cost of personal computers would limit her profitability. The Enterprise Center helped her incubate a new business model focused on desktop publishing, graphics, and full scale printing – with a twist.

“We did some research and found that in the African American community there’s a need for elaborate programs for funeral services,” Della says.

“They might be three pages, they have photos, they are very sophisticated.”

The Enterprise Center connected Donna to local mortuaries serving African American clientele, and her company is still in business today at 72nd and Haverford. “When she came to us she was on public assistance,” 56

Della says. “With our help she owns her own house, her own car. We even coined the joke that people were just dying to give her business.”

Today, The Enterprise Center is focused on the food and construction industries. They expanded their operation to include the Dorrance Hamilton Center for Culinary Enterprises (CCE), which supports both established and start-up food businesses and food processors in need of commercial kitchen space and technical assistance. Located at 310 S. 48th Street, CCE houses 5,000 square feet of commercial grade cooking facilities, including four state-of-the-art, shared-use commercial kitchens for local caterers, food truck operators, and other mobile vendors. It is also the home of the 48th Street Grille, a sit-down Caribbean restaurant operated by former CCE client Carl Lewis.

Della is excited by the growth potential of this industry. “We had four clients vending at the NFL Draft in Philadelphia,” she explains. “We do taste-testings on a regular basis. We invite members of the food services industry who are in the University City area. Penn, Drexel, University of the Sciences, Children’s Hospital. We court their food services companies.

Institutions in West Philadelphia and University City have been extremely important to our food sector. We just think it’s going to explode.” TEC also supports restaurants through their Common Table program, a pop-up restaurant concept where new restaurateurs can test concepts without fully investing in a brick and mortar location. The program launched in January of 2017 with Shark Tank participants LuLu Bang, and welcomed Atiya Ola's Spirit First Food in the fall.

The Enterprise Center has also similar work around construction, forming a consortium to assist construction firms with best practices, and pointing them to available opportunities so they are ready when they arrive. “In both food and construction, capacity is a big thing,” Della explains. “A food service company, they don’t want to award you a very large food contract if you don’t have capacity. It’s the same way in construction.”

And construction is certainly a major part of the current University City landscape. Della points to the high rate of development throughout the neighborhood and wants The Enterprise Center to be a part of it. Twenty years ago, Della didn’t know when – or if – development would have stretched west to 46th and Market. “Today, I can see it coming,” she says.

“It’s at 42nd already.”

She has long been interested in accelerating growth on Market Street, and the community development corporation is critical to that work. From campaigning for the City to move its police headquarters to the former Provident Mutual Life Insurance Company at 46th and Market to planning a mixed-used development on the south side of that intersection, Della has visions of the best way to activate her corner of West Philadelphia. When they moved into their current headquarters, the building was boarded up and dilapidated, and Della describes what they’ve done to bring it back to life. “We see this building as our lighthouse for entrepreneurship. In terms of putting our stakes in the ground at 46th and Market, it’s been a huge community investment. We’ve been in this building 20 plus years, and we’re very proud of how we’ve been able to help small businesses in this community.”

They’ve also given back to the community, particularly through efforts to turn around a plot of land at 4610 Market Street with a new pocket park and urban garden. “We took a very small plot of land, what I call an uneconomic remnant, that SEPTA had next to their station. In a partnership between the Walnut Hill Community, Center City Toyota, the Toyota Foundation, and The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation, we completely brought that small parcel of land back to life. Around Halloween, we have a big party for the kids. In November we give away approximately 200 turkeys in conjunction with Central City Toyota and Walnut Hill. In December we typically have a Santa

Clause during a Christmas party, and give away about 300 gifts with Central City Toyota.”

Della also contributes to the community in a major way by serving as a board member here at University City District. Della has been involved almost since the beginning, and she is largely responsible for bringing Matt Bergheiser – a former TEC employee – to University City District.

Della sees herself as a connector in her role here at UCD. Most of the stakeholders who sit at the UCD table are experts in areas like research, innovation, real estate development and construction, and regional strategy, but they don’t necessarily know diversity and inclusion. “I view one of my roles as being able to help bring diversity and inclusion to innovation, construction, growth and development of their institutions.

If I think your organization can do better, I will come see you and lay out a vision for how you can be more diverse and inclusive. That’s where I see my role and that of The Enterprise Center.”

“In our early years we didn’t present ourselves with as much clarity and focus as we do today. It took me 25 years to learn how to do this job,” she says with a laugh. “But I know it now.”

She sure does. Della Clark has been an integral part of UCD’s work in the community, and we can’t imagine our work without her contributions.

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The University City Review

University City's local paper that’s been delivering news to the neighborhood for 30 years.

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ven if you don’t know Bob and Claudia Christian by name, we guarantee that if you live in University City, you’ve seen their work. Bob and Claudia are the husband and wife one-two punch behind the long-standing University City Review, the hyper-local paper that’s been delivering news to the neighborhood for nearly 30 years. Bob is the paper’s publisher and editor and Claudia serves as the associate publisher, but given the small size of their operation, they both handle much more.

The Review began as a monthly publication, switched to every other week, and finally settled into the weekly publication it is today. 15,000 copies of the UC Review are printed each week and distributed to homes and neighborhood spots like supermarkets or our own UCD office. Bob handled the editing and contributed pieces on occasion, while Claudia worked with community associations on their calendars and meetings. She also collected crime stats from police districts and handled sales, sometimes with a baby in tow.

Originally from New York City, Bob and Claudia arrived in University City with a young child in the late 70s. They chose the neighborhood so Bob could do graduate work at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary, formerly at 43rd and Chestnut. When that didn’t work out, Bob dabbled in property management before deciding to turn a part-time writing pursuit – editing a community newspaper, freelancing for the Delaware County Community Times and contributing to The University City Press – into a full-time gig.

A typical issue focuses on quieter community stories within their coverage area: progress on local parks, upcoming community events, restaurant openings. The paper also serves as an outlet for community opinions, with op-eds and articles written by neighbors. “We had, and we still have, a lot of people who are local who contribute to the paper, and that’s one of our most favorite things,” Bob says.

The University City Review debuted in 1988 as a true community paper focused on what was happening in and around University City. A sister paper, the Philadelphia Free Press, covered news east of the Schuylkill River.

But every once in a while, the paper has made big waves in the community through a story they’ve published. Bob seems to revel in stirring things up, being an instigator, and spurring neighborhood action through his paper.

“I used to worry about not having enough stories,” Bob remembers. “But that’s just impossible. There’s all kinds of things going on, all kinds of people. People wanted us to do the paper. They wanted to read about what was going on in the neighborhood: events, restaurants, crime. They wanted to read stories about people.”

“I’m in trouble a lot,” he says, and there’s a mischievous glint in his eye when he recalls the rival editors, lawyers, and neighborhood big wigs who have read him the Riot Act over stories he’s published. He seems to love being the fly in the ointment, or the David to the various Goliaths. When this idea is proposed to him, he points to a plaque on the wall that reads: 59

“Fighting bad guys is only part of the wonderful world of the good guys.”

The paper doesn’t take a position on issues but serves as an outlet for neighborhood residents. “Sometimes it’s the only voice where people of the neighborhood can say things,” he explains.

Bob and Claudia have used the paper to help the community. When the University City Arts League nearly closed in the 1980s, it was a story in the Review that helped save it. “The board wanted to close it down and sell the building,” Bob remembers. “So I wrote a big editorial. People were horrified. They didn’t know the financial problems.” Bob’s reporting prompted a neighborhood movement to save the longstanding arts organization. “People got so roused up that they took over the Arts League: new board, new president. They got the funding and they’re still in business.”

And Claudia recalls a local veteran who won two concert tickets in a UC Review contest, and shared that it was the first time he had a gift to give to his son. A week after the show, he came back in, told them he read the paper all the time, and gave them the only thing he had: a book of forever stamps. “And you know, that was one of the best gifts I ever received,” Claudia says.

Business has gotten more difficult over the years, not just for the Review but for the entire newspaper industry. Several local papers have folded and others have changed their formats entirely. Competition for readers’ attention has gotten stiff, and people get their news from so many different sources now, often in an instant. The UC Review has worked to stay relevant despite changing times, and developed a website and an e-newsletter. Their revenue is driven by advertisements and their pitch is built on their ability to reach the neighborhood. This reach is what attracts larger organizations like Penn and Drexel, and smaller places like local restaurants and UCD, when we want to connect a local audience. What really sets the Review apart, and keeps them relevant, is a devotion to the news that matters the most to people in the immediate area.

“I used to worry about not having enough stories. But that’s just impossible. There’s all kinds of things going on, all kinds of people. People wanted us to do the paper. They wanted to read about what was going on in the neighborhood: events, restaurants, crime. They wanted to read stories about people.”

A UC Review story also helped to save the Walnut Street West Library. The library had been closed due to water damage, and Bob learned there was a plan to demolish the building. He hired a Penn student to do a drawing of the library, and on the front page of the paper he published the headline “Why Are They Taking Our Library?”

“I’m telling you, all hell broke loose on that one,” Bob says. After community opposition and a big meeting, the library was renovated instead of being demolished, and today it’s one of the most active branches in the system.

Other notable moments from the Review’s history? A battle with Philadelphia Magazine over a story involving a WXPN disc jockey that devolved into a flurry of angry faxes. The time Bob interviewed the commander of the South Sudanese Liberation Army, who was in the neighborhood to raise money from the Sudanese community; the US State Department had no knowledge of the commander’s visit, and the story wound up being reprinted and distributed all throughout Africa.

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“We’re not making millions,” Claudia says. “But one thing we are good at is staying afloat, and staying around.

Other papers in West Philly have folded, even with funding from this place and that place. You have to hustle. It’s a labor of love.”

It might be tricky, yet the Review has risen to that challenge over the years.

A recent survey puts them well above the national average for the percentage of people receiving the paper who actually read it. When they drop off approximately 800 papers to three supermarkets in the neighborhood, people are waiting to pick up copies, and the boxes are empty within days.

Countless neighbors share how appreciative they are of the coverage of community issues that are important to them. “People tell me they read

it from cover to cover,” Bob says. “It always amazes me. We write things that people respond to.”

“It’s an industry that’s always exciting,” says Claudia. “There’s always new stories, and people to meet, and places to go.”

As the 30th anniversary of the Review approaches, Bob and Claudia have begun to consider their exit strategy. Although Bob says “the newspaper gets into your blood,” he admits he and Claudia are at a stage of their lives where they’re looking to turn the paper over to somebody else. When they retire, they hope someone will continue the paper that has found such a home in the community.

Bob allows himself a moment to be sentimental. “Working with people, working with writers, and working Local writers, photographers staffers and family gather in 1988 for the first University City Review party. Bob Christian bottom left; Claudia bottom right. with community people, that’s all been really good. We’ve made so many friends in the area.”

For Claudia, the most satisfying part is publishing stories that make a difference. “Sometimes the stories really have a positive effect on a block, or on the people. Sometimes just having the publicity makes something happen. That’s about the best we can do. We can’t do more than just expose the story, but those things are really rewarding. Years ago there wasn’t much backup for community groups, so getting the exposure in the paper really meant something. If you are responsible, you can have an impact, and you can do something that’s really valuable to the neighborhood.”

Hopefully, they can continue that trend for years to come.

“Sometimes the stories really have a positive effect on a block, or on the people...If you are responsible, you can have an impact, and you can do something that’s really valuable to the neighborhood.”

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University City District Founders

Five of the UCD's founding Board of Directors share retrospectives on the past 20 years.

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niversity City District launched in 1997, as dedicated residents, institutions and businesses came together to help improve their community. As part of our 20th anniversary, we spent time with those individuals who were most involved in creating UCD, hearing from five of the founding members of University City District’s Board of Directors on why the organization started, why they became involved, and how they’ve seen the neighborhood grow and change since UCD’s formation. Here’s what our founders have said about UCD and their commitment to their community.

“Back in ’97, the West Philadelphia area was going through a very tumultuous time. We had to change what people thought of West Philadelphia. One of the solutions to increase the quality of life was the creation of the University City District. The model really was ‘Clean and Safe.’ There were two things that people kept saying to all of us: ‘It’s dark” and ‘I want to see more uniforms.’

The safety ambassador program was a huge lift. We changed the whole landscape and there started to become - little by little - a buzz. We’ve stabilized Maureen Rush the environment enough that now we can do really interesting projects, like Vice President the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative. WPSI has changed lives. The Trolley for Public Safety Portal is going to change the face of 40th street. All of the journey of these University of Pennsylvania past twenty years has absolutely paid off.”

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“This neighborhood was known for blowing trash, investment property owners who didn’t maintain buildings. Clean and safe is designed to enhance the neighborhoods. If you want to do something to improve the urban landscape, then you do it. [After the founding,] the barriers came down, you began to see a very different relationship between the neighborhoods and the institutions that surrounded it. Take a look at The Porch at 30th Street, one of the gateways to University City. All of these things affect the way people look at a neighborhood.”

“The institutions weren’t collaborating, graffiti and trash weren’t being maintained.

John Fry, the VP of Penn at the time, approached a number of us and asked if we’d be willing to collaborate in an endeavor to make a difference. We were very deliberate about what we were trying to do. People had a voice, and they were heard. To see people taking pride in the community, to be part of that, and to see that people really do care about each other and can make a difference – that satisfaction for me is special.”

Barry Grossbach

Joseph Trainor

Representative for Spruce Hill Community Association

Chief Financial Officer The Wistar Institute

“This is my home. I was raising a family here. I wanted them to have a better understanding of the diversity of this world, and there is not a better place in this world to find diversity than in University City. The effect of seeing somebody swinging hammers next door said, 'let me do something, let me paint, let me do that improvement, let me fix my roof.' The rebirth of West Philadelphia is a national and international story.

WPSI can lead to better jobs, it can lead to careers.

That’s a beautiful thing – what more could you ask for than self-actualization? The UCD has impacted people’s lives in such a more meaningful way today than it did 20 years ago - I think that’s the legacy.”

“The neighborhood was working to address a perception problem when we started University City District. But we’ve gotten to a point now where we can really focus on the positive [here in West Philadelphia]. People come here and they see a sense of pride.

They see the tree-lined streets, they see the street lights we’ve put in, the brick pavement. And it’s a happy place.”

Lindsay Johnston

David Adelman

President Common Ground Realtors

President and CEO Campus Apartments 65

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Safety Ambassador Shaun Loadholt

The story of one of UCD's outstanding Safety Ambassadors.

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ll throughout University City, a group of dedicated men and women work 365 days a year to keep our neighborhood safe. There’s Mike, standing at 40th and Market each morning as commuters exit the subway station, or Brianna who takes over for the evening commute. Every day when the final bell rings at the Penn Alexander School, Ryan is there to greet the students. Tuhran hands out materials at college safety fairs to educate students about bike safety and situational awareness, and also teaches chess at the Walnut Street Library. These people, clad in yellow and black, are UCD Safety Ambassadors, and they’ve been a critical part of University City District’s work in the community since our formation in 1997.

On foot, on bicycle, in patrol cars, and for a brief, inexplicable period even on rollerblades, UCD Safety Ambassadors serve as a highly visible deterrent to crime and work with the other local law enforcement and security agencies to reduce crime throughout the neighborhood.

“If we can deter a crime from even happening? That’s the number one goal,” says Alan Garry, UCD’s Director of Public Safety and Community Services. As part of his job, Alan oversees an account with security company Allied Universal consisting of 65 ambassadors and supervisors. He also works to develop relationships with the other nearby safety agencies.

“UCD is unique because we have coverage throughout the entire district,” continues Alan. “Our ambassadors overlap with other organizations like Penn, Drexel, Philadelphia Police, SEPTA, Amtrak, and security for local

hospitals, uSciences, and the Science Center. We’re not confined to a small footprint.”

UCD’s ambassadors are not law enforcement officers. They are trained to be public safety stewards, serving as the eyes and ears for the police, but also assisting residents, students, and local employees with things like walking escort services, vehicle lockouts and jumpstarts, homeless outreach in partnership with Project HOME, and any other needs that might come up. UCD ambassadors receive training in everything from effective patrolling techniques, radio communications, first aid, urban bicycling, and – most importantly to Alan – customer service. “When we hire ambassadors, we look for someone with good communications skills so they can have many positive interactions with community members, business owners, and neighbors.”

One such ambassador who has excelled in all these areas is Shaun Loadholt, who has been with UCD since 2013. While many ambassadors come to UCD through job fairs, general postings, or transfer from other Allied Universal positions, Shaun took a more circuitous route that started with UCD’s West Philadelphia Skills Initiative.

Shaun grew up in North Philadelphia but moved to 52nd and Girard when he was 12 years old. While studying at Overbrook High School he became involved with Philadelphia Futures, a local nonprofit that provides Philadelphia’s low-income, first-generation-to-college students with the tools, 67

resources and opportunities necessary for admission to and success in college. With Philadelphia Futures’ help, Shaun earned an Associate’s degree in liberal arts from the Community College of Philadelphia, but then found himself in need of a job. His counselor from Philly Futures saw a flier for the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative and suggested Shaun apply.

“It was out of nowhere,” Shaun remembers. Through the Skills Initiative program, Shaun learned valuable job and interview skills. “I learned about keywords to use in a resume to help your application jump to the top of the list. I was even learning sociological lessons – it was almost like a college course. I learned all this stuff I had no idea about, like how to sell myself, how to work with my own experience and skills.”

Shaun wasn’t sure where the program would take him, but he was open to opportunities. At the conclusion of all Skills Initiative programs, participants go through mock interviews, and one of Shaun’s interviewers happened to be Alan Garry.

“Interviewing Shaun, I saw someone with a lot of potential,” Alan remembers. “He really stood out from the other interviews that day. Everyone there was hungry for any job, but Shaun wanted something more meaningful, a job he could be proud of.” Alan liked him right away.

“They always put a big emphasis on customer service,” Shaun remembers, echoing Alan. “It’s about soft skills, being approachable, and taking initiative. I guess Alan saw that in me.”

“I would do dispatch, and then on my lunch break I’d get relieved, grab my relief’s bike, and practice riding in the UCD parking lot.

Units would come in from their lunch break and give me pointers.

I didn’t understand how people stayed straight without falling over.

Once it happened... it felt like magic.”

He did. So much so, in fact, that after the interview Alan pulled a Skills Initiative colleague aside to say he wanted to hire Shaun as an ambassador. When he made the job offer, Alan assured Shaun that the people skills were most important, and that the security training could be easily acquired.

There was just one catch: Shaun didn’t know how to ride a bike. “I showed 68

up for training at Allied’s headquarters for their initial training, and I got a slip that said ‘Be at the Penn Annex for bike training Sunday.’” Shaun laughs at the memory. “I went to the bike training and had to tell the trainer I didn’t know how to ride, like, at all. At that point, the last time I had attempted to ride I was six or seven years old, like everybody else, with my dad trying to teach me. And we just never finished.”

The trainer sent Shaun home. “With someone else that would have been the end of it,” Alan says. “But I still saw the potential in Shaun.”

Even though bike riding is an integral part of the position, Alan found a compromise and offered Shaun a position working at The Porch at 30th Street as the weekend concierge. “The Porch was the only ambassador position that wasn’t on a bike at the time. Shaun ended up being a perfect fit and a great compliment to Roy, the full time Porch concierge.”

Shaun spent his first six months working parttime at The Porch, but decided in order to get more hours he needed to acquire additional skills. “Shaun came to realize one of his weaknesses was talking on the radio, so he asked if he could do dispatch,” Alan remembers. “He stressed that forcing himself to do it would make him better.”

Dispatchers are tasked with answering phone calls when the UCD office is closed – after 5 PM and on weekends – for people seeking walking escorts, jumpstarts, or vehicle jumpstarts.

The dispatcher gathers the information and then passes along instructions to ambassadors on patrol so they can offer assistance. They also record all notable occurrences – escorts, incidents, and locations – reported by ambassadors during their shifts.

Once he had that position down, Shaun realized he still needed another skill if he really wanted to excel at the position. So in the summer of 2014, Shaun started teaching himself how to ride a bike. “I would do dispatch,

and then on my lunch break I’d get relieved, grab my relief’s bike, and practice riding in the UCD parking lot. Units would come in from their lunch break and give me pointers. ‘You can’t be looking at your feet,’ ‘you gotta relax,’ or ‘it’s all about balance.’ I didn’t understand how people stayed straight without falling over. Once it happened, I was like, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know how to do this before.’ It felt like magic.”

Shaun had to go back to the same trainer who had sent him home years earlier and try again. “We went to the top level of the Fresh Grocer and go through drills like doing a serpentine pattern through a series of cones.

You had to ride in a circle around a nine foot box without stopping. You have to learn bike safety and all the bike parts, and then show you can brake and balance yourself.” This time, Shaun passed and was able to go out on bike patrol.

“A lot of your efforts when you’re patrolling can go unrecorded,” Shaun says.

“What you’re supposed to be doing is working as a deterrent to crime. You can’t see a deterrence happening. Someone might be about to pull on a door handle, but since you’re standing there they walk away. A lot of it is riding around, being visible, answering questions and giving directions.”

Shaun got to know different students who would call for escorts every night, and he enjoys knowing he’s working to keep people safe.

“He’s always challenging himself,” Alan says. “First it was getting a job,

then it was getting better on the radio, then it was learning to ride a bike, and recently it was getting his driver’s license so he could apply to be a supervisor.” Not surprisingly, Shaun got the position. He now works as a dispatch supervisor, overseeing ambassadors on the night shift and being accountable for a crew working under him.

As much as Alan would love to see the best of our ambassadors stay on indefinitely, many of the ambassadors use their experiences with UCD to eventually move to other positions. “We’ve had multiple ambassadors move on to other positions with Allied Universal, become police officers, or go on to successful careers with the military or in other fields,” Alan says.

When asked to share specific stories of safety ambassadors excelling on the job, Alan has to think for a moment. “It’s hard because there have been so many.” He references the time last year when Penn Police officer Ed Miller and Philadelphia Police Sergeant Sylvia Young were shot by a suspect, and UCD ambassadors as a group received a unit commendation for their response during the crisis. “A real impressive response from our team.”

Ambassadors have helped prevent robberies, and domestic disputes, and countless other crimes. But for Alan, it’s not the big, rare incidents that prove the worth of the program, but the daily interactions with neighbors and employees that happen every day. “Shaun embodies all of what we want in our team, and we’re lucky to have him.”

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UCD's Mr. Fix-It

Ryan Spak runs UCD's Project Rehab, helping property owners restore their distressed real estate.

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ou know when Ryan Spak is in the office for the day. Although he only works at UCD part-time, he makes his hours count. He’s always hustling in through the back door, barking into his cell phone, zipping from meeting to meeting, and wasting no time getting down to business so he can solve one problem and move onto the next.

He’s UCD’s Mr. Fix-It, our professor of permits, the deed detective. You need a drywall guy? An electrician? Need to know how to navigate L&I? Call Ryan Spak. But chances are he’s on the other line.

“Do you mind if I eat? I haven’t had anything all day,” Ryan says before the interview begins. It’s 4:30 in the afternoon, but Ryan has been so busy he hasn’t had a moment for a meal. This is how it typically goes for him – each day he bounces from meeting to meeting all throughout the city, checking on properties, heading to City Hall, on the phone with his employees. He declines at least five calls during a 45-minute conversation.

Ryan is a renaissance man driven by many different interests and passions.

He grew up in the Northeast, earned a degree in Political Science and American Studies from Temple University, and held jobs as a DJ, a clerk in Philadelphia Municipal Court, and as a janitor before developing an interest in real estate and development. He’s a fast-talker who speaks in short, clipped sentences, and doesn’t like wasting words.

“I bought my first property when I was 19,” Ryan says between bites of sushi.

He goes on to outline a circuitous background that involved working for

Ed Rendell’s gubernatorial campaign, becoming a realtor, buying property, working for a developer, starting a janitorial company, rehabbing houses in different neighborhoods, working as a paralegal, buying even more property, cleaning offices himself, and, of course, buying more property, including in West Philadelphia at 52nd and Springfield. Got all that? To make it even more impressive, all of this happened before he was 30. Through these experiences he developed a unique toolbox of talents, including how to find people using different databases, how to work with Philadelphia’s Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I), the ins and outs of property ownership, how to match development projects to community needs, legal paperwork, and more.

Ryan’s ascent to development mogul was stopped in its tracks in 2010 when his wife Jessica fell ill. “I realized very quickly that life is short,” he says of that time. “We were broke.” He saw a posting for an open position for a Director of Community and Business Services with UCD and decided to apply, figuring his experience running a janitorial company made him a good candidate to oversee UCD’s cleaning operations in the district.

When looking back, Ryan admits the position was “abso-freaking-lutely” over his head. But that didn’t stop him from applying and making a big impression on UCD staff, including President Matt Bergheiser. “He’s an entrepreneur,” says Matt. “A guy who, with limited resources, can figure things out and solve problems. That was crystal clear from the interview process.”

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Without knowing it, Ryan was interviewing for a job he hadn’t applied for, a job that hadn’t even been defined until then. According to Matt, the community had been requesting assistance with a neighborhood issue.

“People had been coming to us and asking if we could help with abandoned properties. At the time we didn’t have the resources or the wherewithal or the skill to do so. All those things coming together – Ryan as a person, the demand side of the equation and what had been asked of us by the community. It was like a light bulb going off.”

The final candidates were asked to come up with a business plan to improve UCD’s safety and cleaning services, and address the problem of abandoned properties in the neighborhood. How could UCD make headway with these vacant or distressed properties that seemed to be stuck due to messy estates, disinterested or absentee owners, or myriad other issues?

“You know my personality,” Ryan says.

“I’m aggressive.” He seized on the opportunity to use his knowledge of real estate and outlined plans for homeowners, contractors, and private investors.

When asked if he was excited by this opportunity, Ryan exclaims, “Oh my God, are you kidding me? I was cleaning toilets at night! Here they were paying me to try something. Initially I saw it as a way to make some extra money, but then it became an opportunity to learn more about a business that I knew I loved, and finally it became about learning a way to help the community. The minute it became about helping the community, it exploded.”

“Real estate is really complicated.

And if you haven’t handled your stuff – if you didn’t do a title right, or your mother’s estate, or you’re in the middle of a bankruptcy and you don’t pay your attorney – if at the end of the day, you don’t know how to handle that, who do you go to? The people who live within the University City District, or want to invest in the University City District, they have us.”

It was clear that Ryan was just the sort of dynamic person who would push the boundaries of what UCD could do.

Drawing from Ryan’s love for basketball, Matt compares Ryan’s style to a “chucker,” or “the guy who is shooting all the jump shots and making the coach scream ‘No, no, no!’ And then when the shot goes in, the coach switches to ‘Great shot, great shot!’” Matt called Ryan to tell him he didn’t get the job he had originally applied for, but that he wanted to meet for lunch. When they met, Matt explained that they wanted Ryan to develop a playbook for a program to address abandoned and distressed properties.

“My experience in this field was slim-to-none,” Ryan says, “Other than being 72

a gutsy kid with nothing to lose.” But in reality, he had the skillset already: he understood property law; he knew how to locate property owners who were difficult to find; he was experienced with contracting. Ryan developed a playbook, handed it in, and was hired as a consultant on a part-time basis. He was told to see what he could do over six months as a trial.

At the same time Project Rehab was growing, so was Ryan’s career outside UCD. Around the time he began consulting for UCD he started the Spak Group, a real estate development company, with his wife and mother as partners. Through the Spak Group, Ryan uses the same skills to rehabilitate, reposition and revitalize highly distressed properties. To avoid any conflicts of interest, the Spak Group focuses on properties outside of UCD’s coverage area, mostly to the west of 50th Street.

Over the years Project Rehab has grown into a collaboration between UCD, local community groups and the City of Philadelphia that works to transform problem properties into neighborhood assets. Since the program’s inception, Project Rehab has helped bring over 120 units to market, aided property owners in accessing nearly $15 million in financing, and unlocked an estimated $21 million in real estate value. It also creates an economic ripple effect by boosting local construction companies, suppliers, and real estate financers.

Ryan gets involved when people need to untangle messy situations, from permitting, to financing, to tracing down ownership of abandoned properties. When approaching property owners, Ryan makes clear that he’s offering a free service meant to improve the overall neighborhood, and that UCD has nothing to gain financially from any interventions. “We’re just trying to get the lights turned on.”

And they certainly appreciate it. “It never would have happened without Ryan stepping in!” says Alice Haggland, whose brother moved into an assisted living facility before he was able to untangle title on his property on 50th Street. “Ryan knew the ins and outs and knew where he had to go, he talked to [the lawyer] a lot, he came to settlement….I knew if I had any questions, I could always ask him.” Today, that property – which sat vacant for years – is Dock Street Brewery’s new canning facility, while the adjacent parcel is slated for additional commercial and office use in the neighborhood.

“Real estate is really complicated,” Ryan says, “and if you haven’t handled your stuff – if you didn’t do a title right, or your mother’s estate, or you’re in the middle of a bankruptcy and you don’t pay your attorney – if at the end of the day, you don’t know how to handle that, who do you go to? The people who live within the University City District, or want to invest in the University City District, they have us. I love being able to share my knowledge.”

Nearly seven years after its inception, Ryan continues the work because he sees it as a way to give back to the community and because, as he says with a laugh, “It’s never boring.” Although Project Rehab initially focused on homeowners, it has moved into other arenas. In 2016 we married the work of Project Rehab and our West Philadelphia Skills Initiative in a program called Community Porch Revitalization, where a cohort of unemployed local residents learned carpentry skills.

Ryan also provides assistance to local business owners looking to expand, grow or relocate to West Philadelphia. In the past year, he aided Dock Street’s expansion and helped Rosa’s Fresh Pizza receive financing to open a University City location.

Ryan has worked on larger properties, too, like when he helped save the Frank Furness Protestant Episcopal Church of the Atonement at 47th and Kingsessing from demolition. The whole story is too long and winding for this piece, but rest assured that it involves many lawyers, T-Mobile satellite equipment, a former mayor, and some bosses who were screaming “no, no, no!” until he miraculously sunk the shot and saved the day. Today the building houses two pre-schools, a co-working space, and several businesses, and for his efforts Ryan received one of his three “Outstanding Preservation Awards” from the University City Historical Society.

The gamble on Ryan has certainly paid off.

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Mariposa: The Little Co-op that Could

How Mariposa has served the West Philadelphia community for 45 years.

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frigid morning in January didn’t stop shoppers from making their way into Mariposa Co-op. The cooperative grocery store fills the building at 4824 Baltimore Avenue to bursting with farm-fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, bulk grains, nuts and pasta, high-quality meats and cheeses, and much more. The customers browsing the aisles are as diverse as the offerings: a young white woman with green hair wearing a faux fur coat; a middle-aged black man still wearing his winter cap and thick coat; a dark-skinned 20-something with a pierced septum.

Merrie Baldus, who lives two blocks east, takes a break from shoveling her sidewalk to offer thoughts on Mariposa (which means butterfly in Spanish). Merrie has been involved with Mariposa since the early 70s when the co-op was a buying club operating out of “some guy’s basement,” as she puts it. Back then it was a haven for West Philly residents looking for natural foods, decades before the movement became more mainstream.

Bull’s unique nickname was given to him by his mom as a kid. “I used to run around and break things,” he says. Now Bull is responsible for the opposite: as the facilities manager, he’s tasked with fixing everything and keeping everything running as smoothly and safely as possible.

Long before Bull’s time, Mariposa opened in 1972 at 4726 Baltimore Avenue, the current home of Vientiane. Initially, the co-op was open once a week for three hours, and operated exclusively by the owners.

It wasn’t even a store at first, but more of a pick-up spot for items the members ordered. In 1976, Mariposa purchased the storefront, a decision Bull calls “the smartest thing we ever did. Without that we probably wouldn’t have survived.”

“That was a really weird and wonderful time in West Philly,” Merrie says.

“The co-op had a nice balance of people and you’d socialize together. This was in the 70s but it still wasn’t a common thing.”

Bull has perhaps the longest memory of anyone on Mariposa’s 50-person staff: he’s worked at Mariposa for 17 years and has been a member/owner for even longer. When Bull, a vegan, moved to West Philly in 1997, he lived a few blocks from the co-op and joined, since it was now his local natural food store. “I felt it was my duty,” he says. He joined the staff of Mariposa in 2001, becoming their fourth employee.

“Back then it was just some families trying to source things they couldn’t buy in the neighborhood,” says Bull Gervasi, Mariposa’s facilities manager.

We spoke to Bull in Mariposa’s second floor offices. From this height you have a bird’s eye view of the shoppers moving through the building, originally constructed in the 1920s to be the Belmont Trust Company bank.

“I came in with a lot of excitement about changing things,” he says. Among the things Bull wanted to change were: the hours, the offerings, and the barriers to shopping there. According to Bull, membership “was weirdly complicated.” Only members could shop at the store during limited hours, and each member had to work mandatory shifts.

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Because co-ops are just that – cooperative – Bull and fellow employees and members had the power to push for change. If you’re not familiar with how co-ops operate, here’s a primer from Mariposa’s website: “A cooperative is a business that is democratically owned and democratically controlled by its members. Co-ops can be organized for the benefit of consumers, producers and workers.” It continues, “Unlike privately owned businesses where a small amount of investors control the profits, co-ops return surplus revenue to the store and the community, an approach to business that results in a powerful economic force that benefits the co-op, its owners and the communities it serves.”

The Mariposa community realized it could be doing more. “Once we started getting it together as an organization, we figured out that if we cleaned the store it would be more appealing to people,” Bull explains. “We realized if we were open more regular hours, more people would shop here. If there’s more people shopping here, we can have quality produce, and it’ll sell better, meaning we can source more from local farmers. It was a snowball effect as we figured out how to run a business.”

Over the next few years, the hours were extended, the offerings improved, and membership grew. All of this was accomplished without ever losing sight of the co-op’s mission, which focuses on being affordable and accessible to the neighborhood.

When Mariposa needed to find funding, University City District stepped in to help. Former UCD staff member Joe McNulty, a co-op member himself, helped Mariposa secure $50,000 from The Merchant’s Fund with a proposal on how Mariposa, with its long and storied history in the community, would provide access to fresh food in an underserved area and create jobs.

Through grant funds, a member-loan campaign, loans from other co-ops and more traditional banks, and the sale of the original building, Mariposa was able to build out and open at its current location in 2011.

“The co-op checks off a lot of boxes for things that I find important: giving people access to good quality food, human rights, animal rights, sustainability, environmentalism.”

As the years went on and the staff grew, it became clear that Mariposa was on the verge of outgrowing their original space. Staff began looking for alternatives.

They set their eyes on 4824 Baltimore, which had been the home to a church for 20 years, and banks for 75 years before that. The new location’s monumental exterior and light-filled, spacious interior were a perfect fit for an expanded grocery store.

“I was in a little over my head,” admits Bull, who served as project manager for the expansion. “The good thing is, co-ops are so wonderfully sharing in their information that I had a lot of people I could tap for information.

Anything from materials to contractors, timelines, all this stuff. We were 76

a tiny, tiny store. We had seven people on staff, half of them were part time. Taking on this expansion was huge for us.”

But it didn’t come without challenges. “We were worried that our sales wouldn’t support the number of people we had to hire. We basically had to double our staff.

Although it’s no baseball field in Iowa, the adage “If you build it, they will come” seemed true for the new 2,500 square foot co-op, too.

Mariposa adopted more accessible policies; although people are still encouraged to become members, membership is no longer required to shop. This made a huge difference and both profits and membership soared.

“We tried to make it easier for people,” Bull explains. “If you want to just come in and buy a bag of chips every so often, that’s totally fine.

You’re still supporting the co-op model. You’re still able to get whatever it is you’re looking for. Broccoli once a month, you know it’s going to be good quality and you’ll be treated respectfully when you come in.”

The challenge for Mariposa became how to keep pace with the store’s success. They had a board, a rapidly growing staff, and member-owners who had a say in the store’s operation. They were interested in adopting a collective management system with a flattened structure, but needed guidance and someone to lead them. They found that person in Aj Hess, their current transitional general manager.

When we speak, Aj wears a black co-op hoodie and a nametag listing “they/them” as their preferred pronouns. They joined Mariposa in 2016 after almost 20 years working in co-ops in Hillsborough, New Orleans, and Seattle. When Aj saw the posting for Mariposa, they jumped at the opportunity to be closer to their family in Pennsylvania. Mariposa’s goal in hiring a transitional GM was to bring on someone who could help the staff move to a fully collective structure, or at least provide guidance on the future structure. The determination is still in the works.

“The board is completely open to any possibility the staff organizes. We’re at a good flow right now,” Aj says. “Organizationally and operationally we are outperforming any year prior. Financially, owner numbers are growing more than they ever have – now we’re just trying to tighten things up in operations before there’s a solid decision on how management is going to look.”

With the finances and operations flourishing, Aj has stressed other areas of focus, including development opportunities for staff. Employees are now encouraged to attend conferences and form committees to provide input on things like employment policies and education and outreach.

“That’s definitely more structure than we had seen, and creates more clear avenues for a more clear democratic process.”

In 2016, Mariposa introduced patronage dividends, a move away from the previous member benefit system. Instead of members receiving a 5% discount off groceries while shopping, the co-op’s earnings are now shared with the member-owners through a refund based on purchases made during the year as well as the co-op’s overall profits. As Aj puts it, “Giving the discount you’re essentially giving away profits before you’d even made them, whether we were profitable or not. With the patronage dividends, we’re able to give it back when we’re profitable and retain some of it to continue to grow the cooperative.”

With 2,783 current members (a number Aj impressively recites with no hesitation), the co-op has nearly tripled its membership since moving.

The success and expansion has led to a rebranding campaign that was recently rolled out including a redesigned butterfly logo and bright, welcoming colors. A goal of the campaign is to make sure the community knows about the store and its mission. “We’ve been here for 45 years and there are still folks in the community who don’t know we’re here,” Aj says.

When asked if they had a wish list for Mariposa, Aj says they would like the co-op to be local residents’ primary grocery store, for Mariposa to be a community center providing education through workshops, and to have more people taking advantage of their food access programs. They also hope for the customer base to remain diverse and inclusive.

To demonstrate their focus on inclusion, Aj points out a sign outlining what’s expected of shoppers in the store, which is defined as a welcoming and hate-free space. “You won’t shop here if you can’t uphold those values. No matter what your position, or what you’re about, we’re building a culture of empowerment.”

Mariposa’s activism streak dates back to its foundation, according to Bull, who says the early founders and members of Mariposa were involved in the activist scene in West Philadelphia. The values appeal to Bull and have kept him connected to Mariposa for so long. “The co-op checks off a lot of boxes for things that I find important: giving people access to good quality food, human rights, animal rights, sustainability, environmentalism. That – within the context of a retail establishment that really is a community-based organization and respects its workers, respects the people who shop there – was really important to me.”

We head down to the retail floor so Bull and Aj can point to some of their favorite items the store carries. Bull loves the Spring Hills Maple Syrup, particularly their dark syrup. “It’s the best. I love it. Plus it comes in a Mason jar,” he says with a laugh.

Aj loves the coffee selection and admits they just ordered ten pounds of beans for themself. “We just got this co-op blend where a dollar from each pound goes to PACA [Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance]. It’s delicious.”

Whether you’re looking for high quality, sustainably sourced goods, you agree with their culture of empowerment, or you simply want to support a local, community-owned business, consider making Mariposa your primary grocery store and becoming a member/owner.

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The Rise of Philadelphia’s Second Skyline

We look back on 20 years of development along the eastern edge of University City and how a few risk-taking developers transformed the neighborhood.

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ost of the stories in our 20 Years, 20 Stories campaign have focused on University City and West Philadelphia legends, lore, and favorites – from storied restaurants, to the origins of University City District initiatives, to profiles of local arts groups. But this story shines a spotlight on the new University City, the University City currently rising along the western banks of the Schuylkill River.

Twenty years ago, the eastern edge of University City was an expanse of concrete: sidewalks, overpasses, on-ramps, and bridges connecting the neighborhood to Center City. Home to 30th Street Station, the main branch of the city’s post office, and not much else, the area was the type of place travelers moved through as quickly as possible on their way to somewhere else.

At a time when the neighborhood was considered undesirable for real estate investment, Drexel grad Carl Dranoff was one of the first developers to take a risk on the area. His plan for a mixed-use retail and housing building, a now-familiar concept that was more novel in the late 90s, was selected by the University of Pennsylvania when they sought to redevelop the former Pennsylvania Railroad freight warehouse at 32nd and Chestnut Streets. The 700,000 square-foot building had formerly been home to General Electric’s missile and spacecraft division.

Experts thought Dranoff was “nuts” for tackling the project, as he later told The Philadelphia Inquirer in a January 2014 interview. But what Dranoff saw – and what eventually transpired – was the development that would follow, catalyzed by players like Penn, Drexel, CHOP, and Amtrak. He wanted to be in on it from the start. Dranoff’s gamble became The Left Bank. Speaking to Philadelphia Magazine about the project, Dranoff said, “We created a destination, not just a building: 20,000 square feet of retail space, including shops and restaurants. 100,000 square feet of office space, which Penn made its facilities headquarters, and 260 parking spaces.”

Originally developed for $58 million and opened in 2001, the site was recently valued at $120 million and sparked development to follow.

The Left Bank proved that redevelopment was a viable option in eastern University City, and it was now up to another player to test out the viability of new construction. Here enters Brandywine Realty Trust, the company who has made the biggest impact thus far in eastern University City, and just might redefine the entire region...though more on that later.

The Cira Centre, Brandywine Realty Trust’s 29-story skyscraper, was a long time in the works. The parcel just north of 30th Street Station had been targeted for development since the 1960s, when it was on a short list of locations for what eventually became Veterans Stadium in South Philadelphia. In the 70s, the location was considered as a site for an exposition 79

celebrating the bicentennial, and as a possible home for the Pennsylvania Convention Center; in the 80s real estate developer Gerald D. Hines proposed an office, hotel and shopping center; and in 1992 a stadium was once again proposed, and once again dismissed.

Brandywine first announced their plans for the Cira Centre in 2002. Amtrak, seeking to support projects to increase ridership and earn revenue from real estate holdings, selected Brandywine as the developer of a state-of-the-art tower designed by César Pelli, connected to a new nine-story parking garage.

Taking advantage of its location within a Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone, Brandywine secured leases with Dechert LLP, Attalus Capital, and Woodcock Washburn for nearly 375,000 square feet of combined office space.

Upon its completion in the fall of 2005, the Cira Centre became Philadelphia’s first new skyscraper in 13 years. In her review of the building, famed Philadelphia architecture critic Inga Saffron wrote that the Cira Centre’s glass façade “helps marry the delicate modern tower with the weighty, neoclassical train station,” and also called the building a “shape-shifter,” since it seems to change shape depending on where it is viewed.

The Cira Centre immediately stood out in Philadelphia’s skyline, both for being University City’s first skyscraper, and for its innovative lighting design. Because the building’s architects didn’t want fixtures on the outside of the building, the light designer, Cline Bettridge Bernstein, created a wall of light using 1,500 26W RGB fixtures capable of changing color to create patterns on the façade. The now-iconic lights reflect the city and create imaginative displays: a red “P” when the Phillies won the World Series; green for the Eagles; and even an enormous game of Tetris.

But the Cira Centre’s biggest accomplishment was setting the tone for the further development of the neighborhood, and eventually Philadelphia’s second skyline.

While Brandywine was putting their stamp on the neighborhood, the 80

University of Pennsylvania continued to spur revitalization. They partnered with Dranoff on another renovation, this time a building on the National Register of Historic Places. Dranoff gutted the former headquarters and showroom for the Hajoca Corporation, a plumbing supply and manufacturing company at 3025 Walnut, to create WXPN and World Cafe Live, a performance and restaurant space that opened in 2004.

After purchasing 24 acres from the U.S. Postal Service, Penn released a master plan for the neighborhood called Penn Connects. The ambitious proposal outlined ways to “redefine the relationship of the University and the City by developing an urban design strategy to integrate the entire eastern area along the Schuylkill River with the core of the campus.” The proposal included the Annenberg Public Policy Center, the HUB at 3939 Chestnut, the Singh Nanotechnology Center, the incredibly ambitious and successful Penn Park, and a partnership that accelerated the transformation along the Schuylkill River: the so-called Post Office Redevelopment project with Brandywine Realty Trust.

This highly comprehensive and dynamic plan called for a rehab of the former U.S. Post Office Main Branch building at 30th and Market, and an extension of Brandywine’s Cira brand with two new towers composing a complex called Cira Centre South.

First, the Post Office: built between 1931 and 1935, this six-story, Art Deco building served as Philadelphia’s main postal distribution center until 2008, when operations moved to a facility near the Philadelphia International Airport. Brandywine purchased the building for $28 million; three years and $225 million in renovations later, they welcomed the IRS as the tenant of the 862,700 square-foot building with the signing of a 20-year lease.

Meanwhile, Brandywine plotted Cira Centre South: two towers separated by a parking lot topped with a green roof. The intention, according to Penn, was to expand the University City commercial district and “continue to

be a major gateway for the region with its existing rail and automobile transportation systems enhanced by streetscape and access improvements.” Projects like Penn Park, UCD’s own Porch at 30th Street Station, and the landscaped plaza outside the IRS building aimed to improve the streetscape, and Brandywine’s proposed towers – which eventually contained luxury apartments, office space, and retail – directly added to the commercial appeal of the district.

And it worked. In 2013, a few years before Cira Centre South opened, Inga Saffron reported that West Philadelphia office spaces were commanding higher rents than Center City buildings, just 15 years after banks turned Carl Dranoff down because they didn’t see a market in University City.

Completed in 2016, Cira Centre South came to include Evo, the elevated park Cira Green, and the 49-story FMC Tower, named after the Food Machinery Corporation, the building's anchor tenants. The complex added luxury housing for students in Evo, 4,000 parking spots, two swimming pools, a restaurant by a Michelin-rated team (Walnut Street Cafe), more than 625,000 square feet of total office area, and 268 ultra-luxury residential units and extended-stay corporate suites at AKA University City.

Being a super-desirable location helps too. In fact, a December 2017 report by investment management company Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) listed the stretch of 30th Street between Walnut and Arch as the 16th most expensive street in the nation based on the price of U.S. office space. In the report, JLL notes that “The delivery of FMC Tower on 30th Street in Philadelphia has cemented University City as one of the most desirable office locations in the region’s core. That street is now the most expensive in Philadelphia, a city in the midst of a tech, media, education and health expansion.”

One might think this would be enough for Brandywine. In under 15 years, the company had grown from a suburban developer focused on office-parks to a powerhouse reshaping the eastern edge of University City. But it looks like this is just the beginning, since their most ambitious plan has only just begun.

“At night, when colored lights dance across the facades of the city’s new, 21st century skyline, Philadelphia really does appear to be a world city. The Cira district is an enormous accomplishment.”

The success of the Cira projects led Inga Saffron to declare that the trio of Cira buildings has “shift[ed] Philadelphia’s business district from Center City to the university area.” She praised the overall aesthetic of the towers, declaring, “At night, when colored lights dance across the facades of the city’s new, 21st-century skyline, Philadelphia really does appear to be a world city,” concluding “The Cira district is an enormous accomplishment.”

Brandywine liked the FMC Tower enough to relocate their headquarters to the building in 2017. About the move, Brandywine CEO and President Jerry Sweeney said, “By moving into the City of Philadelphia, and specifically the FMC Tower at Cira Centre South, we are making our headquarters more accessible, and encouraging our employees to take advantage of the wealth of amenities that Cira Centre South and the City of Philadelphia offer.”

Schuylkill Yards is Brandywine’s master-planned, multi-phase innovation community being developed near the Cira buildings on grounds owned by Drexel University. Their intention with the project is “To unite the professional, financial services nature of Center City with the medical, life science, and educational infrastructure in University City by creating a leading hub of innovation, technology, globalization and economic development.” The initial phase of the 20-year development plan will create 5 million gross square feet of mixed-use real estate nestled in a 10-acre site near Drexel’s campus and 30th Street Station. The ambitious Schuylkill Yards is being showcased as one of three possible homes for Amazon’s HQ2 in Philadelphia during the corporation’s national search.

What started as a risky investment twenty years ago has turned into a historic turnaround for the neighborhood. With Schuylkill Yards, Amtrak’s 30th Street District plan, Pennovation, and nearby uCity Square, we’re seeing the potential for a further cementing of University City as the region’s economic and technological powerhouse. If the last 15 years of development are an indicator, there’s little doubt that 15 years from now we’ll see a neighborhood even further transformed.

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A Look Back and Forward from UCD’s Chairs

Founding Board Chair John Fry and current Chair Craig Carnaroli reflect on UCD’s history and offer predictions for its promising future.

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n November of 2017, we celebrated UCD's 20th anniversary at our annual State of University City event. We were joined by two men who were integral to UCD's first 20 years: founding UCD Board Chair and current Drexel President John Fry and current Board Chair and Executive Vice President for the University of Pennsylvania Craig Carnaroli. They each spoke of 20 years of accomplishments and looked forward to the limitless possibilities of the future. What follows are abridged versions of their remarks.

John Fry, Founding Chair President, Drexel University

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t is hard to believe that 20 years have passed since the founding of the University City District. But then again, it is hard to imagine University City without the UCD.

The UCD was modeled in spirit after the Center City District, which was the catalyst to the rebirth of Center City. The idea for the UCD was hatched over a dinner with Paul Levy, who is still making history as the head of the Center City District, and Tom Seamon, the Vice President for Public Safety at Penn, who I recruited to the university from his role as first deputy police commissioner.

After that conversation with Paul and Tom, I asked my trusted Penn

colleague, Tom Lussenhop, to undertake a feasibility study to create what would eventually become the blueprint for the University City District.

And then I hit the road, literally going door-to-door to over 25 institutions and individuals, asking them to become founding members of UCD and to pledge five years of financial support. In the end, almost everyone said yes, and in doing so took a real chance. Approximately $22 million was pledged to support the first five years of UCD’s operations. Amazingly, the UCD went from a dinner conversation to reality in about nine months.

Our founding Executive Director Paul Steinke was the driving force in getting the UCD off the ground, and making it a highly effective business 83

Today’s UCD now offers so much more, including job training, through its nationally known West Philadelphia Skills Initiative; rehabilitating abandoned buildings; and becoming an expert maker of memorable urban places, such as The Porch, and so much more.

It’s safe to say the UCD has more than lived up to its motto of “Changing places, changing lives.”

Throughout these 20 years, the partnerships and friendships that were forged early on have stood the test of time, which in the long run may be the most profound contribution of the UCD – people and institutions got to know and value each other, and collaboration started to occur.

“It’s safe to say the UCD has more than lived up to its motto of ‘Changing places, changing lives.’” improvement district right from the start. Paul was blessed with a small but excellent staff, including Eric Goldstein, who later became Paul’s successor. But beyond Paul and Eric’s inspired leadership, the secret to UCD’s success involved several factors: First, membership was voluntary. No one was compelled to join or provide financial support. You only joined if you believed.

Second, the community was well represented, with the leaders of all the major neighborhood organizations invited to take a seat on the board.

And third, every board member, regardless of their financial contribution, had one vote.

The founding principles were simple: Clean, safe and well-lit streets. And no graffiti. That has served the University City District well over the years – even as it has grown in size and scope.

While Paul and Eric did an amazing job of building the UCD, and establishing its credibility with the community, Matt Bergheiser – one of the most admired and effective leaders in Philadelphia - and his team have taken the UCD to an entirely different level.

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That is a credit to many past and present leaders at Penn, Drexel, University of the Sciences, CHOP, Penn Medicine, Amtrak, University City Science Center and Campus Apartments, as well as community groups in Powelton Village, Spruce Hill, Garden Court, Walnut Hill and Cedar Park.

The UCD board, now led so expertly by my friend and colleague, Craig Carnaroli, has provided countless hours of their time and wise counsel.

Thank you to those who have served the UCD as board members and staff over the years. And special thanks to those who were there from the beginning: Maureen Rush, Penn’s Vice President for Public Safety; Barry Grossbach of Spruce Hill; David Adelman, CEO of Campus Apartments; Joe Trainor, CFO at the Wistar Institute; and Lindsay Johnston, owner of Common Ground Realtors. A big thanks also goes to City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and former Mayor Ed Rendell for their encouragement and support.

While it is wonderful to look back on the UCD’s accomplishments, what’s more important now is to look to its future.

So, let’s take a moment to imagine what University City will look like in 2037 – guided by one of the finest business improvement districts in the United States. First, I see a University City where innovation and inclusion combine to further strengthen the competitive position of our institutions, while creating even greater opportunities for residents who will live in increasingly safe, diverse and vibrant neighborhoods.

The Brookings Institution report released in May envisioned an innovation district stretching from University City to the Comcast towers. While

other cities are scrambling to compete in the challenging race to be a world-class metro, we already enjoy this natural innovation district that positions us so well for the future. The challenge now is to build on our strengths by creating more startups, attracting more investment, and growing more job opportunities for everyone.

At the same time, we must continue to bolster our primary and secondary schools and increase educational opportunities for all University City residents. Creating the infrastructure to provide cradle to career opportunities is where inclusion meets innovation. The Penn Alexander School is a wonderful example of a partnership between Penn and the Philadelphia School District that benefits everyone. Drexel has also teamed up with the School District. A $30 million grant from the Education Department and another $76 million in matching funds are being used for education, health, safety and family support services at seven area schools in the Promise Neighborhood.

And in partnership with the District, we now are teaching 180 students who are in the 5th and 6th grades of the Science Leadership Academy Middle School, or SLAMS, now located at the Dornsife Center, and one day in a new building at 36th and Filbert that will have 800 students from SLAMS and the Powel School. This effort goes hand in hand in helping to prepare University City residents for jobs in the new economy.

Second, as we look to 2037, University City will see the completion of Schuylkill Yards, while watching the 30th Street District Plan take shape.

Schuylkill Yards is a $3.5 billion innovation district on 14 acres surrounding the gateway to Drexel’s campus and 30th Street Station. The development

by Brandywine Realty Trust will include up to 7 million square feet of entrepreneurial space, research facilities, corporate offices, residential and retail development, cultural venues and wonderful public space. It will be anchored by the 1.3 acre Drexel Square, which broke ground yesterday.

As Schuylkill Yards takes shape, the 30th Street District Plan will start to be implemented with an elevated platform over the Amtrak and Septa railyards, which will create 16 million square feet of new space. And the jewel in the crown will be a fully renovated 30th Street Station that will be the envy of the transit world.

If we leave 30th Street Station and go west, you will witness the expansion of uCity Square, led by the University City Science Center and Wexford

Science and Technology. These expansion plans call for 10 new buildings, for an additional 4 million square feet, as well as over 700 apartments, all on 14 acres with a development investment of over $1 billion.

As we gather today, 3675 Market Street, a 14-story, 345,000-square-foot building, is progressing towards completion next fall, with Cambridge Innovation Center as the anchor tenant.

Meanwhile, you will see the continued growth of Penn Medicine and CHOP into the most powerful medical complex in the country, while across the District you will see unprecedented commercialization and technology transfer occurring at Pennovation, ic@3401 Market, and on the campuses of the Wistar Institute, the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel.

And finally, in 2037 we will be able to walk down a reimagined Woodlawn Avenue commercial corridor – anchored by the University of the Sciences – as well as the Lancaster Avenue retail corridor, destined to become one of Philadelphia’s most dynamic and eclectic neighborhood retail districts.

And if it all goes the way I envision, the keynote speaker at a future University City District event will be Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. As you know, Philadelphia is competing to become the home for Amazon’s second headquarters. Landing Amazon would be a game-changing event for Philadelphia and perhaps for University City. Amazon expects to create 50,000 high-paying new jobs and spend $5 billion to build 8 million square feet of office space.

The very fact that Philadelphia is in the running to land Amazon is a tribute to the University City District. The UCD helped create the necessary conditions to attract a dynamic company like Amazon – and many other businesses both big and small – to Philadelphia and University City.

That would have been hard to imagine 20 years ago. But it isn’t now because of everyone here tonight. Your dedication, commitment and generous support helped build a great organization from scratch, an organization that has made a profound impact on the lives of so many people, each and every day.

In doing so, you have made University City the best version of itself. But the true best is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what we will be able to accomplish by 2037. By working together, to make it better.

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Craig Carnaroli, Current Chair Executive Vice President, University of Pennsylvania

I

am delighted to see so many friends and colleagues to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the UCD. You know the pattern of these events. They rely on speeches. You have heard from Matt Bergheiser, who has taken the organization from its founding principles to a new place, a place that is recognized nationally as one of the most successful and unique special services organizations.

And you have heard from President Fry, a great friend and mentor, who had the vision 20 years ago, to create this organization.

In planning the event, Matt suggested that I share with you some short 86

stories of what I am most proud of working with UCD. In thinking about the vignettes I wanted to share, I realized that Thanksgiving is just two weeks away. So rather than just share my pride, I want you to know what I am thankful for relative to the University City District.

First and foremost, I am most thankful to have such wonderful colleagues to work with on the UCD Board. One compliment I have to give my fellow board members is that they practice good governance – they are engaged, ask good questions, but leave the running of the organization to our talented and dedicated staff.

I am thankful for Andrew Wheeler. Andrew Wheeler, you may ask? Yes, Andrew Wheeler from Diversified Search. Working closely with our search committee, Andrew brought us Matt Bergheiser at literally the very last minute. We are so fortunate to have such a talented and dedicated leader.

Matt, on behalf of the entire Board, we are proud of all your accomplishments and all that is yet to be accomplished.

I am thankful for the UCD staff and their creativity to expand the mission of the UCD to powerfully impact the community. Through Project Rehab, which revitalizes abandoned housing, UCD has unlocked nearly $21 million in real estate value, brought over 120 units to market, and helped owners access over $14 million in financing. Through the Skills Initiative, 785 adults and youth have been touched through the job training, internships, and workshops, generating $15.4 million in wages. And, through UCD’s focus on public spaces, concrete deserts have and will evolve into dynamic, inclusive and thriving destinations such as the Porch and coming soon, The Trolley Portal.

And finally, I am thankful for the partnerships that have emanated from my association with UCD. At the governmental level, Jannie Blackwell has been a steadfast supporter and we appreciate all she does for the community.

a revolutionary way of thinking.

The partnerships among anchor institutions are still strong, resources are flowing, and now we are beginning to see private sector companies and individual civic leaders accept a role in this effort as well.

They understand that there is a responsibility for the private citizen helps pay for the public life.

New development abounds. Population rises and crime goes down. We are seeing skyscrapers climb into the sky. And now Iron Chefs Bobby Flay and Jose Garces have restaurants one block from each other.

We have a great turnaround story. And the story continues.

“Being the chairman is an honor. Living in the community is a privilege.

I cherish both.”

After 20 years of being in business, the University City District thrives because it understands partnerships. The anchor institutions of University accept the role that they are stronger together. They pooled their money to finance a new organization that will supplement urban management.

Speaking of funding, since its founding the institutional contributors have invested over $75 million in the UCD, and these funds have leveraged approximately $13 million in external grant funding. Put another way, for every dollar invested by the anchor institutions, another 17 cents in philanthropy was attracted and invested in University City.

I believe it was our founder at Penn, Ben Franklin, who said, we will all hang together, or if not, we will certainly hang separately. Now, Ben was speaking about war and revolution, so let’s not be too dramatic.

However, with UCD’s founding, and its reliance on institutions voluntarily contributing time, money, and resources for the greater good—that was

What about jobs? Workforce development?

Helping individuals from the community improve their chances to contribute?

And so, this is when I would come to the end of the story. But frankly, the ending cannot be told, because we are still writing the future. I am personally very bullish on the future. We have great leadership with dedicated board members. We have great leadership in Matt Bergheiser and his entire staff and team.

We have committed anchor institutions, in partnership with private individuals. And they are partnered with companies, and we are all digging deep to collaborate on ways that ensure our community is strong.

Being the chairman is an honor. Living in the community is a privilege. I cherish both. And I salute the past, present and future partners of the UCD.

We are thankful to John and Craig for their remarks at our State of University City event, and more importantly, for their leadership as the Chairs of our Board of Directors. Without their contributions, guidance, and hard work, UCD would not be the organization it is today.

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University City District Milestones 1997

UCD founded UCD opens office at 3940 Chestnut Street

1999

LUCY Bus launches Partnership with SEPTA on University City bus loops

LUCY BUS

UC Bright program initiated

Initiative to brighten streets west of 40th Street

2001

Philadelphia Orchestra plays Clark Park First 40th Street Summer Series UCD and Penn’s free concert series

2004 40TH STREET SUMMER SERIES

2005

PARKLET

Philadelphia Orchestra returns to Clark Park Baltimore Avenue lighting project UCD installs 71 new pedestrian lights to brighten Baltimore Ave.

First Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll

2009

2010

Food trucks debut at The Porch

2011

West Philadelphia Skills Initiative established Project Rehab begins

2012

Philadelphia’s first Parklets installed

2013

Custom-designed chairs that launched UCD’s development of social seating

Looped In social chairs installed

Launch of Green City Works

Lancaster Avenue pedestrian lighting Debut of Movies in Clark Park

UCD’s job training program connecting unemployed neighbors to work

Free initiative to help owners of distressed property

Heart & Soul roaming piano pop-up Eight artistically designed pianos made for public enjoyment

THE PORCH 2.0

The Porch at 30th Street opens

The Dirt Factory opens

First Pedestrian Plaza installed

UCD’s restaurant promotion

2007

Debut of the mega-popular street festival featuring $1 deals

UCD’s community compost facility on a formerly vacant lot

University City Dining Days debuts

2014

UCD’s mission-driven landscaping venture connecting neighbors to work

UCD’s Logos

The Porch 2.0

2015

Upgrades to The Porch including custom swings and decking

Market Street Bridge pedestrian improvements

1997-2006

MARKET STREET BRIDGE

West Philadelphia Skills Initiative opens new headquarters Trolley Portal Gardens opens Public space and restaurant at 40th St. Trolley Portal

2016

2007-2012

2018 TROLLEY PORTAL GARDENS RENDERING

2013-PRESENT

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Publication Credits

Afterword

Chris Richman Writing and Editing

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this collection of stories as much as we enjoyed putting it together. It was a delight to speak to so many neighbors, business owners, organizational leaders, and colleagues to compile this anthology, and to trace what amounts to a sliver of the history of this wonderful neighborhood. The trailblazing work by the women and men dedicated to improving their community has helped make University City one of the best places in the region to live, work, and visit.

Shawn Ryan Graphic Design Alissa Weiss Editing

Photography Credits Conrad Benner Page 88 Michael Bryant Pages 38, 50

Used with permission of Philadelphia Inquirer Copyright© 2018

Ryan Collerd Pages 14, 16, 17, 74, 29 Hugh E. Dillon Page 26 Conrad Erb Pages 12, 13

In empty restaurants, on dance floors, in private residences, in lovely parks, and all throughout Philadelphia I got to know local leaders, and hear firsthand their passion and love for West Philadelphia. My hope is that this publication does them justice! This book would not have been possible without many people generously volunteering their time to join me for interviews and share their stories. I’d also like to thank Alissa Weiss for her tireless editing and to Shawn Ryan for his excellent design work.

Although the series is complete, we’ll continue telling the stories of the people, places, and organizations that make University City so special, and UCD will continue its mission of changing places and changing lives.

Jay Gorodetzer Page 65 Sarah Milinski Page 20 Oak Leaf Media Pages 24, 63, 64, 65, 78, 80 Lora Reehling Pages 2, 70, 82, 84, 86, 90 Chris Richman Pages 6, 9, 10, 22, 37, 58, 74

Chris Richman UCD Communications Manager

Simone Jaffe Collins Landscape Architecture Page 32 Jeremy Sims Page 18 Christopher Toney Pages 54, 57 Ben Tran Pages 7, 29, 33, 42, 45, 69, 73, 89 whyilovephilly.com Cory Popp: Pages 2, 4, 89

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University City District 3940 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 215.243.0555

University City District (UCD) was founded in 1997 by a partnership of world-renowned anchor institutions, small businesses and residents to improve economic vitality and quality of life in Philadelphia's University City. Our primary mission is community revitalization. We work within a place-based, data-driven framework to invest in world-class public spaces, address crime and public safety, bring life to commercial corridors, connect low-income residents to careers, and promote job growth and innovation.

To make a secure, online donation to support UCD's next 20 years, please visit: www.universitycity.org/donate

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