North Philadelphia : In The News

NPR sets out for a tour of North Philadelphia with community activist and Clinton delegate Malcolm Kenyatta. He talks bout the triumphs and challenges happening in this essential, evolving neighborhood. Listen to the story here. 

Ahmad Nuruddin gave us a ride to the corner of Broad and Cecil B. Moore streets right in front of the Temple University Bookstore where community activist and yesterday's Barbershop guest Malcolm Kenyatta offered to take us on a walking tour of his North Philly neighborhood.

He had described it as the best and worst of the city. And when we got there, I wondered why. There were plenty of people, lots of shops, a lot going on. So I asked Malcolm why he wanted to meet there.

MALCOLM KENYATTA: Philadelphia is not only a city of neighborhoods. I think Philadelphia in a lot of cases is a city of blocks. We're right now still very close to the university...

KENYATTA: And that is the conundrum that we have to figure out. Philadelphia, I mean - we're hosting the DNC. We just had the pope here - first-world heritage city in North America. So all these great things that are happening but that progress is only hitting people in pockets.

MARTIN: We turned down a narrow side street with a hodgepodge of rundown row houses and ones with signs put up by management companies. A group of kids were playing basketball on a court nearby. Do you feel that either party is talking about the cities in a specific way - what the cities are for, what the city should do and specific ways to make the cities kind of engines of opportunity or to create opportunity that's more widely shared?

KENYATTA: No. In terms of a cohesive plan for this is what we're going to do for our American cities, no, I haven't seen that.

Original source: NPR
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Casting for the entrepreneurship-based reality show is coming to Temple University this weekend. Get your pitches ready!

Entrepreneurial students at Temple University might find themselves on national TV in a few months pitching their best business ideas. The hit ABC show Shark Tank will host a casting session at Temple this Saturday, June 11th. Between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., students, alumni, faculty and staff will be able to pitch their business ideas to the show’s casting team in hopes of winning a future spot in front of the “sharks.” 

The show, which received Emmy awards in 2014 and 2015, gives budding entrepreneurs the chance to woo over self-made millionaires and billionaires in hopes of securing an investment for their own business. After six seasons, the judges have already offered $66 million to a various start-ups, according to the show’s website.

The casting session will be held at Alter Hall at the Fox School of Business and involves a quick one-minute pitch and follow-up questions with the show’s casting directors. From there, a few people may be chosen to move on to the next round, which is taped and aired.

Original source: Philadelphia Magazine
Click here for details. 

In a year-long project, Temple University Hospital will give free "baby boxes" to all moms who deliver there. This simple act could save lives.

It might seem a little strange to put your newborn baby in a cardboard box. But one hospital is teaching moms that it's the safest thing possible for their little bundles of joy...The idea is to decrease the rate of "co-sleeping," the practice of parents sleeping in the same bed as their babies. Done incorrectly, co-sleeping is associated with a higher risk of infant mortality. According to Philly.com, many local parents co-sleep with their kids because it's part of their culture, or their parents co-slept with them. Others do so because they can't afford a crib, or lack the space for one. 

The boxes are functioning bassinets and come with a sheet and a firm mattress, which help keep the baby sleeping on his or her back and away from toys and stuffed animals. They also contain essential items for the baby, like onesies and baby books. The boxes, manufactured by The Baby Box Company, are worth around $80 to $100 each...

Baby boxes are popular elsewhere in the world, and parents in the U.S. are just now taking notice. In Finland, the government gives them out to every new mom, and the practice dramatically dropped the country's infant mortality rates.

Original source: Good Housekeeping
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The New York Times takes a look at PHA's grand design for revitalizing the Sharswood neighborhood in North Philadelphia.

Seeking to do more than provide basic homes for its residents, this city’s public housing agency is taking a new approach to neighborhood revitalization. In its latest project, it is adding commercial and educational development to its main role of home building, aiming to address the underlying causes of urban distress.

In the northern part of the city, the Philadelphia Housing Authority is razing part of the Norman Blumberg Apartments in the Sharswood neighborhood, which has had especially high rates of poverty, crime and urban blight. The agency plans to bring in shops, offices and schools, along with housing, in an ambitious program to breathe new life into a struggling community.

The $500 million project, just two and a half miles from downtown Philadelphia, aims to recreate a middle-class community that never recovered after being ravaged by rioting in the 1960s, agency officials say...

Central to the new vision will be the creation of a new commercial corridor along Ridge Avenue, the neighborhood’s main street, which lost businesses as the local economy declined.

In all, the plan projects 400,000 square feet of commercial space. The agency said it was close to making a deal for a drugstore and a supermarket...The housing authority plans to move its headquarters to the street from downtown, bringing around 1,100 employees, who will bolster demand for businesses.

Original source: The New York Times
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The New York Times Magazine examines the crash of Amtrak 188, one of the worst rail disasters in U.S. history. The incident occurred in North Philadelphia and impacted many lives locally.

From 30th Street Station, the train glided northwest out of Philadelphia, tracing the arc of the freeway. Near the old Schuylkill River Bridge, it jogged right, gathering speed, bound for the New Jersey border. Had you been standing anywhere near the tracks, you would have heard Amtrak 188 before you saw it, in the hum of the rail bed and the metallic shiver of the electricity in the overhead catenary wires. And then you would have felt it, in the vibration of the earth: the combined weight of a 98-ton locomotive and seven 50-ton cars, carrying a total of 258 people, eight of them employees...

In the days and weeks and months to come, every part of his northbound journey would be dissected by law enforcement, by the news media, by the public. It would be said, correctly, that the wreck of Amtrak 188 was the worst kind of anomaly — that train travel was safer than many other forms of travel, cars included, and that Amtrak’s safety record was sterling. (This, too, is accurate: From 2000 to 2014, accidents on Amtrak routes dropped to 1.7 accidents per million passenger-miles from 4.1.) Bostian’s personal life would be picked apart, his state of mind questioned. Theories would be floated and discredited: that there was some sort of mechanical problem with the locomotive, or the track, or the signals (none of the above). That Bostian was on his phone at the time of the accident (he was not). That he was using drugs or drinking (his blood was clean).Finally, investigators would turn their focus on the section of track between North Philadelphia Station and Frankford Junction. Three miles of train travel: the distance it took for an otherwise unremarkable trip, overseen by an engineer known for his prudence, to go violently, impossibly wrong.

Original source: New York Times Magazine
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U.S. News and World Report has named Temple University's Fox School of Business the nation's best online MBA program.

Temple, tied with Indiana University and theUniversity of North Carolina, scored a perfect score of 100 when judged on faculty credentials and training, student services and technology, student engagement, peer reputation and admissions selectivity.
Is it validation for Temple? "Absolutely, yes," said Darin Kapanjie, academic director of the online MBA program.

Temple's online MBA program launched in fall 2009 under Kapanjie's leadership. He came to Temple in 2003 as a faculty member in the statistics department, and actively took to integrating technology into the classroom...

The program has since developed an online and digital learning team, which has seven in-house instructional designers that help the Temple faculty organize and deliver their courses online most effectively. There are also two technology support specialists and two staffers in charge of video production. (The Fox school has its own TV studio, where faculty members can record their lectures).

Original source: Philadelphia Business Journal
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The School Reform Commission has sold William Penn High School to Temple University for $15 million. The decision was not without controversy.

Part of the property will be razed and turned into athletic fields and recreation space for Temple students. The school building fronting Broad Street will remain, and will house a job-training academy run by the Laborers' District Council Education and Training/Apprenticeship Fund. It will offer training in construction crafts and general education topics.

The sale happened over the strong objections of some community members - who had been promised a new life for the high school when it "temporarily" closed in 2009. Then-Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman said at the time that the school would reopen within five years as a career and technical academy for district students.

Commissioner Sylvia Simms was the lone vote against the closure and transaction, saying after the meeting that she thought the community had been "bamboozled."

For more background on the sale, check out this feature from Flying Kite.

Original source: Philadlephia Inquirer
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The recording artist (and notable Canadian) Drake has committed to funding the construction of a recording studio at Strawberry Mansion High.

The rapper and singer said that after watching a Diane Sawyer special about the school which ran last May, he wanted to help: "by the end of it I was so heavily affected that at the end I started questioning like major aspects of my life."

Original source: Curbed Philly
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Paseo Verde, an exciting community-supported project in North Philadelphia, was recently completed. It is hopefully a standard-bearer in transit-oriented development.

Paseo Verde, a super green, mixed-use, mixed income community hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony this morning. The complex is the country's very first Platinum LEED certified Neighborhood Development, a distinction that it earned by creating an eco-friendly, transit focused project with the goal of "providing a healthy living environment for residents through sustainable practices, as well as cost savings through effective reduction in energy use."


Original source: Curbed Philly
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Earlier this year, The New York Times reported on the absorption of Germantown High School's football team into that of rival Martin Luther King High School. Despite the heartache of the merger, the team had a triumphant season.

Martin Luther King High School had one victory in 2012. And that was by forfeit. This fall, a $304 million budget shortfall in the Philadelphia school district forced a merger with archrival Germantown High. Many doubted the merger would work...

Then something wonderful happened. Defeat became liberating. Desperation forged unity. Coach Edward Dunn, 27, embroidered a team from a ragged collection of players. Each game became a kind of playoff and King went more than two months without losing.

The Cougars won nine straight games and their first Public League championship. Quarterback Joseph Walker was named the league’s most valuable player. Delane Hart became the league’s career leader in receiving yards (1,932) and the first with more than 1,000 yards in a season. He sometimes wore socks with a Superman logo and little red capes that fluttered as he ran pass routes.

Original source: The New York Times
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In his inaugural address, new Temple University president Neil D. Theobald announced an ambitious 5-year plan that should improve the city and ease the debt burden on students.

One proposal calls for Temple to become more involved in helping the city solve its problems, such as the Philadelphia School District's funding crisis. Theobald, a professor, researcher, and expert in education finance, will participate in an afternoon symposium on funding. The $50 million for research, which Theobald touted as the largest-ever investment in the university's academic program, will be used to bring in new faculty to explore problems deemed most pressing in the city and state, he said. The research will be carried out across disciplines, he said.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Foot patrols can be an effective tool in neighborhoods with high crime rates, forcing young officers out of their police cars and into interactions with the community.

Such patrols work best if officers return to the same street several times in each shift, says Jerry Ratcliffe, director of Temple’s Centre for Security and Crime Science. A good officer will soon know everybody on his beat. It is important to "spend time just standing on a street corner, chatting to people, getting a feel for the tempo and rhythm of a place." Foot patrols work best in dense neighbourhoods, says Mr Ratcliffe, where many people cannot afford air conditioning and so socialise on the street. Drunken disagreements beget violence. “Half the people shot in Philadelphia are shot within two blocks of their address,” he says.

Original source: The Economist
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Postgreen Homes is teaming up with Equinox Management & Construction LLC to build the Folsom Powerhouse, a 31-unit mixed-income green housing project in Francisville.

Postgreen and Equinox are also aided by ISA Architects, who designed the project, and Studio Bryan Hanes, who is responsible for the landscaping. The development will feature energy efficient design, with solar power, green roof technology and advanced storm water management practices. It’s proximity to public transit, nearby shops and the Francisville community center will give residents great access to amenities and necessities.

"Our proposal adapted Folsom’s fabric and the City’s best practices in urban planning," explained Chad Ludeman, President of Postgreen Homes. "The Powerhouse name is indicative of our commitment to extreme energy efficiency, giving residents the power to live with community and environmental consciousness in mind."

Original source: Inhabitat
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The closing of Germantown High School sent players to rival Martin Luther King High School. The New York Times took a close look at the blended squad.

What was once unthinkable to many players had become intimate and binding. Most of King’s current roster played last season at archrival Germantown High School in northwest Philadelphia. Few could have imagined the schools merging, the teams playing as one.

When King last defeated Germantown in their annual Thanksgiving Day game, in 2010, the players brawled with fists and helmets. The police intervened.

But austerity has trumped rivalry. Facing a $304 million budget shortfall, the chronically troubled Philadelphia School District closed 23 schools in June. The closings included Germantown, one of the nation’s oldest high schools, which opened in 1914 and closed a year shy of its centennial. Most of its students would now attend King. The two schools were about a mile apart and shared a tense history.

Original source: The New York Times
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Chef Marc Vetri is bringing his 'Eatiquette' school lunch program to the People For People Charter School.

It sounds more like a restaurant order than a school lunch menu: baked ziti with a side of roasted fennel salad and, for dessert, cinnamon apple rice pudding.

But that's one of the meals offered in the cafeteria at People For People Charter School in Philadelphia. And it's served family-style. Students pass serving dishes around circular tables, where they eat off plates, not cafeteria trays, and use silverware instead of plastic utensils.

People For People is one of four schools participating in the "Eatiquette" program, which was designed by local chef Marc Vetri to provide nutritious, low-cost lunches in a setting that reinforces social niceties and communication skills.

Original source: The Associated Press
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