Kensington/Port Richmond : In The News

We told you about Oxford Mills back in 2013. This teacher-centric development in Kensington draws a community of like-minded young people.
 
"We've heard so many stories about newer teachers, younger teachers that really struggle," Hill said. "Landing in tough schools without a lot of resources - it's a challenge. But to come home and have colleagues to communicate and share ideas with, they're more energized and supported."

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Since 2010, the Little Berlin artist collective has been activating a vacant lot in East Kensington. Now the land has been sold to a developer. It's the urban-gentrification-circle-of-life!

When the arts collective Little Berlin arrived in the neighborhood in 2010 they started hosting events on the site informally at first, before seeking permission from Hirsh, who had purchased the lot in 2008, to develop it as a performance venue and community space. The Little Berlin website describes the agreement with Hirsh as a “partnership.”

The artists took the idea seriously and have been relentless in bringing life to the parcel. A few weeks ago, a Dodge Caravan that had been driven from Ohio was set up with two film projectors replacing the headlights, shining a film on an adjoining wall...

The neighborhood’s vintage housing and soaring former factories have lately become an asset, attractive to developers and young, prospective tenants. The artists are in part responsible.

“There are a lot of houses being built and houses being refurbished too that have been empty for a long time,” says Erickson. While he has only belonged to Little Berlin for two years, the change to the gentrifying neighborhood in just that time became obvious.

“It’s hard to wrap my head around it,” he says, “that in one way we’re making it nicer for people already living there and in other way making it easier for real estate developers to come in and buy property.”

Original source: Hidden City
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According to Bloomberg, Detroit can look elsewhere for models of recovery, including Philadelphia. In the near northeast, zoning changes paved the way for development.

The city also can promulgate new land-use rules to foster development, an idea demonstrated by Philadelphia, which in 1991 itself teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Take, for instance, once-blighted Frankford Avenue.

Sandy Salzman says that even though she promoted the idea, she doubted the thoroughfare in the New Kensington and Fishtown neighborhoods would become an art corridor when it was proposed in 2000.

“It didn’t even have a coffee shop,” said Salzman, director of the New Kensington Community Development Corp. “Now we have a ton of coffee shops. We have art galleries.”

The transformation will get additional support from the first zoning changes in half a century, which make it easier to convert abandoned industrial areas to residential or commercial uses, urban gardens and farms or allow artists to have a shop next to their homes, said Eva Gladstein, who was the executive director of the commission that developed the changes.

Original source: Bloomberg
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The Atlantic Cities chatted with Nic Esposito, urban farmer and founder of The Head & The Hand Press.

A small publisher and writers' workspace, The Head & the Hand Press, has just published Rust Belt Rising Almanac, a literary quarterly showcasing snapshots and essays on life in industrial American cities (including, of course, Philadelphia). The volume invites "Courteous Readers" to read about escapes, remains, and models of growth, and is at turns cheeky and earnest, with such section titles as "On Reverse Pioneering," "On the Anatomy of Coal-Fired Power Plant," and "On the Collective and the Communal."

Original Source: The Atlantic Cities
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The Memphis Street Academy (formerly John Paul Jones Middle School) was one of the most violent schools in the city -- until they removed all their metal detectors.

The police predicted chaos. But instead, new numbers seem to show that in a single year, the number of serious incidents fell by 90 percent.

The school says it wasn't just the humanizing physical makeover of the facility that helped. Memphis Street Academy also credits the Alternatives to Violence Project, a noncoercive, nonviolent conflict resolution regimen originally used in prison settings that was later adapted to violent schools. AVP, when tailored to school settings, emphasizes student empowerment, relationship building and anger management over institutional control and surveillance. There are no aggressive security guards in schools using the AVP model; instead they have engagement coaches, who provide support, encouragement, and a sense of safety.

Original source: The Atlantic Cities
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Like Flying Kite, the New York Times was intrigued by the concept behind Oxford Mills, a mixed-used development dedicated to organizations and people who work in education.

Two redbrick buildings in the up-and-coming but still gritty South Kensington section of Philadelphia are being converted into apartments and offices intended to house teachers and nonprofit educational organizations in what the developers hope will become a cohesive community.

When the renovation is complete, 60 percent of the buildings’ 114 apartments will be reserved for teachers, who will be offered a 25 percent discount on market rent — paying about $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom unit in a neighborhood where they typically rent for $1,300.

Original source: The New York Times
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The Inquirer's architecture critic Inga Saffron has a powerful reaction to the lack of retail at the upcoming Soko Lofts project in South Kensington.


Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Check out Kensington urban farmer Nic Esposito's Notes From the Urban Homestead series in Paradigm Magazine.

For many people, the concept of farming in any city is strange, let alone in this neighborhood. No matter that there’s a family who lives out of their car, or a heroin addict who sleeps in the park all winter, or a woman who prostitutes herself just for a bed to spend the night and maybe a hot shower: I’m the weird one on the block. But that doesn’t bother me. We all have to fit somewhere in this world.

Original source: Paradigm Magazine
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Smart Planet brings us up to speed on Postgreen and its new home construction innovations.

With one house sold and three in the works, the Avant Garage project on Memphis Street is among Postgreen’s most expensive undertakings. (The base price of an Avant Garage house is $355,000.) Each home has a roof deck and a two-car garage. To cater to the neighborhood’s artists and professionals, the garage situates vehicles in front of each other, rather than side-by-side, and has a second door opening to the backyard. The idea is to create space suitable for a studio or workshop.

Original source: Smart Planet
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Eulogy, Memphis Taproom, Monk's, Grey Lodge and Standard Tap made Draft Magazine's list of America's 100 best beer bars. They really love Monk's:

Monk's Café’s place in the upper echelon of watering holes is well-deserved. Its Beer Bible, which covers style guidelines, brewing 101 and an intoxicating list of more than 300 beers, acts as a visitor’s guide for patrons packed into the venue’s two intimate bars. The selection makes ordering tough; have a pint of the house brew Monk’s Café Flemish Sour Red and a pot of award-winning mussels while you sift through the list.

Original source: Draft Magazine
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Metropolis Magazine tells the story of industrial designer Andrew Dahlgren, his Philadelphia company ADMK and how he is helping revolutionize textile manufacturing and labor.

"Ultimately, what we are talking about is a new way of living," says Dahlgren. Pattern files can be digitally conveyed to satellite knitters in their homes who may, in turn, use the knitting machines to provide for themselves beyond their contracted production.

Dahlgren takes the long view, pointing out that "Stradivarius was still innovating violin making in his 80s, can we as a culture accept, as a way of living, making things?" Dignity, pride, and identity in workmanship seem like quaint yet timeless building blocks for reviving an industry that once boasted some 60,000 employees in Philadelphia and competed globally long before “globalization” was ever coined.

Original source: Metropolis
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