As University City expands, paradox abounds
By Melissa Dribben
Inquirer Staff Writer It is midday at 50th and Baltimore
on the gentrification frontier.
West of the intersection, a young black man walks up the
double yellow lines, hawking ice water. A young white
woman carrying a backpack slips through the door of a
two-story apartment building. She lives above an
abandoned general store. A Michael Nutter flyer from
May's primary still hangs on the grate. The windows are
partially covered with sun-crisped yellowed newspaper
from October 2006 with the headline "Report Says
Minorities Still Face Housing Woes."
To the east, through the arched windows of what was once
a Victorian firehouse, you can see brewmasters tending
the copper vats in Dock Street Brewery & Restaurant. Next
door, tattooed bicyclists congregate at Satellite Café.
Across 50th Street, in clean, leafy Cedar Park, mothers
push strollers.
"Two close friends of mine killed each other in this very
park a few years ago," says Daniel Thomas, 28, who grew
up in this neighborhood and says that, recently, it has
improved dramatically. "Now my kids play here."
The transformation is fitful and mysterious along this
iffy edge of University City in West Philadelphia.
Abandoned houses and boarded-up businesses still harbor
the nefarious at night. But it is also a place for loyal
families, real estate gamblers, and hopeful pioneers
redefining the neighborhood merely by walking its
streets.
"This is the the edge where the real change is
happening," says Bob Christian, editor of the University
Weekly Review local newspaper.
A conglomeration of neighborhoods, University City is as
much concept as geography. Residents pride themselves on
their mix of races, religions, financial situations and
dietary preferences. Their attitudes toward their most
influential neighbor - the University of Pennsylvania -
have not always been so tolerant.
Penn's critics view the school as an imperialist bully.
But most homeowners and businesses credit the university
for putting its muscle behind recent improvements.
Working with Drexel, local politicians, neighborhood
groups and businesses, Penn helped create the University
City District, which has improved security and supported
businesses. (It was this coalition of forces that turned
Cedar Park from skeezy to lovely.)
Indirectly, and unintentionally, Penn may also have
spurred improvements around 50th and Baltimore.
In 2002, it helped create the Sadie Tanner Mossell
Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School,
a new K-8 oasis of public education not very subtly
designed to serve the university community. Realtors say
that immediately, prices shot up an estimated $50,000 per
house in the catchment area, the western border of which
ends at 47th Street.
Melani Lamond, a resident and area real estate broker
since the 1980s, says that, increasingly, prospective
buyers are looking farther west.
"With Dock Street opening, that was something you could
tell people. All of a sudden, the 5000 block of Catharine
looked pretty good."
Crime in the area has been steadily declining, says
Police Capt. Daniel MacDonald of the 12th District. "It's
so much nicer now than it was even two or three years
ago."
As of last week, there had been few robberies and no
murders in the area around 50th and Baltimore, he said.
Ten years ago, when he was a sergeant in the district,
"it was a lot rougher."
Preparing for the evening rush less than three weeks
after opening, Dock Street owner Rosemarie Certo takes a
break over an espresso.
Last year when Certo began looking for a new home for her
restaurant and brewery, she didn't even consider
University City.
"Driving around with a Realtor, we saw this building. It
was beautiful. But I said, 50th and Baltimore? No way."
She chose a spot in Mount Airy, but when the deal fell
through, she gave the stone former firehouse a second
look and fell in love.
Members of the church across the street opposed the
restaurant's zoning application, worried that it would
promote drinking and damage the community.
But the majority of residents thought the restaurant
would be a great commercial boon and social gathering
spot. So they banded together to reach out to church
leaders and support Certo.
The restaurant opened Aug. 20.
"The community worked so hard for this," says City
Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who supported Dock
Street's move and attended the preopening party.
Carol Walker, president of Cedar Park Neighbors, was at
the party, too. The restaurant's arrival is a victory for
the community, she says, and others are in progress. The
old liquor store that supplied more derelicts than dinner
parties is about to replaced by a classy one. And her
group is pressing City Hall on zoning issues.
Speculators are being allowed to acquire abandoned homes
and break them up into multifamily rental units, although
the community, she says, would rather see these buildings
rehabbed and owner occupied.
"We'd like to have some say."
The jumble of people that makes this area so lively also
makes it a tricky place to do business, says Bill
Coleman, who ran a farmers market here for 17 years.
"It's foolhardy to try to be all things to all people,"
he says. "If you want a ripe Brie and I put it in the
refrigerator case next to American cheese, you're going
to assume that it's second-rate Brie. And the
American-cheese customer will be put off by the white
dusty-covered stuff."
One solution, suggests Abdul Humphrey, may be for young
entrepreneurs like him to take part in the commercial
revival.
Humphrey, 27, who has lived near 50th and Baltimore his
whole life, owns a small water ice business and is
learning about real estate. He says he was skeptical, at
first, when white people started moving in. "I thought
the Caucasians were moving the Africans Americans out.
But then I thought, if you see opportunity, you should
take it, too."
Prosperity has dipped its toes into this West
Philadelphia neighborhood before.
"In the 1980s, they said it was going to be the next
Chestnut Hill," recalls Maureen Tate, vice president of
Cedar Park Neighbors. But then the national economy took
a dive, followed by a real estate free-fall and the crack
epidemic.
There has always been a dividing line at 50th Street,
Tate explains, in part because it was redlined during the
days of segregation. And in part because of the
architecture. To the east, mostly rambling Victorians. To
the west, humbler two-story rowhouses.
Twenty years ago, Phillip Lapsansky chose his home at
50th and Walton for purely practical reasons, he says.
"It was cheap and I like being able to zip right into
town."
Lapsansky, 66, is chief of reference at the Library
Company of Philadelphia. He's lost much of the idealism
that drove his civil-rights activism in the 1960s, and
now watches the gradual reintegration of his neighborhood
with more curiosity and academic detachment than hope.
"It's a phenomenon," he says. "It could well be this
generation of young urban pioneers are willing not to be
intimidated by a certain amount of edginess."
It could. And also that, in the Catch-22 of neighborhood
transformation, they are as much reacting to change as
they are creating it.
