PennPraxis facilitates a regular monthly forum at which neighbors who
are either for or against the hotel proposal can communicate and learn.
This is not a panacea, but running meetings is PennPraxis' chief stock
in trade. If regular public meetings can't help your faction, then yes,
PennPraxis hasn't helped it and can't help it. It's not a sort of
Planning Police, if that's what you have in mind.
If the people who show up at Friends of 40th St. meetings frequently
express concern about the hotel proposal, then PennPraxis would likely
record it in some way. By the same token, if nobody ever mentions
opposition at any of these regular meetings, that too becomes a datum
-- a way to measure public opinion. No one owns a copyright to the
phrase "the neighbors", after all.
As for UCHS -- didn't Karen recently mention that one of its board
members testified to its opposition to the hotel proposal at some public
hearing? That sounds like help for the anti-hotel faction. It was clear
she had wanted even more help. But that doesn't mean it didn't help.
SHCA helps both sides as well as the ZBA by providing a Zoning
Committee. An organization that acted without a report from its Zoning
Committee would seem impetuous and unreliable. In a long game, one needs
a closer as well as an opener.
-- Tony West
Friends of 40th St. holds regular monthly meetings on the last Friday of
every month at the Community Room of 3901 Market St. The next meeting
will be Sep. 26. There will be presentations on the trolley portal
renovation, the Lancaster Ave. Jazz Fest, retail in the Radian building
and more.
The developer of the extended-stay hotel project made a presentation to
Friends of 40th St. It's an appropriate subject for Friends of 40th St.
meetings and Goodman welcomed people who are interested in this subject
to attend those meetings.
no one disputes that penn praxis exists, just as no one disputes that
shca or uchs or ucd exist. the fact remains that neither penn praxis
nor shca nor uchs nor ucd have helped the neighbors in this year-long
hotel battle.
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
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