I can speak from my own experience, that when construction of that intersection began, I assumed it was for a Penn project, however I could find no reference to a Penn project, the Streets department outright denied it, and there was no mention whatsoever of the project in any major Penn publication that I could find. Only months into it was it reported that Penn planned to build a building there. And hey, I think it was a great decision - even if I hate that intersection even more now and feel it's worse that it was before. And yes Tony, you point out it is a two way street, and a big part of Penn's planning often seems to revolve around avoiding a neighborhood uprising. It's always a balance, and some people accept the trade-offs as worth it, and others do not.
Darco ________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Anthony West [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 8:53 PM To: UnivCity Listserv Subject: Re: [UC] UCD is innocent Also a sound account. But the most important discussion of neighborhood development, of course, is always whether the development is good for the neighborhood or not. Correct? I gassed up and repaired my vehicle at that garage many a time. But it posed a pollution problem due to an elderly leaking tank, I heard. It takes big bucks to fix a brownfield problem like this. Fortunately, Penn has big bucks. So an elderly gas station was replaced with a shining new vet-school facility. The vet school has always been an asset to UC; now it's even more of an asset. Where's the problem, neighbors and neighborettes? Why are we now whining about a neighborhood improvement that has no apparent downside? I suppose Penn could have led with its Dark Side. It could have said: "We plan to build a Big Building that will Forever Change the Essential Character of the ordinary West Philadelphia neighbors who live a peaceful life at 39th & Baltimore, entirely unaffected by the large university that just happens to be next door, that they all hate, because all good progressives hate universities, just like the GOP does." But it didn't. Instead, it simply got the building built, bypassing our neighborhood's pseudo-radical nonsense by any means necessary. How else could it accomplish anything? Dialog is, by definition, a two-way street. If UC leftists wish to be accepted as equal, rational partners in community planning for this off-campus neighborhood, they need to quit foaming at the mouth every time a university tries to solve a festering real-estate sore for us, as it did at the 38th & Woodland gas station and again at the 40th & Pine nursing home. -- Tony West On 5/18/2010 8:21 PM, Brian Siano wrote: But I simply cannot believe that Karen's reporting this accurately. What did she think-- that the project was _just_ a road reconfiguration? Didn't people see the announcements, the artists' conceptions, the maps, the website? I sure did. It was _always_ to accommodate a new Vet building. Artists' conceptions were always part of the presentations. Every presentation I saw, every web site, every announcement, said that a new Vet building was going up. This bit about 'they told us it was for traffic flow" is hard to believe. What is Karen saying-- that they kept a _whole building project_ as a _secret_? ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
