Also this issue: National Pride Preservation forces win a round in the battle over the orange-tiled Old City landmark. -Daniel Brook

November 14-20, 2002

cityspace

Model Citizens

by Ted Mann

Go West moneymen, go West.

After whispering this mantra for years, the University of Pennsylvania has finally been heard. Citizens Bank recently announced that it would invest $28.5 million in a neighborhood development initiative for West Philadelphia. The money is earmarked for land acquisition, renovation, mortgage financing and small business loans, and it will encompass the neighborhoods bounded by 30th Street and 52nd Street, and Haverford Avenue south to the Schuylkill River. It is the first large, private-bank bank investment in West Philly since the area was “red-lined” in the 1930s.

The bank unveiled its plan at a news conference in City Hall, and it was hailed as a "huge, huge announcement" by Mayor Street. Both Street and Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell were eager to tie the Citizens venture to their own neighborhood redevelopment projects: the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) and West Philadelphia on the Move, respectively. An NTI banner was even hung above the conference, giving Street's program prime product placement. However, when Citizens CEO Stephen Steinour spoke, he gave much of the credit to Penn.

Steinour said his company's program hoped to build upon "the improvements and investments made by Penn and neighborhood groups." The university-led programs are almost too numerous to mention, but just a few include: the Sansom Commons retail development, management of a new public school at 42nd and Spruce streets, funding for the University City District, and UCBrite, an initiative that lit sidewalks on 153 blocks in West Philly.

The initiatives that Citizens will most directly inherit are Penn's Home Ownership and Home Improvement programs. These were created to give faculty and staff cash incentives to purchase and renovate homes in West Philly. Citizens can now pick up the slack, offering the same sort of sweet financing to people outside the university. With $10 million pledged to help community groups acquire and develop land, and another $5 million set aside for below-market-rate mortgage loans, the bank will have a huge impact on the area's low- and moderate-income residents.

In terms of history, the $28.5 million represents the first time a large bank has invested in the area since the federal Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) damned it in the '30s. The now infamous practice of "red-lining" designated much of West Philly as a fourth-grade neighborhood, an unwise place for mortgage lenders to put their money. After decades of decline, Penn finally took measures, starting in the 1990s, to reverse the HOLC legacy. In both a historical and figurative sense, the university has managed to recolor its environs from red to green.