July 31-August 6, 2003

mailbag

Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

Hasta, Primavera

Carl Primavera's remarks [Political Notebook, Mary Patel, July 17, 2003] about the proposed Old City Historic District were so off-base they merit a response. First, I attend the Historical Commission meetings on a regular basis and I have never seen anyone leave "crying because they did not have the money to replace their windows" properly. Moreover, Mr. Primavera has never seen that either because he never attends Historical Commission meetings except when he is representing a developer who is trying to get around some aspect of the city's historical regulations. It should be noted that a large number of applications in historic districts are reviewed and approved at staff level without even coming to the Commission. Those that come to the Commission are, in my view, treated fairly with respect to both historic merit and economic realities.

Second, Mr. Primavera cites the Ritz-Carlton Hotel as a good example of an historic project by a private developer. I agree. But he seems to forget that the Girard Bank building (to use the historic name) was protected by historical review; the reason the project turned out well was not because the developer had a free hand, but precisely because the developer had to go through the types of historic reviews Mr. Primavera objects to and because the developer was very responsive to the historic significance of the building. The same is true of the proposed development of the National Products building site in Old City by Matrix: A much better design for the site was achieved by virtue of the fact that the developer had to comply with historic review and did so in a responsible manner.

Third, the virtue of historic district designation is that it does not establish "slavish standards." It allows for a flexible process of review by the Commission's professionally qualified Architectural Review Committee, which examines each building and project on its individual merits. There are many developers who take their responsibilities seriously and have little difficulty with historic reviews; it's the ones who don't want to take them seriously who dislike the regulations -- and that's exactly why we need them.

Old City merits being designated an historic district and the Alliance will fully support this designation when it comes to the Commission for approval.

John Andrew Gallery

Executive Director
Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia

Telling It Like It is

Thank God someone else isn't afraid to say it ["Criminal or Scofflaw?," Jacob G. Hornberger, Slant, July 24, 2003]: Bush is a fraud!

Soren Paris
Phiiladelphia

Clarification

In last week's article, "GoInternet Back To Arkansas," by Daryl Gale, Yvette Nunez-West of the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation (PWDC) was quoted as saying PWDC paid for half the salaries of GoInternet employees in a welfare-to-work program. Ms. Nunez-West called to correct her statement shortly after the paper went to press. Although GoInternet had 24 employees in the program, she said, PWDC never paid the company because the employees failed to meet the program's six-month retention guidelines.