Rebuilding Girard

by Brian Hickey

Seven years ago, residents of Fairmount and Brewerytown saw their neighborhood Shop n Bag close at 27th and Girard. Since the lot has remained vacant, they were sentenced to a life of traipsing across town to do their food shopping.

So last year, when McDonald’s announced plans to build on that site, their frustration was understandable. Fighting on a fresh-fruits-and-vegetables-instead-of-Big-Macs platform, they formed the Girard Avenue Alliance and defeated Ronald’s incursion, in part by launching a court battle in which a judge agreed the company didn’t properly advertise zoning hearings. Today, they’re still anxiously waiting for their market, and if the "Plan for Girard Avenue" workshop meeting at Girard College last Thursday is any indication, the locals’ hunger for development hasn’t been sated.

Thinking big picture, they met with developers and urban planners to discuss the avenue’s future. In short, they think they can rebuild the stretch into the thriving commercial corridor of yesteryear. SEPTA plans to turn the route 15 bus into a restored trolley. The roughly 100 people on hand also saw artists’ renderings for Girard from the Philadelphia Zoo all the way down to Fishtown. They depict new stores, restaurants and meeting places with public art and fancy new streetlights.

So why, when the economy’s flailing, do they think they can pull it off? The community knows it has support from its elected officials and that neighborhood demographics can’t help but appeal to developers. The roughly 24,000 people living within a matter of blocks of Girard, from 19th to 33rd alone, spend about $233 million on retail goods and services annually. About $168 million goes out of the neighborhood.

"Our job is to figure out how to keep more of that money here," says Jim Hartling of Urban Planners. Developers "have to think they’ll be successful from day one."

That may not be too difficult.

"We already have $900,000 for sidewalk [improvements] from Front to Seventh that will start in the spring, and there’s a bill pending right now that will give us $5 million in state funding for streetscape work [along the entire avenue]," says Rojer Kern, coalition organizer for the Mayor’s Office of Community Services.

Noting that the pending bill requires the city to match any state funding, Kern says State Sen. Vincent Fumo and State Rep. Frank Oliver have lent support.

"We’re trying to convince developers that there’s gold in them thar hills," says Curtis Jones Jr., president of the Philadelphia Commercial Development Corp. arm of the city’s Commerce Department. "We’ll absolutely be a part of any ongoing community efforts."

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