8/14/2005
3 local areas to take part in Pa.-wide revitalization effort
By Amy Worden
Inquirer Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG - Twenty-two Pennsylvania communities, including two neighborhoods in Philadelphia and one in Chester County, have been selected to participate in a program that organizers say is a new, broad-reaching approach to community revitalization.

The Blueprint Communities program, announced by Gov. Rendell in the Capitol yesterday, will provide technical assistance, financial training, planning support and grants for community groups so that they may become more involved in redeveloping their areas.

Under this approach, communities - not banks, governments or outside developers - will take the lead in the rebuilding process, said officials with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, which created the program.

John Bendel, the bank's director of community investment, called it a "holistic approach" that will produce a "road map for sustainable growth."

"Rather than investing money in one project and having neglect and blight around it, banks will be making an investment in the whole community," he said.

There is no dollar figure attached to the overall Blueprints program, bank officials say. Rather, the training and technical assistance-based initiative will position community groups to apply for grants and loans from banks for a wide array of commercial and residential development projects.

The bank will fund a $158,000 program this fall to train representatives of the 22 communities. Bank officials say they hope some projects will be under way next year.

The Philadelphia areas selected are Tioga and Norris Square in North Philadelphia. Linden in Kennett Square, Chester County, is the third community in this region.

Rendell said focusing on lower-income communities, as the state has tried to do with the governor's $2 billion economic-development plan, is a step toward reversing the state's slow economic growth and its related loss of open space. He said the reason for the loss of open space was that "neglected older communities didn't understand the potential for revitalization."

City officials say the program will dovetail with Mayor Street's $296 million antiblight initiative. "This will help communities drive what the vision is, what the planning is and the implementation, and give them the tools to be successful," said Eva Gladstein, the director of Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative.

While Street says the five-year program, which ends in 2007, is operating ahead of schedule, some critics say the program has failed to create enough housing to replace the city's many rundown buildings and vacant lots.

Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, whose district includes Tioga, said the Blueprints program will help ensure that some of those recently cleared areas of the city are rebuilt. "We have done a lot of demolition. Now it's time to rebuild," she said.

Norris Square civic leader Daniel Rodriguez said the program will help preserve affordable housing in that rapidly gentrifying community. "This will help bring together all the various elements, from the physical buildings and economic development to social services for a neighborhood in transition," he said. "Sustaining affordable housing is one of the key issues."