Business on and around commercial corridors (like this one in Lawncrest) balance the pros and cons of those avenues' high traffic. Photo/Laura Robb

This is the second of a two-part look at three Northeast Philadelphia business corridors, the areas and around them and how those businesses impact their communities.

A community without businesses is a community failed. Businesses promote employment, provide services or goods and enhance other economic freedoms helping communities to flourish. Typically, these positive outcomes distract residents from any real concern.

However, occasionally businesses can attract the wrong kind of clientele. Amid the shoppers, strollers and neighbors can also be loiterers, criminals and drug dealers.

At June’s Take Back Your Neighborhood meeting in Castor Gardens, Lt. Thomas Macartney of the 2nd Police District spoke about some of the reported problems along Castor Avenue.

“One of the things we’ve been working on is the 6600-block of Castor Ave.,” Macartney said. “Between two stores on the corners at Castor and Magee, there has been some gang-related activity, including residents buying drugs.”

We compared statistics from CrimeReports.com of five blocks each of three commercial corridors in Northeast Philadelphia, examining police reports from Jan. 1 to June 23 of this year to determine how those avenues – all in the 2nd Police District – stack up. continue reading »

Al Taubenberger, president of the Greater Northeast Chamber of Commerce, says several business corridors in the region have not experienced decline during the economic fallout.

For Samuel Nalbandian, owner of Rising Sun Pizza in Lawncrest, the business is a way of life and the recession is nothing to worry about.

“For me, it’s been the same,” he said of business during the past several months. “It’s always good, as long as I’m here managing. The customers are satisfied.”

Nalbandian, who opened the pizza parlor in 1982, said while he did see a slight drop in business last year that he attributed to the recession, he doesn’t worry about the shop.

“I do worry for other people not having jobs when the economy is bad,” he said. “But as long as I do the right thing, I don’t worry [about the business].”

Like some owners throughout the Northeast’s many neighborhoods and myriad business corridors, Nalbandian is a small business owner lucky enough to skirt the worst of the decline, avoiding being hit as hard as other businesses, especially larger ones. While there are not concrete statistics for our region of the city specifically, in terms of the economy’s effect on the businesses, a consensus exists among owners and civic leaders that while the Northeast’s businesses were hit, they largely weren’t hit too hard, and will pull through and stay profitable. continue reading »

NEast Philly is officially open for business!

Though we’ve been up and running for almost a solid year now, the process of becoming a recognized and legitimate business was a slow one, complicated by delays from the city and state governments. But thanks to the folks at Freedom Credit Union, the NEast Philly business account is finally open!

Business owners interested in advertising can get that information here, and NEast Philly readers: keep your eyes peeled in the near future for opportunities to buy some very NEast-y products!

One month after highlighting Globe Dye Works, another Frankford company is getting widespread praise.

East Frankford design collaborator and fabrication company Amuneal was ranked 51st in the 11th annual Inner City 100, a competitive ranking of the fastest-growing companies located in the “inner city” of a U.S. metropolis, last week.

There’s no telling what our friends at the Frankford Gazette will say about being labeled the “inner-city.” See what the list constitutes an inner-city here.

The list comes from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1994 by a Harvard Business School professor. The organization’s mission is to promote economic prosperity in U.S. inner cities through private sector engagement leading to job, income and wealth creation for local residents.

Find out more about Amuneal and the list below.

continue reading »

The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Burholme will cut about 3 percent of its staff – more than 70 jobs.