Before the Frankford Civic Association meeting got started Thursday, zoning officer Pete Specos had an announcement.

Alice Henry will withdraw from the board for personal reasons, with Specos taking the helm. Henry joined the board as vice president in January. continue reading »

The small grocery store at Frankford Avenue and Unity Street in Frankford has plans to sell beer and incorporate seating. But before the store makes those changes, the owners are getting community reaction.

The Frankford Gazette reports the store owners were at Thursday’s Frankford Civic Association meeting to float the idea of improving the small strip of stores adding seating and selling take-out beer.  No formal steps have been taken with the Zoning Board.

If you had a bad experience in the past with the city’s once notorious Licenses and Inspections department, it’s time to give it another shot.

So went the address Thursday night from a representative of the city agency charged with enforcing its zoning code and related statutes.

“Let’s be real: things were bad,” said Maura Kennedy, the L&I director of strategic initiatives, of the agency before current Commissioner Fran Burns came on. “But we’ve worked very hard to get things in order in the past three years, and we want you to give us another try.”

Kennedy, who was speaking at the Frankford Civic Association meeting, outlined how her agency has changed and, along the way, took questions on a longstanding neighborhood beef with L&I over recovery homes.

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The Frankford Civic Association has approved Mastery Charter Smedley's expansion plans for the back of the property.

A vote by the Frankford Civic Association last week will allow expansion plans for the Mastery Charter School Smedley  to move ahead.

Smedley’s principal and COO made a presentation to the group for a new gymnasium and four additional classrooms on the property on the 1700-block of Bridge Street. continue reading »

Frankford Civic Association board members present, joined by Tim Wisniewski.

An apparent un-sanctioned flea market that has waxed and waned various weekends for at least a couple years on Torresdale Avenue in Frankford has grown to a size and a consistency that concerns the civic association there.

Concentrated on the east side of the 4200-block of Torresdale Avenue between Adams Avenue and Church Street, civic group complaints date back to at least 2009, as the Frankford Gazette reported then, noting, as board members did Thursday night, that the venders were unlicensed, leaving litter behind, causing traffic, and otherwise mistreating a partially residential strip of the busy two-lane road.

So the board discussed finding a new home for the market.

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The monthly meeting of the Frankford Civic Association has been delayed a week. The group will instead meet next Thursday, June 9, at 7 p.m. in the second-floor conference room of Aria Health-Frankford.

The Frankford Civic Association voted Thursday night to write a letter of opposition to the city’s Zoning Board, asking it to deny a zoning variance for the development of a new facility for the Bridge, a school for boys suffering from drug, alcohol and behavioral issues.

“We’ve been just overwhelmed with drug-related facilities, so we need to say ‘no’ because we’re the closest civic,” said association president Brian Wisniewski, referencing tumult over whether the local Frankford, Northwood or Juniata neighborhood group had the authority to vote on the facility. “At first, the Bridge wanted to go to Juniata but they got together with Northwood to try to bum rush Frankford… We have something to say too.”

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Jason Dawkins and Maria Quinones-Sanchez comfort Chris Spence's family in front of the Frankford bar where he was fatally shot.

As was discussed at Thursday’s Frankford Civic Association meeting, a hearing has been set of T&T bar. Jason Dawkins, Jorge Santana and the offices of Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Rep. Tony Payton have pushed for a ’611 action’ hearing to take action against the bar where Christopher Spence was fatally shot in February. continue reading »

The two and a half hour Frankford Civic Association meeting that started 20 minutes late and ended with heated conversation on the controversy of the moment in that beleaguered neighborhood didn’t feature a single vote.

Local opinion of plans for the Bridge, a celebrated, four-decades-old, adolescent residential treatment facility, to develop a campus on a nine-acre plot of nearby land along Adams Avenue, is split between pragmatic support for a known entity and firm opposition for any more recovery programs in the neighborhood. To develop the property, the Bridge will need a variance from the city’s Zoning Board, which can be influenced by neighborhood group opinion.

After spilling into inaction, Barry Howell, president of the Northwood Civic Association, told reporters that on Monday he was going to sign a neighborhood agreement with Bridge representatives.

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Two nonprofits trying to take root in Northwood are getting two different reactions from that neighborhood’s civic association, and the difference has everything to do with a decades-old deed restriction, says its president.

Plans to develop a new facility along Adams Avenue for the Bridge, a residential treatment program for adolescent boys aged 14-18 and a subsidiary of Center City-based Public Health Management Corporation, now has the support of the Northwood Civic Association, following a voice vote at Tuesday night’s meeting. Roughly 30 people in attendance agreed with the civic association board’s plans to support the initiative, countered by a lone voice dissenter.

Other residents had raised concerns in preceding conversation, though much was answered by Civic President Barry Howell and state Rep. Tony Payton’s Chief of Staff Jorge Santana. The civic board can now write a letter of support to the city’s Zoning Board, which would have to approve a zoning variance for the facility to be built.

That support, which closed the meeting near 8:30 p.m. at St. James, was balanced by voices of opposition for another proposal.

For two years, Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell and a cohort of his members have organized and mobilized against national rehabilitative nonprofit Volunteers of America operating a facility at 4871 Roosevelt Blvd. near Allengrove Street. Tuesday night, Howell pledged an invigorated effort to undo VOA’s use of the property, which currently houses three “disabled elderly residents,” who, Howell said in January, were ‘snuck in’ by the nonprofit.

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