First of all, CBS3, 19124 is not Mayfair.

Somehow every news outlet in Philadelphia but you managed to determine that Large and Pratt streets intersect in Northwood.

Not Mayfair.

So when a 10-year-old was hit by a car after school, and CBS rushed to alert everyone that a Mayfair child had been struck, parents in that neighborhood had to scramble to account for their kids. continue reading »

Northwood Civic Association new 2012 board of directors, from L to R: President Joe Krause, member Gina Panchella, Vice President Frank Bennett, member Renee Hudson and member Lou Kubik. Not pictured: Treasurer Bill Rodebaugh.

New Northwood Civic Association board leadership was introduced Tuesday night, but a familiar voice took hold.

After a debate raged at last month’s meeting around the necessary quorum and other group charter rules surrounding the choosing of new board members, not a single vote was cast at the December meeting.

Instead, new civic president Joe Krause, formerly board vice president, said the board had largely remained the same, except for his promotion and a single new nomination. The group’s charter allows for board nominations to fill vacant seats, Krause said, so no vote was necessary.

Krause is replacing the outspoken and fiery Barry Howell, who retired from the board yet still grabbed the spotlight Tuesday, as he is known to do, by calling for an audit of the finances of the Historical Society of Frankford, something close to a neighborhood sacred cow.

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The Frankford Y has a rightful owner that is seeking a buyer and the Northwood Civic Association can’t do much about it.

So says Frank Bennett, the civic member, private attorney, new resident and Castor Avenue home renovator, who offered last month to look into the embattled historic building.

His view, which came by way of a thick packet of paper handed out to 20 residents in attendance, was echoed by civic President Barry Howell, of the historic and currently abandoned former community center.

“Sooner or a later a decision needs to be made about the safety of the building,” said Howell, who was presiding over one of his last civic meetings as president. “For now, we wait until there’s a buyer and see if we should oppose or support it.”

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The historic Frankford Y should be forced into sale with civic approval and could be done so in orphans’ court, said an attorney and Northwood resident present at that neighborhood’s civic association meeting Tuesday night.

The 70-year-old Y, which closed in June 2009 and whose future has been uncertain since its controversial executive director died in January, was the subject of intense criticism from Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell both at Tuesday’s meeting and last month, when the subject was revisited.

“We don’t know who really owns the thing and what’s going to happen, but I don’t believe we’re going to get the right buyer for that property because that right buyer doesn’t exist. They say the building is worth $1 million. I wouldn’t give them $100,000,” said Howell to a crowd of nearly 40 Tuesday night. “And while we wait for it to get figured out, I think someone is going to get raped, shot or killed in there.”

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Another Frankford bar with a troubled past due to reopen will get some community scrutiny at a forum next week, a city council representative said Tuesday night.

The former Primo’s Sports Bar and Grille, at 1520 Arrott Street, which sits diagonally from the Arrott Bus Terminal beneath the Margaret Orthodox El stop, has a new owner hoping to reopen it, says Jason Dawkins, who works for City Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez. But coming off a court-ordered closure following episodes of gun violence, greater attention needs to be had, residents have said.

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Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell at an earlier meeting. Photo by Christopher Wink.

Held a week early so as not to conflict with primary elections, Tuesday night’s Northwood Civic Association meeting focused on quality-of-life issues around the neighborhood, including the application for a grant to remove fire-damage garages from Rutland and Fillmore streets. continue reading »

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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Bridge Program Director Michael Ogden at the February Northwood meeting. Photo by Christopher Wink for NEast Philly.

After several meetings and a handful of discussions about the move from Fox Chase, the Northwood Civic Association has granted permission to the Bridge to come into the neighborhood, with the Juniata Civic Association echoing the approval of the residential treatment facility for adolescent boys. Representatives for the Bridge will go before the Zoning Board May 5.

The Frankford Gazette has the full report from Tuesday night’s Northwood meeting.

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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