District Attorney Seth Williams at the June Northwood Civic Association meeting.

Seth Williams says he doesn’t always wear his seat belt while driving.  Philadelphia’s District Attorney also says he was recently caught by a red-light ticket camera.

Lessons for enforcing driving in a town whose DA has broken a law or two can be implemented citywide. So Williams told 30 residents at Tuesday’s Northwood Civic Association meeting in the basement of St. James Church.

“It’s not the severity of punishment that changes behavior,” he said. “It’s the certainty of punishment.”

It was one of four hallmarks he gave for his developing administration, before taking questions from a community that has characterized itself in a quality-of-life war against blight and crime.

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Northwood Civic Association's board members at a previous meeting. Photo by Christopher Wink.

Lots of things kept us from Tuesday’s Northwood Civic meeting — bad weather, election night and the big-deal Flyers game. The same reasons the Frankford Gazette lists for the unusually low attendance at the meeting. continue reading »

New Frankford Development President Felicia Richardson addresses the Northwood Civic Association at its monthly meeting Tuesday, April 20, 2010.

It seems the Northwood Civic Association has made nice with the for-profit company poised take operational control over the storied Frankford Y.

“This has the prospects of being a well established part of the community,” civic President Barry Howell told nearly 40 residents inside the St. James’ church basement at Castor Avenue and Bridge Street Tuesday night.

It was Howell, of course, who said in December that he “sensed a rat” around the proposal. But Howell now says lots has changed since then.

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Two frequent topics of consternation at recent Northwood Civic Association meetings are being taken to court.

A pair of unanimous 18-0 resident votes urged President Barry Howell and his board to go ahead with plans to request an injunction on the opening of an addiction recovery facility on Roosevelt Boulevard and to sue the Frankford Community Y to open its financial records.

“We oppose this as much as you do,” State Rep. Tony Payton, who circulated a copy of a letter he sent to the city’s chief of the Department of Behavioral Health Arthur Evans,  expressing as much to, said of the opening of a Volunteers of America of Delaware Valley home on the 4800-block of Roosevelt Boulevard. Howell, Payton and others maintain that this in direct conflict with Northwood’s deed restriction.

“I think these court proceedings will bring to light that deed restrictions trump city zoning,” Payton said. “We certainly hope that’s the case.”

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Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell (r) at a previous meeting. Photo by Christopher Wink for NEast Philly.

We couldn’t make it to Tuesday’s Northwood Civic Association meeting. But our friends at the Frankford Gazette did — and so did NBC10.

The meeting revolved mostly around 4871 Roosevelt Blvd. Also a focus of previous Northwood and Frankford meetings, the property was purchased by volunteers of America, and Northwood Civic President Barry Howell has made it his mission to see the property is used to benefit the community.

Frankford Gazette has the full story with video.

Tuesday’s monthly meeting of the Northwood Civic Association was host to a hot issue  – as was last month’s.

The group discussed the recent purchase of a home by Volunteers of America Delaware Valley. As the Frankford Gazette reported, Civic President Barry Howell vowed to make sure the new owners comply with the deed restrictions.

Frankford residents ask questions at the Dec. 3 Civic meeting about the proposal for the new Frankford Y.

A starry-eyed plan for reinvigorating the century-old Frankford Y has now lost the support of the civic association to whom the proposal was first presented.

Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell, who presided over the November meeting of his neighborhood group that featured the announcement that a for-profit group would purchase the cherished, nonprofit community center, stood up at Thursday night’s Frankford Civic Association meeting and addressed the issue aggressively.

“I sense a rat,” Howell said, to chatters of approval from the 16 residents and 10 Frankford board members in attendance. “They fed us Disney World, but this ain’t Disney World.” continue reading »

Anthony Bannister, a partner in the company that is purchasing the Frankford Y, addresses the Nov. 17, 2009 Northwood Civic Association meeting.

A for-profit development company has agreed on terms to purchase the New Frankford Y, as announced at Tuesday night’s Northwood Civic Association meeting. The Y closed its doors back in May after 68 years as a neighborhood hub.

Portraying himself as well-connected and well-funded, a young and charismatic quarter partner in the Frankford Development Corporation said they plan to reopen the Y as the Frankford Community Center by September 2010.

“The place brings such a rich, beautiful element to the neighborhood,” Anthony Bannister told a dozen residents and the civic board inside a well-heated classroom at St. James Lutheran Church. “I’m not afraid of Frankford. You just need a vision, and I can see it.”

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A class-action law suit against property owners who rent their homes in Northwood could be looming in the coming months, warned neighborhood civic association President Barry Howell at last night’s meeting.

“I don’t know how rentals came to Northwood, but they won’t stay,” Howell said to 26 attendees. “If they don’t own it, they can leave.”

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Northwood Civic Association President Barry Howell recaps the group's progress since the last meeting.

Northwood residents voted unanimously last night to back up a decision made by the Northwood Civic Association to allow a new school on the property of Friends Hospital.

Civic Association President Barry Howell led the meeting, at the end of which, the 20 residents in attendance supported the association’s backing of Camelot School’s new Excel Academy. Already built but waiting for finishing touches, the facilities are located on the south side of the Friends Hospital property in the old crisis center of the Webster building.

Todd Bock, senior vice president for education services at Camelot, a private company that oversees several other schools in Philadelphia in addition to Excel, addressed residents’ concerns about the schools. Many feared the school could bring more unruly teenagers through the neighborhood.

“This is not Shallcross,” Bock reassured attendees, who fear having their own version of the Parkwood-based remedial discipline school, which hosts students who’ve been expelled from other schools for things like weapon possession. (Members of the Parkwood Civic Association contacted Howel praising the Excel Academy, which Bock stressed is not the same as Shallcross).

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