The Philadelphia Department of Commerce has a dedicated program to cover 50 percent of the installation costs of outdoor security cameras at city businesses, but it recently realized that in some neighborhoods that isn’t enough.
"We have been finding that businesses in low-income areas are not as prone to be able to take advantage of that," explains Karen Lockhart Fegely, the Commerce Department’s deputy director of neighborhood & business services.
So, with help from
Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI) dollars, the Department launched a pilot program to fund the entire cost of outdoor security cameras in two targeted neighborhoods.
One of those areas is a stretch of the Germantown business corridor: the 5600 to 5900 blocks of Germantown Avenue. According to
Germantown United CDC Corridor Manager Emaleigh Doley, the Philadelphia Police Department helped to identify the right locations.
"Once this project is complete, there will be at least 25 businesses on this area of the corridor…that will have new security cameras" facing the street, she explains. This is "exciting" for those investing in Germantown’s business corridor. "Not to get all 'Big Brother' on people, but shoppers like knowing that the corridor is safer, so I’m really hoping that helps set a new tone in that area."
The other spot getting new security cameras through NTI funds is the
N. 22nd Street commercial corridor of Allegheny West, which the Commerce Department chose because it’s already the site of streetscape upgrades through a capital improvement project.
Allegheny West Foundation's Thera Martin-Milling is the N. 22nd Street corridor manager, and she did the legwork of securing plans and estimates from camera companies. The Commerce Department, again with input from the Police Department, hopes to install the devices at evenly distributed intervals along the stretch.
The corridor managers on both 22nd [Street] and Germantown Avenue contacted the business and property owners at strategic locations to solicit their approval to have the cameras installed and to maintain the cameras.
So what is the effect of putting more eyes on the street?
"At this point, we do not have hard evidence on return on investment in terms of increase of foot traffic and sales revenue," says Fegely, but the basic goal is to support commerce through increased public safety. To receive Commerce Department reimbursements for the cameras, participating business and property owners must register their cameras through the PPD’s
SafeCam program.
"It is widely accepted that the first step to revitalizing and sustaining a corridor is to make it clean and safe," adds Fegely.
Writer: Alaina Mabaso
Sources: Emaleigh Doley, Germantown United CDC; Karen Lockhart Fegely, Philadelphia Department of Commerce