In The News

Update: New Vision for South Broad announces a decision

PlanPhilly Tuesday, December 04, 2012

As Flying Kite detailed back in late November, Avenue of the Arts, Inc. (AAI) partnered with the Pennsylvania Horicultural Society (PHS) to launch a "New Vision for South Broad Street" competition. The goal was to continue the thoroughfare's original purpose as an arts and entertainment district but with a modern take. Ten architectural and landscape firms submitted ideas, and four were chosen as finalists. Now the list has been narrowed once again.

A judging panel, overseen by Avenue of the Arts, Inc. (AAI) Chairman Dianne Semingson, has chosen Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects, Inc., to participate in Phase II of the “New Vision for South Broad Street” Request for Proposal (RFP) project. The two teams, selected from four finalists (the other two were LRSLA Studio and Cairone & Kaupp, Inc.) are charged with pushing forward a program to reinvigorate South Broad Street from City Hall to Washington Avenue.

The two firms will present refined proposals in early 2013 and one winner will be selected.

Original Source: PlanPhilly
Read the full story here.

Plans for city land bank take shape

The Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Plans are beginning to take shape for a Philadelphia land bank, a development that would make it easier for the city to deal with vacant and blighted properites. Council is likely to start considering the bill in the new year.

The rest of the properties are in private hands—about 17,000 of them are tax delinquent, according to a 2010 consultant's report. In many cases, the properties have been vacant so long the listed owners are dead or virtually impossible to find.

Anyone wanting to assemble vacant parcels—developers, nonprofits, and even neighbors who want to start a community garden—have to navigate the maze of ownership.

About a decade ago, Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia needed three years to assemble 20 parcels in the 1800 block of North 18th Street—a project that eventually yielded 14 new houses.

Original Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
For the full story, click here.

Business Insider admires Philly's murals

Business Insider Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Business Insider takes a self-guided tour of Philadelphia's Mural Mile and walks away impressed. Their slideshow offers a great run-down of some of the city's most visible public art pieces.

The program has grown into a thriving network of muralists, youth, local businesses, and Philadelphia residents all seeking to add more beauty to the City of Brotherly Love. More than 3,000 murals have now been painted all around the city, and many more are in progress. We've heard some incredible praise for the program, so we decided to go see it in person. We took the self-guided walking tour of Mural Mile in the Center City neighborhood, and thought it was astounding.

Original Source: Business Insider
Read the full story here.

Salon's Williams pens a post-marathon ode to Philly

Salon Tuesday, November 27, 2012

After Hurricane Sandy caused the cancellation of the New York City Marathon, Philadelphia's race stepped up and offered spots to some of the displaced runners. Erstwhile Philadelphian Mary Elizabeth Williams (running in the midst of treatment for cancer) sends the city a sincere thanks.

In retrospect, I should have expected nothing less from a city whose very name means brotherly love. Besides, I knew how much Philly could give. I’d gone to school there; I’d forged some of the best and most enduring relationships of my life there. I had returned, again and again over the years, to see my friends and to eat soft pretzels and to introduce my children to the city’s charms. Yet on Sunday, Philadelphia gave me – and nearly 1,500 other New York marathon runners – something new. It gave us welcome and warmth and refuge after one of the darkest experiences in the Big Apple’s history, just by letting us pound its streets.

Original Source: Salon
Read the full story here.

Foobooz names Philly's top 50 bars

Foobooz Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Local food-centric blog Foobooz releases its annual list of the city's best bars. It's no surpise that the top ten are dominated by spots with serious beer programs—top-shelf suds have become Philly's calling card. Pub & Kitchen takes top honors, up from no. 10 last year.

If you want to be number one on the Foobooz Top 50 Bars list you had better bring it every day. And Pub & Kitchen does just that, with excellent food, a well curated beverage program plus excellent and dare we say, attractive service.

Source: Foobooz
Check out the full list here.

Grantland loves Philly-centric 'Silver Linings Playbook'

Grantland Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Silver Linings Playbook, the Philly-centric new film that puts Eagles fans front-and-center, continues to garner nationwide praise. The movie is based on a novel Matthew Quick, a former Haddonfield Memorial High teacher. Grantland reserves special praise for the movie's perspective on sports fandom.

The ways in which Pat, in his pitiable mix of out-of-control rage and deranged optimism, is a product of his struggling underdog city and the maddening football franchise that it hosts will probably be obvious to most readers of this site and lost on a solid percentage of non-sports fans who go see the movie. You have to know Philly, know the Eagles to really get it, how each of these characters is simultaneously badly scarred and up for more punishment. Silver Linings Playbook is a few different movies at once, but one of those movies is about the complicated interplay between a city's sports teams and a city's citizens, the way that over time the two start resembling one another.

Original source: Grantland
Read the complete story here.

Green City, Clean Waters earns praise post-Sandy

Huffington Post Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The Huffington Post's Mark Tercek gives props to the Philadelphia Water Department's pro-active stormwater management program, which should help mitigate damage in future storms.

Like many cities, Philadelphia has been battling a problem with stormwater management. During heavy storms, water running off rooftops and roads overwhelms the city's aging sewer systems, dumping unsanitary water into local waterways and basements, and -- as we saw in New York City -- overwhelming power sub-stations and other critical infrastructure. Stormwater problems and the resulting sewer overflows are a major source of river pollution around Philadelphia, and elsewhere around the world.

Philadelphia's "Green City, Clean Waters" program tackles this problem by replacing impervious grey infrastructure with natural alternatives: green roofs; blue roofs that hold large quantities of water for long periods of time; tree-lined streets and side walk planters; new and restored wetlands; rain gardens; porous pavement; and creek-side restoration. These green areas either absorb water or help it to flow at a more manageable rate rather than water hitting concrete and racing to the sewage system.

Original source: Huffington Post
Read the full story here.

Glimpsing forgotten Philadelphia by train

The New York Times Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The New York Times Magazine takes a ride on Amtrak along the northeast corridor and surveys the ghosts of our industrial past.

As anyone who rides Amtrak between New York and Washington knows, the trip can be a dissonant experience. Inside the train, it’s all tidy and digital, everybody absorbed in laptops and iPhones, while outside the windows an entirely different world glides by. Traveling south is like moving through a curated exhibit of urban and industrial decay. There’s Newark and Trenton and the heroic wreckage in parts of Philadelphia, block after block of hulking edifices covered in graffiti, the boarded-up ghost neighborhoods of Baltimore made familiar by “The Wire” — all on the line that connects America’s financial center and its booming capital city.

Original source: The New York Times
Read the full story here.

Bloomberg Philanthropies announces Mayors Challenge finalists

National Geographic Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Philadelphia is among the 20 cities from across the country to be named a finalist in the Mayors Challenge. In Spring, Bloomberg Philanthropies will announce the winning team, which will receive $5 million to jumpstart its idea; four other teams will each receive $1 million.

In Houston, the Challenge has brought to the fore a plan to streamline waste diversion by developing the first total material resource recovery facility in the nation. San Francisco’s project seeks to link unemployed individuals with city government projects that lack personnel to close the employment gap throughout the city. Chicago’s plan calls for the deployment of an open-source analytics platform that will help streamline decision-making processes in city services, while Philadelphia focuses on developing public-private partnerships to tackle urban issues.

Original source: National Geographic's City Solutions blog
Read the full story here. For more on the Mayors Challenge click here.

Built to Last: Architect Frank Furness gets his due

The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, November 13, 2012

A century after his death, Philadelphia's Frank Furness is remembered in a series of events, including this exhibition at The Athenaeum. The architect continues to earn praise for his ambitious, idiosyncratic style.

By the time he died in 1912, at age 72, structural exhibitionism was passé, even vulgar, and Furness was something of a laughingstock. Only in the 1960s was he rediscovered by young architects disgruntled with modernism, for whom he was a guilty pleasure, a kind of joyous architectural Falstaff to fling against the solemnity of the Bauhaus. Robert Venturi did much to make Furness respectable again, praising the "array of violent forces within a rigid frame" that characterized his work.

Face & Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness runs Nov. 30 through Jan. 11 at The Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Click here for details and a complete calendar of Furness 2012 events.

Original source: The Wall Street Journal
Read the full story here.

Dancing Around the Bride at the Art Museum

The New York Times Monday, November 05, 2012

The New York Times dives into this one-of-a-kind, collaborative exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that pays homage to late dance great Merce Cunningham.

The context brings out Cunningham’s radical use of time and space. (Steps on one side provide seats for audience members, but the performances may be viewed from any angle.) When Brandon Collwes performed a solo from “Second Hand” (1970) in one corner of the stage, Emma Desjardins and Melissa Toogood took over the rest of the platform area with a near-unison duet from “Aeon.” As the horizontal S shapes of their arms compressed, accordion fashion, into vertical ones, it was as if the man and the two women were moving in different time frames, different dimensions.

Original source: The New York Times

Read the full story here.

Eastern U. nursing leader takes on statewide challenge

Nurse.com Monday, November 05, 2012

Mary Anne Peters, who chairs the school of nursing at Eastern University in St. Davids, has spent the last few months settling into her new role as president of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Nursing Schools Association.

She will serve a two-year term in the top spot of the statewide organization, which helps baccalaureate and higher degree nursing education programs in Pennsylvania plan and implement programs for growth, development and advancement. PHENSA provides a forum and meeting place for those who lead schools of nursing to assemble, learn about the current healthcare issues, discuss ideas and strategies and plan for nursing’s future.

"There are issues that affect us all as nurses," Peters said. "But there are also issues facing nurses here that are completely different than what’s facing nurses in other parts of the country and in different parts of the commonwealth."

Original source: Nurse.com

Read the full story here.

A Philadelphia eighth-grader's electoral hopes

The New York Times Monday, November 05, 2012

Thirteen year-old Hope Boone of Philadelphia writes about how presidential candidates should think as big as teenagers do.

Young people’s minds are malleable and open to innovation. It is nearly impossible to change the mind-set of an adult. If we want to encourage young people in innovation, education must be improved. It’s the only path to becoming free of fossil fuels, ignorance and debt.

Original source: The New York Times

Read the full story here.

Young Visionaries: United By Blue's organic apparel and accessories

Entrepreneur Monday, November 05, 2012

Entrepeneur's Young Visionaries series pays a visit to Philadelphia's United By Blue, an organic apparel and accessories company with a heavy social mission.

His vision provides for the removal of one pound of garbage from the nation's waterways through the sale of each item on the site. Each cleanup involves thousands of volunteers and has resulted in the removal of many thousands of pounds of garbage.

Original source: Entrepreneur

Read the full story here.

Philadelphia's ScrubDaddy walks away with Shark Tank deal

Nerdles Monday, October 29, 2012

Aaron Krause, who owns ScrubDaddy, maker of what is described as "high-end cleaning sponges," walked away from ABC TV show Shark Tank with a deal, reports Nerdles.

He needs $100,000 in exchange for 10% equity in his enterprise. He’s currently selling the product online and in 5 Philadelphia stores. His sales have already reached $100,000 in the past 4 months alone. Since Aaron owns a patent for Scrub Daddy, he is now venturing into manufacturing the product on a large scale. As such, he needs the funds to set up his own manufacturing facility as he anticipates an in increase in demand from other supermarkets

Original source: Nerdles

Read the full story here.