Center City

ATLANTIC CITY — The stabbing deaths of two Canadian tourists outside a casino hotel left tourism officials stunned and dismayed Monday, casting a shadow over the formal opening on Memorial Day weekend of the newest gambling palace and tripping up a $30 million-a-year campaign to rebrand and revive the sagging resort town. The two victims, women ages 80 and 47, were stabbed and killed during a robbery Monday morning outside Bally's Atlantic City casino hotel, just steps from where a police officer was sitting in a patrol car. Police declined to provide the names of the victims, or precisely where they were from, pending notification of family.

KATE CLARK and her husband had their first child, son August, last June and plan to continue living in the city. "We're here. We're not going to the suburbs," she said. Philadelphia is affordable, walkable, and has a great art scene and "tons of young parents," said Clark, who lives in the East Passyunk section of South Philly. And you "have a chance to make an impact on your city. " Her son is one of the new residents who have contributed to an estimated growth in the city's white population since the 2010 census, reversing a 60-year decline of whites in the city.

Back in 1993, Philadelphia committed a radical act. It opened a new downtown convention center without a single public parking space. Despite the modest inconvenience, the city's hospitality industry exploded. Suburbanites flocked in for the popular flower show and other special events, often choosing to take the train instead of driving. Since then, the city's fortunes have picked up and more cultural attractions have opened, yet the city's resolve to limit parking has weakened.

In the first few years of the last decade, a lot of assumptions were made about aging baby boomers, their parents, their children, and their housing needs. Boomers would begin downsizing as soon as the children flew the coop, starting at about 55. Boomers would move to communities filled with their own kind. Elderly parents would be accommodated in a casita — a part of the house — until they needed continuing care. The casita would then be converted to a crafts room.

Bentley Systems Inc., the Exton-based, $500 million (annual sales) construction and architecture software firm, says it will add 50 employees at its new Center City office over the next couple of years, in the first of what Mayor Nutter hopes will be a string of suburban firms opening city "gateway" offices for skilled staff who'd rather walk to work than fight the Schuylkill. Bentley customers are expected downtown at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Tuesday for the company's "Be Together" users' conference.

Philadelphia's great white hope is back in the news, and I'm not talking about Rocky Balboa. For the first time in 60 years, the city is adding white residents more quickly than it is losing them: 3,980, to be exact, as reported in Thursday's Philadelphia Daily News. Statistically, a few thousand new people in a city of 1.53 million is insignificant. And one year does not make a trend. The 2020 census could well show that the city's white population has declined yet again.

Snow began falling as afternoon slid into evening. With the lights of Center City twinkling around and below her, Jane Miles stood by the vast expanse of windows that line one side of her new 27th-floor condominium in Symphony House, watching. "The snowflakes look so big up here," she said, more than a little awe in her voice. "With all the cars whizzing by in the streets below, it's like being in another world. " A world high above Philadelphia that, even a few years ago, Miles and her husband would have been very exclusive residents of. But as condo towers grow more commonplace in the city, taller, well-heeled buyers are choosing to feather their nests in the clouds - or as close as several hundred feet above street level can get them.

MY FIANC? AND I both live in Harrisburg but travel to Philadelphia often because we love the city. What we don't love, however, are the outrageous parking rates. When he attended monthly meetings of the Black Data Processors Association in Center City, it cost him more in parking fees to attend the meetings than it did in gas and tolls to make the 105-mile trip from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. Parking also becomes an issue when we want to visit Delilah's at the Reading Terminal for a nice Saturday lunch.

YOUR Holiday Shopping Guide was a welcome sight in the Dec. 3 Daily News. But once again, it gave short shrift to Center City, whining about parking while barely mentioning that you can get downtown by trolley, El, rail, bus, foot, bike and ferryboat. Your reporter seeking Apple's new music player stated flatly that department stores "don't sell the iPod. " Just a few pages later, good old Strawbridge's display ad was featuring just that - the new 20 gigabyte iPod, no less.

Charles Heffron had a problem while he was on vacation nine years ago - but the solution spawned an idea that grew into a profitable business. While in California, he promised a friend he would have some film developed, but he forgot. When the friend was expecting to see the prints, Heffron didn't have them. By chance Heffron stumbled upon a service he had not seen offered in Philadelphia - a one-hour photo-developing center. In 60 minutes, he had his pictures back and his friendship intact.

In its East Coast premiere, Daniel Catán's operatic version of the film Il Postino is infinitely more engaging than one could ever have predicted from an opera that has little exterior action, characters that aren't especially heroic, and music that hasn't a fraction of the usual tension of the opera's 20th-century predecessors. You aren't likely to walk away from the Center City Opera Theater production, which opened Thursday at the Prince Music Theater, thinking you've seen a masterpiece.

Philadelphia's great white hope is back in the news, and I'm not talking about Rocky Balboa. For the first time in 60 years, the city is adding white residents more quickly than it is losing them: 3,980, to be exact, as reported in Thursday's Philadelphia Daily News. Statistically, a few thousand new people in a city of 1.53 million is insignificant. And one year does not make a trend. The 2020 census could well show that the city's white population has declined yet again.

Back in 1993, Philadelphia committed a radical act. It opened a new downtown convention center without a single public parking space. Despite the modest inconvenience, the city's hospitality industry exploded. Suburbanites flocked in for the popular flower show and other special events, often choosing to take the train instead of driving. Since then, the city's fortunes have picked up and more cultural attractions have opened, yet the city's resolve to limit parking has weakened.

In an attempt to get a more complete picture of homelessness in Philadelphia, more than 50 volunteers fanned out to all corners of the city Wednesday night and counted 583 people living on the streets. Usually, the city only includes Center City, Philadelphia International Airport, and a few select neighborhoods in its quarterly count of unsheltered homeless people. But this time, more people were enlisted to reach more areas of the city. "We moved into every zip code," said Debbie Plotnick, an advocate for the Mental Health Association for Southeastern Pennsylvania.

KATE CLARK and her husband had their first child, son August, last June and plan to continue living in the city. "We're here. We're not going to the suburbs," she said. Philadelphia is affordable, walkable, and has a great art scene and "tons of young parents," said Clark, who lives in the East Passyunk section of South Philly. And you "have a chance to make an impact on your city. " Her son is one of the new residents who have contributed to an estimated growth in the city's white population since the 2010 census, reversing a 60-year decline of whites in the city.

Thousands of people are expected to converge on Franklin Square Park, at 6th and Race streets in Center City, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday for the sixth-annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Festival. Highlights include a children's fair and other kids' activities, music and artistic performances. Various cultural and other organizations will host information booths. May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. — Julie Shaw

At first, Douglas Wallace, a senior at the Science Leadership Academy, thought it was a prank when he heard President Obama plans to meet with the school's graduating seniors when he comes to the Franklin Institute for a fundraiser on June 12. "We were very excited," Wallace, 18, said of hearing the news from Frederic Bertley, the vice president of science and innovation at the Franklin Institute. "The way he [Bertley] told us, he started off saying, ‘Guys, we have some bad news, graduation has been moved' [from June 12 to June 11]

Bledar Istrefi, executive chef at Center City's popular Bellini Cafe, bought a house in Northeast Philadelphia. Istrefi, 33, soon realized that although the Northeast is teeming with pizzerias and other quick-serve options, it has few Center City-style Italian BYOBs — polished, candlelit, great food and service. The owner of Fish & Grill, a Turkish restaurant on Bustleton Avenue north of Grant Avenue, was getting out of the business, and so Istrefi, with his friend Ilirjan Asllani, left Bellini and opened Il Polpo (9825 Bustleton Ave., 215-677-2224, www.ilpolpo.com )

Bentley Systems Inc., the Exton-based, $500 million (annual sales) construction and architecture software firm, says it will add 50 employees at its new Center City office over the next couple of years, in the first of what Mayor Nutter hopes will be a string of suburban firms opening city "gateway" offices for skilled staff who'd rather walk to work than fight the Schuylkill. Bentley customers are expected downtown at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Tuesday for the company's "Be Together" users' conference.

SIXERS FEVER has hit the secondary ticket market. As the Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Celtics switches to the Wells Fargo Center, fans appear eager to be in the house for one of the biggest - and most welcomed - surprises this season. As of late Tuesday, over 5,200 tickets were purchased on StubHub, the highest number of tickets sold for a NBA playoff semifinal series thus far. The closest was Sunday's Game 1 between Miami and Indiana, which amassed over 3,500 tickets sold.