Development Projects

The Bristol Township Planning Commission has recommended final approval for two proposed developments and preliminary approval for a third. The votes were 3-0, with two members absent. At a meeting Tuesday night, the commission recommended that the Township Council approve Stan Wortman's plan for a building to handle large laundry equipment. Wortman proposes to build in the Magnolia Industrial Park, Section 2. The recommendation was contingent, however, on Wortman receiving approval of the Bucks County Soil Conservation Service and the Bucks County Planning Commission.

Mayor Nutter will seek to reassert the preeminence of the Planning Commission as the shepherd of growth and development in Philadelphia this evening in what aides are billing as a major address. "I'm here tonight to say as emphatically as I can that I want the Planning Commission to resume its leadership role in shaping our vision of the future and managing the development of our city," Nutter is expected to say tomorrow at the Academy of Natural Sciences, according to an early draft of his speech.

In the hope of spurring economic development in disparate parts of Montgomery County, commissioners approved a $2 million loan Thursday for a Norristown business center and a $3 million grant for enhancements to conservationist John James Audubon's Lower Providence Township house. The loan to a Norristown developer for renovations to the sagging Logan Square shopping center followed a $1.9 million county grant awarded in September to USM, a janitorial-services company moving its North American headquarters into the complex.

WHILE THE CITY is trying to spur development, City Council last week made a major change to the 5-month-old zoning code that critics say could significantly slow building projects throughout the city. What Council did was override Mayor Nutter's veto Thursday of a bill sponsored by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell that requires community organizations and zoning applicants to provide notice to each resident within one block of a project, as well as adjacent blocks. The change also allows for multiple mandatory meetings with these "registered community groups," or RCOs, instead of just one. In addition, it relaxes the requirements necessary for a group to be considered an RCO and expands the civic design-review committee - created to weigh in on major development projects - to include a designee by a Council member, and a seat for an additional RCO member.

Pennsylvania lawmakers who want to stop the Delaware River Port Authority from lavishly spending toll revenues on dubious economic-development projects have the right intention. But it's too late to do anything about money already spent, and their bill's fate is so murky it may not be worth pursuing. Over the last decade, the DRPA has shelled out $375 million for development projects that include local sports stadiums, museums, concert venues, and, most recently, a memorial to the President's House near Independence Hall.

ON CITY COUNCIL'S first day in session of the new year, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell successfully led a charge to override Mayor Nutter's veto of a controversial bill that amends the five-month-old zoning code to give more power to the neighbors of development projects. The bill requires registered community organizations (RCO) and zoning applicants to provide notice to each neighbor within one block of a project and allows for multiple mandatory meetings with RCOs instead of just one. It also expands the civic design-review committee that was established to weigh in on major development projects to include a Council member.

Philadelphia has become two dramatically different cities - a flourishing downtown with impressive buildings and luxury homes and the wealthy residential areas of Chestnut Hill and the Far Northeast, juxtaposed with the abandonment and decay in our oldest neighborhoods. The contrast between the two cities can be traced to public and private decisions to invest Philadelphia resources disproportionately in center city. Providing subsidies and resources to downtown development in hope that they will "trickle down" to the neighborhoods is not working.

Matthew B. Weinstein, 75, a developer of major apartment complexes in Philadelphia and the Main Line suburbs who was heavily involved in civic organizations, died yesterday at his Merion Station home. Mr. Weinstein began his development career in 1944 when he purchased two Haverford apartment buildings, Haverford Villa and Concord Arms. During the next four decades, he went from managing those buildings to becoming the developer of several thousand apartment units. Mr. Weinstein pursued his development projects primarily through Rosemont Construction Co., which he founded and served as president.

What's a residential developer to do in these lean times with no banks lending money and few willing new home buyers? Well, besides planning on attending Phillies playoff games Wednesday and yesterday, Wayne developer Joe Duckworth is transitioning his Arcadia Land Co. into a consulting business for commercial banks and other institutions financing development projects. The goal of Arcadia Development Services, Duckworth said, is to help lenders "minimize their losses. " That could mean, for instance, getting them to force a change in the project before the first shovelful of ground is turned.

Rejecting the prosecution's case as "an unconvincing web of circumstantial evidence," a federal judge on Friday found former New Jersey State Senator Wayne Bryant not guilty of corruption charges tied to a series of billion-dollar development projects proposed in Camden County and North Jersey. Prosecutors had argued that Bryant, a once-powerful Camden County Democrat, took bribes disguised as legal fees to do the bidding of a North Carolina developer that in 2004 had projects planned in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, on Petty's Island in Pennsauken, and in the Meadowlands.

WHILE THE CITY is trying to spur development, City Council last week made a major change to the 5-month-old zoning code that critics say could significantly slow building projects throughout the city. What Council did was override Mayor Nutter's veto Thursday of a bill sponsored by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell that requires community organizations and zoning applicants to provide notice to each resident within one block of a project, as well as adjacent blocks. The change also allows for multiple mandatory meetings with these "registered community groups," or RCOs, instead of just one. In addition, it relaxes the requirements necessary for a group to be considered an RCO and expands the civic design-review committee - created to weigh in on major development projects - to include a designee by a Council member, and a seat for an additional RCO member.

ON CITY COUNCIL'S first day in session of the new year, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell successfully led a charge to override Mayor Nutter's veto of a controversial bill that amends the five-month-old zoning code to give more power to the neighbors of development projects. The bill requires registered community organizations (RCO) and zoning applicants to provide notice to each neighbor within one block of a project and allows for multiple mandatory meetings with RCOs instead of just one. It also expands the civic design-review committee that was established to weigh in on major development projects to include a Council member.

John Grady doesn't have a dog. The president of Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. has resisted getting one, despite considerable begging from his three young children. That's not to say he doesn't see value in canines. Quite the opposite. That's why PIDC recently guaranteed 50 percent of the $125,000 loan and line of credit that Portia Palko secured from Valley Green Bank to move her dog-day-care business, Central Bark, to a larger facility in Grays Ferry in July. Not that Palko - a Central Bark franchisee since 2007, who, as a nearly lifelong city resident, was well aware of PIDC - would even have thought to expect help from the 54-year-old economic-development nonprofit associated with some of Philadelphia's most ambitious building projects.

Rejecting the prosecution's case as "an unconvincing web of circumstantial evidence," a federal judge on Friday found former New Jersey State Sen. Wayne Bryant not guilty of corruption charges tied to a series of billion-dollar development projects proposed in Camden County and North Jersey. Prosecutors had argued that Bryant, a once-powerful Camden County Democrat, took bribes disguised as legal fees to do the bidding of a North Carolina developer that in 2004 had projects planned in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, on Petty's Island in Pennsauken, and in the Meadowlands.

Rejecting the prosecution's case as "an unconvincing web of circumstantial evidence," a federal judge on Friday found former New Jersey State Senator Wayne Bryant not guilty of corruption charges tied to a series of billion-dollar development projects proposed in Camden County and North Jersey. Prosecutors had argued that Bryant, a once-powerful Camden County Democrat, took bribes disguised as legal fees to do the bidding of a North Carolina developer that in 2004 had projects planned in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, on Petty's Island in Pennsauken, and in the Meadowlands.

A federal judge in Trenton has begun weighing the fate of former State Sen. Wayne Bryant, who is already serving a four-year sentence for a corruption conviction and who could end up with additional jail time if convicted in the case pending against him. Testimony in the nonjury trial before Judge Freda L. Wolfson ended in February, but the judge gave the prosecution and defense a May 8 deadline to file legal briefs. The documents, more than 100 pages from the prosecution and 58 pages from the defense, summarize and expand on arguments and evidence introduced during the three-week trial.

Saying it marked the end of an expensive era, the board of the Delaware River Port Authority on Wednesday spent $20 million of its remaining economic-development funds for non-transportation projects. The board's two unappointed members, Pennsylvania's auditor general and treasurer, opposed the spending, arguing that the money should have gone for transportation projects or toward reducing the agency's $1.4 billion debt. The vote on the last $29.9 million of the DRPA's controversial economic-development funds sent about $10 million back to the agency for future capital projects and $19.7 million to such projects as local food banks, a new cancer center in Camden, student housing for Rutgers-Camden, and Cooper River rowing facilities.

Heads bowed, worn sacks of seeds slung across their shoulders, the farmers of San Mateo Ozolco toil to exhaustion, planting and harvesting corn by hand near an active volcano 50 miles from Mexico City. Barely eking out $7 a day, they feel the pull of jobs in America, where minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The incentive to cross the border, legally or otherwise, is almost irresistible, even though the United States is hundreds of miles away. In the last decade, an estimated 2,500 of San Mateo's 4,500 residents have moved to the Philadelphia region to find work, according to a Latino advocacy group.

When real estate started waning a few years ago, developer Kelly DeFeo started collecting restaurant ideas to turn into a sports bar. The result is Chubby Balboa's Sports Bar & Grill , which just opened next to the Acme in Concordville Town Center (Routes 1 and 322, Glen Mills, 610-558-4130). As the name implies, the interior is aiming for a knockout, with arches and columns reminiscent of a casino's interpretation of ancient Rome, beneath a black, industrial ceiling. About four dozen TVs dot the interior.