June 14, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local News

Summer changes in store for Avenue block
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

If you are strolling along the 8500 block of Germantown Avenue, don’t be surprised if you find that some of the shops you’re passing are unfamiliar.

LUPZ chooses new co-chair, discusses Citibank
by KRISTIN PAZULSKI

At the Land Use Planning and Zoning committee meeting last Thursday, June 7, the only official business was the recommendation of a new co-chair, though members discussed the designs of the new Citibank branch and LUPZ’s involvement with Chestnut Hill Hospital’s master planning.

Singer/songwriter Phil Roy and El Dinero set for Pastorius Park

Musician Phil Roy

Acclaimed songwriter and Philadelphia native Phil Roy brings his self-described “simple, truthful, heartfelt” music to Chestnut Hill’s Pastorius Park summer concert series on Wednesday, June 20.

Roy, whose parents operated a shoe store at 16th and Columbia, grew up enveloped by the Philadelphia soul sounds of the ’60s and ‘70s. He began playing guitar as a teenager and performed in two moderately successful bands before landing as a staff writer for a music publishing company in Los Angeles, where he wrote songs featured on albums by Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville and Widespread Panic, among many others.

Tired of the music-publishing grind, Roy broke free and took a chance on recording his self-produced grouchyfriendly CD in 2000. This was followed, in 2003, by Issues+Options. Roy’s music has received notice from artists like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, and listeners of local radio station WXPN recently voted Roy’s “Melt” one of the “885 greatest songs of all time.” In 2006 he released The Great Longing.

Younger Katz worked for Nutter campaign
by JAMES KEOUGH

Ben Katz first appeared on the radar under the wing of his father’s political career, in which he tried three times for mayor of Philadelphia and once for the governor of Pennsylvania

Mt. Airy USA begins improvement planning

Pictured during a recent Mt. Airy USA Streetscape Committee Steering Committee meeting, ready to embark on a site tour around the Avenue are: Neil Dessai of Brown & Keener Bressi; Jennifer Barr of the City Planning Commission; Julie Bush of landscape architecture firm, Lager Raabe Skafte; Kurt Raymond, a neighborhood resident and architect; Carolyn Johnson, a neighborhood resident; Carolene Wood, a neighborhood resident and commercial property owner; Brenda Foster of Au Revoir Travel; and David Fellner, owner of the Sedgwick Cultural Center and Video Library and a neighborhood resident.

Mt. Airy USA is getting hands-on with its efforts to improve transportation, shopping and landscaping along Germantown Avenue.

Brown & Keener Bressi, an urban design and planning firm based in Center City, is in the process of developing the placemaking and Streetscape Improvement Plan for Mt. Airy USA. Brown & Keener Bressi were chosen in March from eight other firms because they are “hands-on,” said Elizabeth Moselle, program associate for Mt. Airy USA’s Avenue project and manager of the improvement plan.

“They had a really innovative approach to getting ideas,” she said, which involved going into the neighborhood to talk to locals and watch how certain parts of the town are used. “They want to represent what people want to see because it’s their neighborhood.”

Plus, she said, they have experience working on other successful downtowns, such as Center City and East Falls.