Parade participants, including a family whose float honors a relative serving in the U.S. Marines, doff their caps for the National Anthem. (Photo by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)
by JAMES STURDIVANT As they have for the past 89 years, the bikes rolled and games were played at the Chestnut Hill Bocce Club’s Independence Day celebration at the Water Tower Recreation Center.
The day’s festivities began just after 9 a.m. with the singing of the national anthem and a reading from “Patriot Poet” Tom Woodruff, who spoke on the theme of “favorite places” and the importance of appreciating the connection between the Declaration of Independence and the freedoms we enjoy today. Woodruff dedicated the reading to a young relative who, after finishing college, volunteered for service in Iraq.
Developer, residents clash over East Mt. Airy project DeSouza Brown Inc., of Bala Cynwyd, has proposed to build a 23-unit development on a six-acre site along Cresheim Creek.
Residents are concerned about the intensity and environmental impact of the project. by MICHAEL J. MISHAK Organizers had hoped selecting a church as the venue for a discussion on a controversial housing development would ensure a sense of civility. Instead, East Mt. Airy residents sent an unequivocally clear message to developer DeSouza Brown Inc., of Bala Cynwyd, at a community meeting last week: take your plans elsewhere.
Those plans, which were formally unveiled before an audience of about 50 at Grace Epiphany Church last Thursday, would place 23 single-family homes on a six-acre site along Cresheim Creek near the intersection of Woodbrook Lane and Anderson Street.
The project requires at least four zoning variances, including ones that would release the developer from both watershed and steep-slope restrictions.
Banking on service
Slated to open this fall, Valley Green Bank is the Northwest's only community-based lending institution. Area residents are behind the effort and at the helm. by MICHAEL J. MISHAK Seeking to fill a void in the Northwest's commercial landscape, an enterprising group of area residents and business leaders have pooled their resources to establish Valley Green Bank, the region's only community-based lending institution.
Part of a growing national trend in the banking industry, Valley Green, scheduled to open this fall in Mt. Airy, is a bank by local people, for local people.
The de novo, or start-up, community bank fills a critical gap in the commercial corridor more than a decade old. In 1993, Chestnut Hill National Bank, one of the first community banks in the Delaware Valley, was sold to National Penn, solidifying a corporate banking block that has only grown in recent years.
A little peace of their hearts Peace high school, the new Northwest magnet, will welcome 150 incoming freshman in September. About 600 students had applied. by MICHAEL J. MISHAK When Philadelphia schools chief Paul Vallas opened the region's first public military academy in West Oak Lane last year, Shelly Yanoff demanded an alternative. Backed by a contingent of Northwest community groups, she suggested a peace school, and much to her surprise, he gave it the green light.
Yanoff, a Mt. Airy resident and executive director of Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth, worked feverishly to build coalitions and form partnerships. Ultimately, about a dozen groups — including the American Friends Service Committee, Arcadia University and Military Families Speak Out — rallied to the cause, forming an advisory committee to shape the school's curriculum.
Now, after months of planning, the school, tentatively dubbed Parkway Northwest High School for Peace, Justice and Conflict Resolution, will open its doors to 150 incoming freshman in September on the site of the New Covenant Campus in Mt. Airy. Part of the school district's "Small Schools Transition Project," it is one of two new magnets slated for Northwest Philadelphia.
A Celebration for the Kids