Money to burn?

I’m not a businessman.

Maybe if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone to grad school to earn an MBA.  Instead I went the graduate journalism route and learned everything there is to know about print media. I’m about as useful now as a door-to-door ice salesman. So you can take my opinion with those qualifications.

Still, I don’t think you need to know an awful lot about business to question the wisdom of the business leaders who seem eager to hire retail consultant Midge McCauley for the sum of $115,000. And it’s not just business leaders. The board of the Chestnut Hill Community Association approved a $10,000 “partnership” contribution to be put toward McCauley’s fee. And trust me, $10,000 is a lot for this organization, where money like that does not come easy.

Now I don’t think the Chestnut Hill Business Association, the Business Improvement District and other institutions are wrong to take this path. It’s clear that Germantown Avenue could use some help. The recommendation of a committee of CHBA and CHCA members to hire a main street manager was one that I supported in this space not long ago.

That plan originally called for applying for and securing a $350,000 loan from the Department of Community and Economic Development, which oversees the Main Street program (Main Street programs funded by the same grant are up and running in Roxborough, Ambler, Cheltenham and many other nearby communities). That grant would be used to pay for staff and façade improvements over a 5-year period. At $115,000, McCauley is asking for nearly one third of what the state would supply for five years. Just what would Chestnut Hill get for that money?

McCauley is a well-known and successful figure in the retail-consulting world. Hiring her would be hiring one of the best. But even then, the best is no guarantee of success. In nearby Ardmore, McCauley was retained for several years and for more than $400,000 in taxpayer money. Ardmore has not seen a turn around, and residents there are not thrilled with the return on their investment.

To be clear, Ardmore’s struggles are not McCauley’s fault. They only illustrate that even a talented retail consultant with outstanding credentials cannot move a retail district by herself. In hiring her, the Hill would get great advice and outstanding help in trying to recruit business to the Hill that would help improve the Avenue. But without support from all the major landlords, McCauley wouldn’t be able to do much.

Maybe Hillers think that advice is worth it. But it seems to me the Hill has already spent a lot of money on studies – even the Cope Linder Streetscape Survey of 2005 addressed business vacancies – and it has many residents who work for the best architecture and planning firms in the city.

I’m not suggesting that the Hill’s problems can best be addressed by volunteers – someone needs to be accountable for recruiting businesses – but there are many local residents well-equipped to create a plan and screen candidates for a main street manager. In Montgomery County, these professionals typically earn something in the range of $50,000 a year.

Hiring McCauley would not be a bad thing. And it just might be the best idea. I just hope that those involved carefully consider spending so much and considers the fact that McCauley’s fee would not be a one-time payment to transform the Avenue. It will take much more money and a lot more work and cooperation.

Pete Mazzaccaro

Commentary: Local erred in IDD story
by James Pope
President, Northwest-
Wissahickon Conservancy

A lot of very good reporting by Jennifer Katz was undone by the headline in the Local that Chestnut Hill College would “withdraw” their application for an IDD [“College withdraws BID for IDD status,” Nov. 11]. In fact as the article correctly stated in the text, the college has not withdrawn their application, they have merely postponed it and they are still proceeding to present their plan for an IDD to the Philadelphia City Planning Commission on November 17. This means that the college is prepared to go forward on that scheme despite the other negative facts about the IDD zoning that were described at the hearing and presented in your article:

• The IDD regulations provide no future framework for community discussion.

• The IDD encourages massive development that is not consistent with the scale or character of Chestnut Hill.

• The IDD offers a framework to undo the Wissahickon Watershed Ordinance by encouraging over-development of the site, building on the steep slopes and further damaging the Wissahickon watershed.

• The IDD stays with the property whether the college controls it or not so that the college could sell to a developer for any other use.

In future articles the reporter might pursue other questions raised in the LUPZ hearing such as whether garages and basements are included in the IDD development limits. In fact, as per the online city code, structured parking does not count against site limits — so the college did not include their nearly 100,000 square-foot garage in their building totals. And future articles should note that the college engineers did not add the garage stories to the buildings atop the garage to give the true heights of buildings along the ridge. Further, when the reporter examines the implications of the engineering drawings that have finally been posted, it will be clear that the proposed plan will in fact result in cutting at least 80 percent of the trees on the hillside toward Germantown Avenue, resulting in a devastating change to a premier environment recently recognized by the Audubon Society as an “Important Bird Area,” one of four in Southeast Pennsylvania. If the IDD happens and a premier entrance to Chestnut Hill is destroyed, what will this say about our community?

The Local erred in giving the college president a forum without vetting its content or offering the opposition to the college plans an opportunity to respond. Contrary to President Vale’s remarks, the majority of college neighbors did not attend the college meeting on Nov. 3 because most were not invited and others did not attend because the college had refused to make its engineering plans available so as to support a fact-based discussion about issues. If the Local is to preserve its role in the community it must be a balanced presenter of information.

The college publicly promised to  provide the community with their traffic study by Orth Rodgers. Despite its representation in hearings, CHC has failed to provide this report. How can we as a community engage CHC in an intelligent, good faith dialogue when they will not release critical information? It is patently unfair to ask the community to respond to a still secret document. CHC must meet its obligations and commitments and immediately provide this critical information as previously promised. As CHC knows, representatives of various stakeholder groups in the community are intending to help shape an appropriate planning process with the college in early January. If this is the model of the college’s cooperation, this will be very difficult.

Finally, all of Chestnut Hill will be affected by the traffic, the environmental devastation, the unchecked development that is the college’s current proposal. Community Association president Walter Sullivan should be congratulated for stepping in to prevent a prolonged battle by rejecting the IDD which is antithetical to all that Chestnut Hill stands for and pushing all groups toward an effective community development agreement.

The Battle of “Sortitout” on the Western Front of a weak mind
by HUGH GILMORE

As a bookseller I’ve long been fond of the adage that you can tell a lot about a person by the company he or she keeps. The book company, that is.

What could be more expressive of our likes and dislikes than the books that line our personal library walls? What could tell us more about how a man spent his leisure hours?

Whenever I buy a big collection of books, I am easily drawn into the question of: What was this person like? After all, books are rather personal possessions and they say much about our tastes.  

And so, with great anticipation I began going through a very large collection of books I acquired from an estate last week. The former owner of this library had died in a retirement home and I’d been called to handle all the books the family did not want.

The situation was somewhat unusual in that I was not called in until the family had gone through the library. Then the books were sent to a loading dock where I’d pick them up. All very simple, but I didn’t meet any family members and could not, therefore, ask them questions about the recently departed “friend of the book.”

Indeed, there were more books than I could handle in one packing of the Bookmobile (a Nissan Quest minivan) and several trips were required to get them all back to my working space. There were about 70 boxes, about 1,500 books. I needed to sort them and make some decisions about finding new homes for them.

On a job like this I use my carport, to avoid having to carry them all and in and out of my workspace. Using the carport means having to work fast, to stay ahead of the weather. Pages and dust jackets curl even in high humidity. I set aside all other priorities and went to work.

The first box I opened contained books about World War I. Good books too. Published since 1970, illustrated, in near-perfect condition. World War I Trench Warfare is one of my reading hobbies, so I spent some time considering whether to put quite a number of them next to my reading table. Most of the books focused on a specific battle, like the Somme. In fact, there were fifteen books on that subject in one box. Who was this man? Was he a U.S. Armed Forces veteran?

The next box was also about World War I. Again, the Western Theater of the war, again very specific battles: Ypres, Passchendaele, Flanders. Not much on the famous air battles. Nothing on the Lafayette Escadrille. No, the man who owned this library was interested in what happened down in the mud, I guessed. Had he been a foot soldier in this war?

But, wait, there are very few World War I veterans left. Most are over a hundred years old. This man must have been in World War II, I guessed, and he must have fought over much of the same ground and wanted to know what had happened before he came along and fought similar battles on similar terrain. Yes, that must be the case, confirmed by my opening six boxes in a row of books about the Second World War, again mostly ground battles.

My guesses deepened as box after box of military history books emerged. Occasionally a box contained books about the American Civil War, or the Korean War, then several boxes about Vietnam.

The collection wasn’t entirely high-adrenalin, specific-battle military history, though. There was some fiction, perhaps three boxes all together. But again, it was either the rough stuff — Michael Connelly tough thrillers — or exciting espionage thrillers and mysteries — Tom Clancy, Dean Baldacci, Alan Furst, Stephen Coonts, Len Deighton, and others along those lines.

I was starting to think that maybe this man had been so stimulated by the war, he’d never afterward been able to relax and enjoy anything other than high-adrenalin books. What must that have been like? What horrible sights must he have seen?

There were memoirs too, but they were also military-oriented: Omar Bradley, Marshall Foch, Admiral David Beatty, and even Robert Graves. I too read first-person accounts of specific occupations or assignments, so I set aside some of the more engaging memoirs — those written by snipers, say, or helicopter pilots, or prisoners of war. But, who was this guy?

After looking at more than a thousand of his books I was intrigued. My best guess, my working hypothesis, given his age (I guessed he was in his 80s), was that he served in the Second World War, the Italian Campaign, right up to the Battle of the Bulge. I had no proof, other than my guessing from the patterns of his books.

And then (This shows what happens if you pursue your pet theory hard enough), in the very last box, of the second vanload of books, I found what I’d been looking for: the Rosetta stone that opened up the riddle of this man’s life and collection. I found a book that told the tale: “History of the 363d Infantry Regiment,” by Captain Ralph E. Strootman.

Vindicated. I knew he was a foot soldier. Maybe an officer, but nonetheless, an infantryman. This 363d Infantry Regiment fought in Rome, the Apennines, and the Po Valley Campaigns. He’d seen such horror and destruction he’d never got over it and remained fixated on the topic of war and battle all his life.

There, I thought. There’s a good subject for a column. I went to bed Saturday night with the article already outlined in my head. I needed merely to write it.

Sunday morning I arose, took several pages of notes about specific book titles in the collection (to use as illustration), and then sat down. I felt comfortable with the tack I was taking, but realized I’d forgot to look up this man’s name in the regimental history. I should learn his rank and the dates he served. After 10 minutes of searching, however, alarms were going off in my head. Why did he have this book if he wasn’t mentioned in it? Was it possible he didn’t serve in the 363d?

What’s there to do but Google? I found a recent Philadelphia Inquirer obituary.

Oh man, I’d nearly bought the farm. The man who’d built this library had died recently at the relatively young (almost too young for a World War II vet) age of 79. Yes, he’d served in the army, but in the Korean War, being stationed at the port at Inchon. By 1955 he was working as an executive for a major local manufacturer.

Another good theory shot to heck. I acquired a lot of interesting military history books as a result of my work, but I’d say I’m not one inch closer to understanding the man who built that library. So much for pet theories, eh?