We're pretty excited here at the corner of Broad and Oxford Streets. Over the last few weeks, we've watched the final demo of the old strip mall Progress Plaza to make way for the new and LONG promised grocery store in North Philadelphia.
Progress Plaza has a long and storied history on North Broad Street. Progress Plaza, the brain child of Leon Sullivan, a Baptist minster, civil right leader and social activist, was the nation's first black-owned and developed shopping center.
It has served as a field trip for the students involved in ITSRG's BITS program as they explore and document their community. One of the students favorite stories about Progress Plaza has been how the Leon Sullivan got the project started in the 1960s.
Sullivan suggested the development of the strip mall to address two major needs he saw in the community. First, the need for black-owned businesses and the need for jobs.
The story goes that when Sullivan approached the chairman of the bank to request a construction loan. He was told that Sullivan needed some equity and to, "think about it," and come back in two, three of four years. Sullivan then presented the chairman with $400,000 in cash raised from the community.
The shocked bank chairman quickly changed his story and told Sullivan he could work with him. The strip mall opened to the community in 1968 and has been home to a variety of stores and community services since its opening.
The story always brings a smile and a laugh to the students faces and a new appreciation for the plaza and the sometimes hidden treasures found in North Philadelphia.
Today, Progress Plaza is currently undergoing a 16-million dollar renovation. The plaza is soon to be anchored by a 42-thousand square foot Fresh Grocer. Earlier this year, it served as a campaign stop for President Obama.
Caroline Guigar
ITSRG - Temple
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The post above, tweeted around 7 pm last night, set off a tweetstorm of LOLs, sarcastic advice, witty patois, and outright disbelief both inside the venue for the McCain dinner to honor Obama on the eve of the inauguration and outside across the twitter network of @ev. Some of @ev's twitter followers joined the fun within seconds: BITS student Ken Sprull designed the logo above in the summer of 2007 as part of his experience to engage in actions to improve local environmental quality in North Philadelphia. He, along with other students in his group, strongly articulated the viewpoint that North Philadelphia environmental concerns are deeply connected to social ones. Their perspective was that those include the need to foster racial harmony and reduce violence in their daily lives. His logo and the group's sponsorship of community-building events to raise local environmental awareness captured this sentiment. Click here to view all photos I have to admit, I was rather skeptical of the entire Park(ing) Day concept in the days leading up to the event. I seemed like just another exercise in green futility: good intentions wrapped in the idealism of collegiate exuberance, distributed to like-minded individuals with extra care not to ruffle any feathers along the way. Our banishment from the greater Philadelphia Park(ing) Day participants, due to our late arrival and associated liability concerns, did not help matters any. It is always comforting to be a fool in the company of fools, rather than a lonely fool mimicking the activities of a bunch of fools across town who didn't have room on their release forms for our foolishness. During the last four years, ITSRG has sponsored the BITS Program, an after school and summer intensive program aimed at increasing information technology skills among students enrolled in local public high schools. The program has involved over 400 high school students and reached out to their families across North Philadelphia to raise community technology skills and improve preparedness of students to pursue their educational aims. We focus particularly on broadening participation among underrepresented youth in science, technology, engineering and math - so called STEM fields of study. Our students have been studying Progress Plaza throughout these past four years. They have examined it in the context of the Charles Blockson-inspired program to demarkate sites of importance in the African American experience throughout Philadelphia. They have examined it in terms of its role in supporting community health because of the dental and chiropractic community services that are located at the shopping center. They have considered the magnitude of the loss of the neighborhood’s only supermarket ten years ago and its long term impacts on community nutritional needs and food security concerns. They have anticipated, along with the whole ITSRG staff, the promise of the return of a new grocery store. They have examined the use of Progress Plaza’s ramps to provide accessibility for wheelchair users to the shops and services and thus fostered an understanding of how built environments can shape social inclusion in the local economy. They have tested the availability of wireless Internet services through Philadelphia’s free wi-fi available through Wireless Philadelphia at Progess Plaza, concluding that the wall along Broad Street is not a bad spot from which to use an Ipod Touch! Michael Rovito's up close and personal encounter with the new media has been eye opening to say the least for those of us who know him well as a friend, co-worker, researcher, scholar, and mentor to high school students. We have kidded him all week long that among the most unlikely bits of the stories surrounding his brief exchange with Sarah Palin last weekend was the fact that he was identified as a student because he was wearing a Temple University T-shirt due to having attended the Temple-Western Michigan homecoming game at the Link with his family. His reflections on the experiences of the past week are shared in a Huffington Post interview with Brett Ashley McKenzie that was published earlier today. ITSRG Twitter followers are no doubt aware that we have been tracking the rapidly growing Internet and Mainstream Media (MSM) story of our Graduate Fellow Michael Rovito's exchange with GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin at Tony Luke's in South Philadelphia this past weekend. It seems clear from the video captured of the Rovito-Palin exchange over US strategic interests in and around Pakistan that neither she nor her handlers anticipated that folks in South Philly would have the sophistication to be concerned and conversant about their campaign's foreign policy positions. Michele Masucci, Director - ITSRG In his Stuff White People Like blog, humorist and cultural critic (to use both terms rather loosely) Christian Lander sarcastically sings the praises of 'raising awareness.’ Tongue held firmly in cheek, Lander defines ‘awareness’ as ‘the process of making other people aware of problems, and then magically someone else like the government will fix it.’ ITSRG Live Blogs Webinar Event Sponsored by the ITEST LRC: The Road to ITEST Dissemination -9/24/2008 Paving Your Way with Journals and Conferences and Web 2.0 ITSRG partnered with students enrolled in Environmental Policy Issues, a course offered by the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University, to mount a Park(ing) Day space on North Broad Street last Friday. The students in the course planned and executed the event. ITSRG has supported the project dissemination through maintaining a live blog of the event on our Twitter feed last Friday and continuing to integrate feedback into the project blog found at: http://plantyourpark.tumblr.com. |
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