Guess who's back, dadda da da, back again....

Somewhere, at some time, someone is going to learn a lesson about trying to dump projects on the East Falls/Allegheney West/Germantown border, without consulting the Multi-Community Alliance.

From Today's Daily News:

Street wants to move the Youth Study Center to temporary digs at the old state-owned Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute on Henry Avenue. He's got Rendell's pledge to underwrite close to half the cost of rehabbing the old building.

But it now looks like Goliath is about to meet David in the form of the Multi-Community Alliance, representing a coalition of neighborhood groups.

The city needs to get a use certificate from the Zoning Board of Adjustment because the EPPI site isn't zoned for a youth-detention center.

The alliance is gearing up for a major confrontation before the Zoning Board, which the hard-headed leadership concedes may be a losing proposition. But if the groups lose, they'll appeal to Common Pleas Court and up the line.

"We think our best shot is going to be before the Commonwealth Court," said alliance chairman Ralph Wynder, a ward leader who got into a verbal dustup with Street on the day the mayor announced the Youth Study Center move in early September.

....

Managing Director Loree Jones said if the city prevails before the Zoning Board, a legal challenge from the community groups "would stall the process."

And that could become an issue because the city is supposed to turn over the current Youth Study Center site at the Parkway and 21st by the end of May for the Barnes Foundation museum.

I don't know this for a fact, but, if the City had actually talked to neighbors around the property, rather than the secrecy driven-last second stuff, they may have succeeded. Instead, they only pissed people off. And, that just isn't a smart thing to do.

That area of the City is about to get a really cool, really nice gym courtesy of the Salvation Army, that is going to have childcare for first and second shift workers, a small urban farm, a pool, and free memberships for those in the neighborhood who cannot afford it. (And, no one will actually know who is paying and who isn't.) Now, they hopefully will gt a much needed supermarket, as well. In other words- good, sustainable development, for an area of the city that ranges from working class to middle class to wealthy, all within about a mile.