A deeper way to read this is simply that the local eds & meds industry
continues to grow, at a time when many other American industries are
suffering from international competition. So E&M is tending, over the
long run, to take up more real estate around its bases -- of which we
are one.
But the rate of increase per decade is modest, and the social outcome is
mostly beneficial. So it's hard to claim any "disruption" of the
neighborhood by the neighborhood's largest employer.
In the meantime, Ray Rorke, in this case, was faced with a standard
American, two-way, political choice. He could either seek to support an
11-story hotel at 40th & Pine, or a rotting ruin at 40th & Pine. He
chose the rotting ruin.
All this paranoid babble about the "university" assumes there is
something intrinsically suspect and harmful to inner-city neighbors
about operating a successful and growing university-based economic
complex in their neighborhood. Quite the contrary -- in 2010, it's been
a lifesaver. The '60s are over, my grizzled friends. We are not about to
organize a sit-in at Houston Hall, to tell it to go away.
Put another way: how can we help you cripple your employer's growth,
Ray, without hurting ourselves in the process?
-- Tony West
On 12/12/2010 12:38 PM, UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN wrote:
quietly, quietly, the university and its pawns (ucd, campus
apartments, co-opted community organizations) continue to redefine --
physically and narratively -- our community in terms of penn's agenda.
structures planned and developed by campus apartments are replacing
residential buildings in order to promote the interests and activities
of penn. local businesses are being replaced and facelifted by ucd and
campus apartments in return for votes for penn's upcoming bid.
meanwhile the university continues to claim that it is engaging
locally and improving the neighborhood.
the identity of the neighborhoods surrounding the pine street hotel
was -- and is -- this:
neighbors excercising their civic duty
in the name of responsible development
over a decade ago, penn made the decision to put the penn tower hotel
-- which included extended stay suites for visitors to the university
and its hospitals -- to other uses. now penn has decided it needs to
build another extended stay hi-rise hotel, not on campus property, but
in our neighborhood. how long will it be before this new hotel becomes
obsolete? and how long will it be before penn decides to build another
must-have hi-rise-for-penn elsewhere in our neighborhood?
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
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