Mark your calendars. You won’t want to miss the week of February 23rd. It’s going to be a monumental one for the future of Philly’s libraries. That’s when the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania will hear oral arguments surrounding the Nutter administration’s appeal of last month’s Common Pleas court ruling, which mandates Philadelphia to keep open 11 libraries that the [...]

By the end of the month, it’s likely Philadelphia’s 54 libraries will be open three or four days a week according to library officials, who are still tweaking the numbers. The Central branch, however, will remain open seven days a week because Pennsylvania’s state library law mandates the city keep open its main branch at least 65 hours a week. If [...]

Just a quick link to start things off today.  I missed this story when it came out earlier in December.   Apparently, Mayor Nutter, in a grand gesture of regional cooperation, pledged not to actively woo businesses to relocate jobs from the suburbs to Philadelphia:
“It’s bad business and even worse politics,” said Nutter, who was the [...]

The fact that Unisys has shelved its idea to move the corporate headquarters from Blue Bell to Philadelphia is not surprising given recent news about the company’s financial troubles.  And frankly, it’s not even that disappointing.
Though the original plan to move 225 high paying jobs to Center City was slightly more impressive than other job [...]

Greater, Greater Washington’s Cavan Wilk posted a fantastic piece about the possible end of shopping malls that had me wondering what the changing economics of these staples of suburbia could mean for this region.  Wilk’s points to a recent piece in Slate that is among the first from outside of the traditional “urbanist” movement - [...]

Remember Unisys?  They most recently made news when their plans to relocate their corporate headquarters to Two Liberty Place were thwarted by a newly invigorated Zoning Board of Adjustment who denied them the permission to affix a giant lighted sign to side of Philadelphia’s third tallest building.
The company is back in the news today with [...]

Blogging will be light today since I really have to get to some video editing but I’ll open today’s blogging with this fun post from Governing.com’s blog, The 13th Floor:
Here’s the darkest headline I can remember seeing on a press release:
Cities Officials Hold the Worst Outlook in the Nation’s Direction in Nearly 20 Years

And here is [...]

A neighborhood with overgrown and trash-covered vacant lots is a perennial issue often facing poor neighborhoods. So how does a community nip this sort of problem in the bud? In Philadelphia, one of the answers has been the municipally-funded Community LandCare (CLC) program. But it’s now at risk of being wiped out as part of Mayor Michael Nutter’s $108 million budget cut plan.
The Community [...]

Our nation’s economy is in the toilet. Philadelphia’s libraries and swimming pools are closing. We get it. Times are tough. On the personal level, folks are saving and spending less. Goodness knows, the bag lunch from home is gaining popularity. But once in a while, wouldn’t it be nice to treat yourself to a Philly Cutback Sandwich? You might be wondering, what’s that? [...]

Mayor Nutter defends 10-year property tax abatement program:
I’m way behind on my reading of the Sunday Inquirer, but I finally got around to the piece by Patrick Kerkstra that Alan says was so prominently discussed at last night’s town hall meeting.  Clearly there are some vast differences of opinion between the backers and opponents of [...]