This weekend marks one of Asia’s most significant holidays – the Harvest Moon – as well as Asian Americans United 13th Annual Mid-Autumn Festival, an event AAU founded to celebrate the cultural survival and community power of Philadelphia Chinatown, one of the city’s oldest immigrant neighborhoods.

Eight years ago, Mid-Autumn Festival was marked by the thousands of people who used this cherished gathering to declare their defiance of a new mayor’s proposal to establish a baseball stadium on Chinatown’s borders. At the time, it was considered a “done deal” and few expected resistance from a largely non-English speaking community with one of the poorest zip codes (at the time) in the city. No effort was made by the city to communicate with the residents of the neighborhood or to engage with the community’s plans for affordable housing, schools, parks, and gardens.

Chinatown had to fight tooth and nail to establish itself as a neighborhood with real needs and a vision for itself. Among the many arguments used against us was that Chinatown had no alternatives for the land north of Vine Street. But eight years is telling. Eight years later, Chinatown North (as it is dubbed) is a far different vision for a city’s development than the one nearly forced upon this community.

Cross Vine Street and walk the footprint of what would have been the stadium. You’ll find:

• a new annex for Chinese Christian Church, to house their growing congregation;

• the building headquarters of the Greater Philadelphia Fujianese Association, one of the fastest growing ethnicities in Philadelphia, whose business and community leadership has changed the face of the community;

• Khmer Art Gallery, which celebrates the culture and arts of Cambodia, and Liao Collection, a gallery and store of Asian arts and antiques, whose owners relocated to this location after being active participants in the battle against the proposed baseball stadium; and

• Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, an arts-based elementary charter school serving 400-some students founded by Asian Americans United and the Philadelphia Folklore Project.

Contrast this with a stadium that would have stayed empty two-thirds of the year, and offered this community little of the kind of “progress” it desired. Is it any wonder that this community fought a baseball stadium with every bit of its breath?

So why would city and state officials think that a casino would be any less repellant? The expected announcement today of the Foxwoods casino re-site to the Gallery is shocking on a number of levels.

First, since it’s apparently been forgotten: Chinatown is a NEIGHBORHOOD. Almost a quarter of its residents are children. We have homes, places of worship, cultural centers, and schools. A casino has no business in or around residential neighborhoods

Second, given the stadium history, it’s shocking that city and state officials would repeat past mistakes and make an announcement without any communication with neighborhood residents. The broader Chinatown community was neither consulted with or even informed of this announcement. We applaud the move to re-site the casinos – done largely in recognition of the flawed process and community activism that sunk the waterfront sites. But it is ironic/disrespectful/outrageous to ignore these past lessons and simply re-site to a different neighborhood with the same lack of process and communication.

Third, the Gallery location reportedly may come with perks for Foxwoods – including potential input on the development of the Market East corridor, a trouble-free approval process, tax breaks or compensation to abandon the waterfront sites, and legal immunity. None of these are priorities or an appropriate use of public process or dollars in difficult economic times.

And finally, we deserve a city that sets its development priorities based on a public planning process guided by unifying principles for what a city and its people need. It doesn’t need politically-connected operators to dictate how and when a city develops and uses its precious resources and money.

Obviously we need a lot more information to know where this is going. But right now, unless we hear differently, we’re ready for a fight.

Our friends over at Old Philly Politics A.K.A. The Public Record have a pretty interesting editorial in this week's paper. The crux of it is this:

In a campaign that proved wildly popular with the citizenry, Mike Nutter proposed to spend more on police, health programs, arts programs, schools and Community College. He is opening up new offices in City Hall as fast as desks can be delivered – for business, culture, public relations, transportation, zoning and housing, to name but a few.

At the same time, Nutter is determined to keep cutting the City’s destructive business and wage taxes. Great! In the long run, a healthier business environment will pump revenues in a healthier way.

In the short term, however, it looks like we’re walking into a recession. That can wreak havoc with the Mayor’s best-laid plans. If a general economic downturn affects our region, a wide range of business and wage taxes will drop.

The real-estate market is cooling off at the same time. This will lead to lower earnings from the transfer tax.

The city cannot afford, in 2008, to turn away any longer from the immediate economic benefits of casino construction.

I think slots casinos are one of the worst ideas for economic development proposed for this city in a long time (right up there with raising Black Bottom for Penn in the 50's, "slum clearance" on South Street via the Crosstown Expressway, stadiums and convention centers, etc. And could only be made worse by adding tables games to the mix). I am very happy they have still not been built.

However, this editorial (and the front-page story of the Public Record) make it clear that pro-casino forces are getting antsy.

And positioning casino revenue as a way to fund BPT tax cuts is very, very interesting to me.

I am curious to know who is pushing this idea behind the scenes and how much traction it will gain. It's certainly an argument that could put a lot of us in a weird place, i.e. united.

Ok, this is way late, but better late than never as they say…

As you may remember, back in the glorious hey-day of YPP, there was a contest to submit ideas to Donald Trump for a profitable use of the Budd Plant after the that location was nixed as a possible casino site.

The point of the contest was to encourage alternative uses of the land that would be profitable for an investor like Trump and also suggest some sustainable economic development ideas. The contest had…er…three submissions (myself, DeWitt and Ben I believe) and via Philebrity quoting the Inquirer a month ago (yea! timeliness), it is clear that I won the Trump Apprentice Challenge Philly:

Rotem and Sojitz Corp., a Japanese company, have formed a consortium to build 120 Silverliner V regional railcars for SEPTA for $274 million. The first cars are to be delivered to SEPTA in December 2008, and all 120 will be completed by June 2010… The lease … is for 20 years, and the plant will house Rotem’s U.S. headquarters and employ about 300 workers on an 11.5-acre site on Weccacoe Avenue between Snyder and Oregon Avenues.

This is awesome. Rotem, which seems to be a subsidiary of Hyundai, is opening its first US plant in Philadelphia. They have also signed a contract to build rail cars for a commuter line in California.

My entry to the Philly Apprentice Challenge was inspired by the Kawaski plant in New York that opened in Yonkers to build trolleys for SEPTA and subway cars for NYC. They have been there ever since. So, if we play our cards right, Roten could be around for a while too providing high-wage industrial jobs to Philadelphians in an industry totally poised to expand.

In haughty blog fashion, let me quote myself from my Budd plant entry:

So, to sum up, my proposal to the Donald is that he think about investing some serious resources into what could be a growing niche market: building rail cars for rapid transit lines throughout the country and also for some international customers.

Philadelphia is well located to get its product to any part of the US. We have a history producing rail products with some portion of a trained workforce still alive and able to work. We have a city and state government that might be willing to cut a deal with the right corporation and we have a transit agency in need of new rolling stock that could award a new rapid transit construction corporation with a contract,

I certainly don’t have an MBA, but I think there’s some value in exploring this idea more and helping Philadelphia become a leader once again as a rail car manufacturer and also providing employment for many Philadelphians not to mention a real boost to our local economy.

Well, here is a real life example. Mr. Nutter and Council: make it work; keep Rotem and help them expand.

This is a post that's been a long time coming. Here is part of its history.

During the Mayoral primary campaign, YPP hosted a post by a young woman named Renata Neal. Renata grew up in Germantown, and attends West Chester University through the Core Philly Scholarship program. Her mother worked as a volunteer for Chaka Fattah's mayoral campaign, and Renata likewise voiced her support since Fattah had helped create the program.

But one of the questions that came out of that post was why a talented young Philadelphian had to leave the city of Philadelphia to get an affordable education at a public university. Philadelphia has many prestigious and wonderful colleges and universities -- but most of them are private, which makes their tuition steep, especially for first-generation college students who are unwilling to take on debt or who can't easily navigate the scholarship system. Temple, which like Penn State is a public/private commonwealth university, has undergraduate tuition twice that of West Chester. If Renata, who as a young, full-time student had been offered scholarships, had to look elsewhere -- what opportunities were there for nontraditional students, finishing their degrees part-time, or trying to return to school after a long absence?

Mark Cohen noted then that he was working with the state university system to try to bring a new four-year state university to the city of Philadelphia. I've had this in my mind ever since then. And I think it's a wonderful idea -- for college students like Renata, for students nothing like Renata, for our schools, for our neighborhoods, and for our city. What's more, it's a project that in principle all of our elected officials, from city office to Congress, can work to make happen. If you want to know more, read after the jump.

Doron Taussig and Tom Namako at the City Paper put together a cover story (as of last Thursday) that takes the form of a to-do list addressed to Mayoral presumptive Michael Nutter. Great minds think a like apparently as their article hit some of the same marks as my post about the future of Philadelphia’s economy and Michael Nutter.

One point they hit that really seems worth emphasizing is the renegotiation of city worker contracts that will occur next spring. The lines have already been drawn in that battle: the city will not have a whole lot of money to spend on all its needs and city workers don’t want to make any more concessions on health care.

The CP article describes the coming conflict efficiently:

Within five years, the city of Philadelphia will be spending more than one of every four of its tax dollars on what used to be called 'fringe benefits'" — pensions and health care. You can't afford to maintain this rate, and if you don't win some concessions, your hands will be tied by budgetary constraints for your entire first term. But the unions have said they don't intend to accept any benefit cuts — good bennies are practically the point of a public-sector job — and the last thing you want in your first half-year is a public-sector strike that shuts down the city you promised to make work better. The situation is so dire that it's been compared to what Gov. Ed Rendell faced when he first took office, when Philly was on the verge of bankruptcy...One other thing worth mentioning here: Philadelphia's public-sector employees' generous health and pension plans are not necessarily a bad thing. The City of Philadelphia is the biggest employer in the city of Philadelphia. It behooves you to keep 27,778 public employees and 33,500 retirees comfortable.

The authors go on to list a number of other important priorities including violence, addressing prison overcrowding, SEPTA, DHS, ethics, and of course tax cuts:

There are two changes to the city's tax structure that you've backed. One was reducing the business-privilege tax (BPT), a move you tried to make while on council until Street vetoed it. The other is reassessing property taxes, so that properties are assessed according to what they would sell for if a For Sale sign went up today, rather than decades ago.

Now that you're mayor, it would appear that these proposals' time has come. But two things could stand in their way: those upcoming union negotiations, and City Council. There's only so much money the city has to spend every year, and this year, the unions get a shot at it first. If they persuade you to spend more money on them, says tax advocate Brett Mandel, it might be hard to cut business taxes....Passing the BPT cuts, at least, seems doable: It takes nine votes to pass a bill, and eight of the members who voted in favor of cutting the BPT in 2004 remain on council. That means you need to persuade just one of possibly four new council members: Bill Green, Maria Quinones-Sanchez, Curtis Jones or (maybe) David Oh to back the idea. Take them to dinner, compliment their outfits, give them some money for area recreation centers — you remember how this is done, right?

I am somewhat biased in this conversation as I now dating a city worker (well, I have always been dating him, but Joel just became a Library trainee). Aside from the income he brings into our household, his job is important to me because it provides me with healthcare (yea domestic partnership!). I gotta tell you, I really don’t want him to lose his job. And I think you all know how I feel about business tax cuts.

Looking at the situation objectively though, and I guess this is what is what I was trying to articulate in my earlier post about Nutter and the economy, the contract fight is a great opportunity to dissect our collective priorities for the expenditure of city funds.

Do we as citizens and voters support job and benefit cuts for city workers if the money saved will go toward something that enhances our economy and creates a net gain of jobs? Is that really the choice that will be presented to us? What value and services do we as citizens get from city workers?

Messing with the livelihood of the largest pool of employees in the city is a BIG deal. Seems to me like we as a general populace need some tools to better understand what is going on.

As the CP article points out, and as many folks here have pointed out, Michael Nutter has a lot of problems to deal with when he becomes Mayor, and he won’t be able to address them all right away. In that context it is up to us to set expectations accordingly and begin to articulate which things are most important to deal with first, and be able to explain why.

That starts with identifying the issues that will be forced to the forefront (probably this one and and gun violence would be my guess) and all of us (on and offline) listing our priorities beyond those.