On August 23, A lovely summer day, Megan Atwood, Beth Walker, and Kathy Sykes attended a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for Centennial Village, developed by Community Ventures. The property is in West Parkside just across from the Mann Music Center. This building, and indeed the surrounding neighborhood, were developed by Community Ventures in partnership with the Parkside Association of Philadelphia, the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, PNC Bank, the Philadelphia Housing Authority, and other supporters and funders.
This collaboration reflects a 12 years long commitment by Community Ventures (CV) and its neighborhood and political partners to build this lovely new 4 story apartment building to provide 30 units of affordable housing for seniors and individuals with mobility issues. In addition to this primary building, there are new houses and apartments on adjacent streets for a total of 51 units of mixed-use development and new commercial space.
We were happy to be there and enjoyed seeing the fruits of the labors of this partnership. It is clear from the speakers that there was much work that had gone into getting to this point. Lessons learned include it truly takes a village to create a village. You need all partners to be willing to work through issues and make compromises to keep going. The president of the Parkside Civic Association has been involved in all phases of this development dating back to the early stages before the actual project got underway. Mayor Kenney was on hand to celebrate and cut the ribbon along with CV and Parkside Association president and members, as well as local, state and federal politicians.
A tour of the new building followed the ribbon cutting. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we share with you a few of the pictures we took.
