Stop The Stupidity, Norristown

When I started this blog in 2012, my thought was to point out the good things about the town to quiet naysayers, and to point out what needed work so residents could nudge their council reps towards better solutions. Instead, I found council making worse and worse decisions, and residents not showing up for council meetings and if they did contact their reps, they were being ignored. I contacted my reps about problems in my neighborhood, and was treated politely, but nothing improved. And readers of the blog even sent me their own problems, somehow expecting an out-of-work, disabled writer, composing this blog for free to solve their woes for them and getting mad at me when I couldn't. So I stopped writing the blog except for election information twice a year.

What brought me out of the woodwork this time was the sheer stupidity of what our local government has become. And in this day and age of stupidity in the US Senate and Executive Branch and in our state legislature, I've finally become sick of all of it. The final straw was a notice I saw this morning that our Council had approved $100,000 to be spent on a stormwater study, including a $20,000 use of a helicopter. And it sounds like they'll be slapping us taxpayers with stormwater fees of some sort in the future.

To be truthful, I was actually thinking of writing a blog the last week about trees, about big old growth trees being cut down all over town and how that's bad for Norristown for a whole number of reasons. (Stay with me, it ties in.) In the last few years, I've counted about 3 dozen large trees taken down in the North End alone and I've seen cleared lots in other parts of town.

Back in 2012, we had a Shade Tree Commission that regularly encouraged property owners to plant trees on their properties because a) nice trees could raise property values and b) trees provide shade. With increasing heat waves every summer the last 3 years, we desperately need shade to counteract the reflected heat from all the paving and brick houses in town. There used to be incentives to plant trees. There were classes on how to do it. Whatever happened to that commission?

Besides shade, trees clean our air by absorbing carbon dioxide, and they sequester that carbon while they're alive so that it won't contribute to global warming (which gives us the heat waves). The 3 dozen trees I've seen cut down would have absorbed about a TON of carbon dioxide EVERY YEAR.

But one of the most important gifts trees give us is that their roots absorb water. I have two small trees in my side yard. In warm months when I use a rain barrel for my garden, I run the overflow hose around those trees. The roots can absorb runoff from storms of as much as 2 inches or more of rain, depending how fast it comes down. Large trees like those I've seen cut down, would absorb much more stormwater.

In the last 10 years, developers like Sarah Peck have used Norristown taxpayer funding to cut down trees and pave over large lots. She has done her darnedest to get around laws requiring the replanting of trees. At Arbor Mews she removed some very large, very old trees and put a scattering of tall bushes in their place that barely absorb any water. She at least supposedly put in an underground cistern there. At Arbor Knoll, farther up Dekalb St, Norristown had to update the stormwater drains (at taxpayer expense) to handle the added runoff because of the paving. I'm on record as the one who went to Zoning and Council meetings and spoke about how Ms. Peck's plans for these 2 developments would bring on stormwater runoff problems.

(Fun fact:  The word "arbor" originally meant a shady garden alcove where trees form a roof. "Arbor" Day is a day set aside for celebrating and planting trees. Ms. Peck's use of the word Arbor in all her development names is a bad joke.)

I'm not saying there aren't reasons to cut down some trees. Some die after a long life, some fall in storms, and some have been destroyed by spotted lantern flies (ALL invasive trees-of-heaven should be cut down because of that).  PennDOT's been cutting down all the old growth trees along Markley to widen the street, which I guess can't be avoided. But others seem to be coming down simply because property owners don't want them (especially landlords).

Here we are, after years of letting developers cut down old growth trees, after years of no incentives for planting trees to beautify the town, NOW Norristown Council decides we might have a stormwater problem.


So here's a solution. Take a fraction of that $100,000 and instead, replant native trees in public areas all over town, especially where stormwater collects. Require anyone who's let a building lot sit vacant for more than a year to plant native trees on it. Give property owners incentives to plant small trees, at least, on their properties, and maybe also incentives for the planting of rain gardens (that is, smaller plants and native grasses that absorb water well, planted in places where runoff is currently eroding soil). We don't need more concrete infrastructure to solve the problem when a natural solution would work better (and cheaper) and make the town so much prettier.

I'm tired of taxpayers always having to bail out the stupidity and short-sightedness of Council's decisions. It's happened over and over in the 60+ years I've lived in this town. But at least, paying for trees should help solve stormwater problems for many years to come, and trees benefit every resident in other ways. Plus they're good for the planet, too. Win, win, win.

Or will it be more stupidity, Council?

A Lesson from Scheidt Beer

When we talk about historic preservation in Norristown, we usually focus on what we've lost: 4 of our 5 movie theaters, City Hall, both Ys, the Valley Forge Hotel, First Baptist Church, the Wonder Bread building, etc. The Norris Theater in particular has become a rallying cry, as well it should be, since the loss of it to a McDonalds--and the consequent purchase of the Norris's front facade by the foremost museum of Art Deco in the US--embodies the short-sightedness of our leaders in decades past.

Today, though, I want to remind everyone about our historic preservation victories, and the pride they still bring to Norristown. No one can deny that the Centre Theater is now a beautiful building. Back in the 1980s, it wasn't. The brickwork was dark and sooty, the masonry and stucco were dingy gray. The decorative wood trim was rotting. The mansard roof AND the dormer windows were all tar-papered over. And at street level, well, it wasn't a building you'd ever want to enter. The place was a poster child for blight. But thanks to the Doyles and all the other groups who got involved, it was brought back from the dead.

The Masonic Building on West Main (now Gaudenzia headquarters) was also dingy and broken down. Now it's stunning with its white stucco and red trim. The Cigar Factory, despite its management problems over the years, was an amazing transformation from what was there. The brickwork was so dark, it almost looked black. Its restoration, in a spot so obvious to people coming into town on Markley, was a huge improvement to Norristown's look, and at the time, to our attitude about our look. Other successes include the old grist mill on Marshall and the rolling mills building on East Main. I had the pleasure of seeing the inside of that building last month and it's simply amazing. You can see all the mill's inner workings, wonderfully restored, yet the space is now a classy-looking office building.

But the most ambitious and amazing restoration in town is one few of us remember, simply because, unless you have state taxes problems, you probably have had no reason see the result of the restoration, let alone go inside. I'm talking about the old Adam Scheidt Brewery, now known as the Stony Creek Office Center

The project restored six buildings in all. Since they're not on a street, but along Stony Creek between Marshall and Elm, you can't see all the buildings. As you're driving up Marshall, you can see the first structure, with its rounded corner entrance and cone-like cupola (photo above). This was one of the original buildings, dating from 1866. Other original buildings in the complex are a 3-story octoganal tower which served as the brewery's lab, and triangle-shaped admin offices. The PA Revenue offices are now in the 8-story Art Deco style office building, built in the 1920s, with its spectacular 3-story cylinder of glass bricks. That's the one you can see when you're stuck in traffic on Markley.

The complex had been abandoned in 1974, and restoration wasn't begun until 1984, so it had been vacant for a decade. Salvagers and vandals had knocked large holes in some of the walls to remove the copper vats. Many of the glass bricks were broken, and as the president of the rehab company said, "Every pigeon in Norristown was living in those buildings." Repurposing wasn't easy--removing the grain bins left huge holes in the floors. And in the middle of the project, President Reagan eliminated tax credits for the historic preservation.

But Windon Capital and the contractor, Driscoll, refused to give up. They not only finished the restoration, but the project was highly regarded by everyone in the industry and was written up in trade journals. Historic Preservation Magazine did a big feature article on it in 1987.

I've been to the tax offices--the inside of the structure is as well done as the outside, especially the staircase behind those glass bricks. If you get a chance, take a drive though the complex for a look at the buildings (enter off of Marshall, right across from the old mill).

Now, remember, the Scheidt Brewery had been vacant for 10 years and had huge holes in its walls. Montgomery Hospital has only been empty a little over a year, the 1930s structure is intact, and is 2 stories shorter than the tallest building of the Stony Creek complex. Changing a brewery to office space is much more difficult than making apartments out of hospital office, testing and therapy space (the patient rooms were in a newer wing).

Montgomery Hospital CAN be restored, and fairly easily compared to our past rehab projects. We shouldn't let Einstein and Elon lie to us that the building can't be saved. From our past experience in this town, we know better.