From where I sit, this young year looks hazy.
I suppose that it’s always tough to forecast the future, at least this side of Madam Marie (a bone tossed to you Springsteen fans).
But, in Harrisburg, 2023 seems hazier than usual, with several major matters in flux. These are important issues that I expect will develop over the course of the year, so that we should, I hope, have greater clarity come year-end.
First of all, I expect that we’ll have a better understanding of the commonwealth’s back-to-the-office plan. As we all know, “normal” life got tossed to the winds with the onset of the pandemic and, three years later, still hasn’t settled completely.
For Harrisburg, that’s meant two opposing things.
On the positive side, some people have migrated in, often choosing the city as a lower-cost option for urban living for their new work-from-home lifestyles. On the flip side, the same trend has bitten the city hard, as the state’s small army of office workers has largely toiled from home, which, more often than not, has meant staying in the suburbs.
Former Gov. Tom Wolf left this important issue hanging as he left office and, as of this writing, it’s remained unresolved. To me, it’s clear that state workers will never again return to five-days-a-week in the office—but just how many days, how many hours?
With this knowledge, Harrisburg can begin to plan. The ultimate answer may be acceptable or it may be awful, but, at the very least, city government, businesses, developers, residents, etc., will know where they stand and, with that knowledge, be able to forge ahead. I hold the opinion that the city’s future will look quite different from its recent past.
Building on that theme, my second “hazy” issue involves the city’s housing situation. As I write this column, both affordable and market-rate housing proposals are in flux.
On the affordable side, we await details of the city’s plan, as it has pledged to deploy a large chunk of American Rescue Plan Act money to the cause. On the market-rate side, we wait to see if any of the many proposals for new apartments and townhomes will break ground in 2023.
The former is an easy call. We almost certainly will learn the city’s vision for providing much-needed affordable housing this year. I’m eager to see how the administration and City Council approach it, as there are numerous possible paths forward.
The latter is much tougher. Building proposals, many already approved, dot the city, touching almost every neighborhood. The Reily Street corridor, in particular, is thick with them, with developers apparently understanding that there’s demand for quality rental housing in Harrisburg.
Few of these projects, though, have broken ground, mostly due to rising interest rates and escalating construction costs. Several seem to be in jeopardy of not happening at all.
In the financial world, there’s an old saying, credited to super-investor Warren Buffet, which says, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who was swimming naked.”
By year-end, I anticipate that we’ll have a much better understanding of who was prepared for tougher times and who was wearing nothing but a smile.
Lastly, by the end of 2023, I hope we’ll have a better understanding of how serious the city and the state are in addressing Harrisburg’s dangerous road system. The city’s street network was built out in the 19th century for pedestrians, horses and the occasional streetcar. It then was widened and expanded to accommodate cars and trucks, to the exclusion of other methods of mobility.
Like many cities, Harrisburg has now entered a new stage, a multimodal one.
In this phase, vehicles aren’t the only things on the city’s streets. They compete for space with pedestrians, pedal bicycles, e-bikes, scooters and however else we’ll move around for the next century or so.
We’re already witnessing a clash of modalities, as we sit (and drive and walk and ride) stuck between the old and the new.
We’re at an inflection point, where the old ways have begun to fade but the new ways haven’t been fully embraced—or even realized by some. For evidence, look no further than the shocking rate of pedestrian and bicycle accidents and fatalities on city streets.
To their credit, PennDOT and the city have taken some measures to address our changing transportation needs, such as the 2nd Street project and improvements on some state-owned roads, but there’s much more work to do.
To me, there is some low-hanging fruit: slimming down Forster, slowing down Front and fixing the rest of 2nd. And in retrospect, removing bike lanes from the State Street project seems shortsighted. In fact, we need more bike lanes, not fewer, on more roads in Harrisburg.
Eleven months from now, will I be un-hazed? Will these three issues seem any clearer to me? My bet is “yes,” though my total defogging is likely to extend far beyond 2023.
Lawrance Binda is publisher/editor of TheBurg.
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