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Burning for You: LCSWMA has owned the once-infamous Harrisburg incinerator for almost three years. How’s it going?

September 30, 2016 | by M. Diane McCormick

LCSWMA’s James Warner and Kathryn Sandoe.

My trash that morning included food-encrusted paper plates from a family gathering, the never-read insert from a contact lens solution package, and the usual assortment of home-office detritus.

Now, just maybe, it was rolling past me in a white City of Harrisburg garbage truck, practically molecular amid the tons of trash delivered every day to the Susquehanna Resource Management Complex.

You might know this place better as the Harrisburg incinerator. It hasn’t been in the news much lately, and, yes, that’s perfectly fine with owner Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority (LCSWMA), whose officials showed me around on a recent, warm day.

Not that things are standing still there. This is a facility in flux, already the recipient of $10.6 million in upgrades and slated for $25 million more by around 2031. LCSWMA sees the plant as part of a broad strategy to make trash disposal and waste-to-energy creation a regional effort.

What They Acquired

The quasi-governmental LCSWMA has photographic proof of the distressed, dilapidated facility it acquired on Dec. 23, 2013. This 59-acre tract between S. 19^th and Cameron streets included an auto graveyard, a scrubby entrance guarded by a rusty gate, potholed roads, and lots littered with every form of trash imaginable—corrugated metal, concrete blocks, rotting wooden poles, soda bottles.

LCSWMA’s first task was site cleanup. The 180 tons of scrap collected sold for $42,000. About $1.5 million was pumped into aesthetics—a new entrance and fencing, repaved roads, landscaping. Even today, staffers cruising the site in golf carts stop to pick up every stray piece of trash.

“We care about what our neighbors think,” said CEO James D. Warner.

And, while aesthetics matter, LCSWMA also had to bring operational functionality to a facility that had suffered many botched upgrades, plus years of deferred maintenance. There was the inefficient collection system, forcing haulers to wait hours to tip their loads. Worn-out elements of the burning system weren’t replaced. The water-cooling system, essential to operations and now in the replacement rotation, demands constant repairs.

Improvements

LCSWMA’s investment touched on every square inch of the site.

For instance, the main entrance, moved to 19^th Street, now flows directly to a new scale house, with separate inbound and outbound scales.

A new, $5 million transfer building is where recyclable metals, pulled from the waste stream, are collected. It’s also where such small-haul customers as landscapers, contractors and plumbers unload their trash by hand. This step streamlined incoming traffic by keeping the slow unloaders from clogging up the line also occupied by automatically unloading trash trucks.

Overall, the plant received $3.9 million in upgrades, including three new boilers (they’re the equipment that do the actual incinerating), new fans and a $1.5 million emissions monitoring system. The new emissions monitoring system supplanted a creaky old one that symptomized many of the problems LCSWMA inherited.

“If you lose your (emissions) data, you lose your ability to prove your compliance, which means you’re automatically out of compliance,” said Warner.

How It Works

While LCSWMA is the site owner, operator Covanta—on a contract that expires in 2017 and currently negotiating a new agreement with LCSWMA—manages day-to-day functioning.

An average of 152 vehicles enter the site on weekdays. All are weighed coming in, their exit weights compared to determine the weight of the trash left behind. When exiting, municipal garbage trucks don’t have to cross the outbound scale because it’s already known how much these vehicles weigh when empty, another new streamlining procedure.

From there, garbage trucks enter the incinerator building and back up into the tipping area, high ceilinged and concrete floored. They disgorge their contents onto the floor while a worker known as the compliance officer operates a wheel loader to push the trash below an open arch.

From behind the arch, giant mechanized claws (TheBurg’s brilliant former staff reporter Paul Barker once called them “teddy pickers”) descend and grab great gobs of garbage. The crane-operated pickers drop the trash into hoppers, which feed chutes where it’s agitated and fed with combustion air for burning. The burners run 24/7, creating ash that moves through a conveyor system designed to corral both the heavy particles and the fly ash that likes to flitter off on its own.

The ash is then collected in trucks and trundled to a collection area just a couple hundred yards away on the site, waiting to be reloaded a fews days later for transport to LCSWMA’s Lancaster-area landfill.

Waste to Energy

Keep in mind that this is a waste-to-energy facility. Your garbage burns in a kind of box with a ceiling made of tubes. The fire heats water in the tubes to create steam, which is further super-heated and pumped through pipes to power turbines. Those turbines create the power that lights up the dark recesses of the Capitol complex. Any excess is sold to the regional power grid.

The Capitol complex arrangement was part of the multifaceted LCSWMA purchase deal that gave new life to a wheezing facility. LCSWMA needed revenue guarantees to justify the above-market purchase price of about $130 million. One part of the guarantee involved selling 110,000 megawatt hours of electricity a year to the state for 20 years, at about 4.3 cents per kilowatt hour.

The other part guarantees that my garbage—and yours, if you live anywhere in Dauphin County—will come to this facility until 2033. The city of Harrisburg is committed to delivering 36,800 tons a year, paying $190 for every ton tipped. Dauphin County’s commitment, at $80 a ton, is measured in revenue—$10.1 million worth of trash every year.

“We paid upfront based on how much trash they were going to generate over a fixed time,” said Warner. “They got all their money upfront in the acquisition price, and that’s why we have the obligation for a certain amount of business.”

City and county are delivering about 200,000 tons of trash a year, he said. If they deliver less, they would still pay up, but neither is falling short. In fact, keeping the facility functioning optimally requires trucking in another 100,000 tons from New Jersey.

“Power plants like to run at capacity,” he said.

The Vision

If the proverbial can kicked down the road can have a resting place, perhaps this was it, amid the old trash-strewn lots and the visible signs of deferred maintenance. Much of LCSWMA’s investment has focused on whittling down the maintenance backlog. Boilers are now much less likely to break down, reaching “record highs” in their availability to process waste, said Warner.

“The asset is doing a wonderful job at doing what it’s supposed to do,” he said.

Shockingly, this is a rather new development.

“When things would break down [before] and the trash would back up, they would just say, ‘Hey, customers, you have to go somewhere else today,’” he said. “That’s a sin of all sins in this business to tell your customers to take their business elsewhere.”

Looking ahead, LCSWMA is instilling a scheduled maintenance discipline, blended with a broader vision of regionalizing the waste-to-energy scene. Though it’s a facility on the upswing, it remains hampered by the burn system installed by a company named Barlow before it went bankrupt. The system is so nonstandard that, according to Warner, it’s the only one in use today. It produces heat value—the amount of energy recovered from each ton burned—of only 80 percent, considered below industry standard.

Changing that burn system isn’t financially feasible, but LCSWMA’s plant upgrades and regular maintenance are meant to squeeze out a few more BTUs per ton. They include a scheduled turbine cleanup next year and replacing the facility’s cooling tower, now an assembly of six huge drums, with a system capable of cooling more water and helping the whole plant run more efficiently.

Another 2017 upgrade will replace the clunky, two-step ash collection and transport system—“the armpit of this facility,” Warner called it—with a process putting ash directly into trucks for hauling to Lancaster.

Waste-to-energy systems such as this plant constitute one of three options for managing our waste stream, he said. We can landfill it, recycle it, or burn it. Waste-to-energy opponents, claiming that municipal waste is non-renewable and derived from finite resources, call for more recycling. In Lancaster County, LCSWMA is both the recycling and waste disposal authority, and while it “works hard to increase recycling rates, there’s always enough waste to process,” he said.

“We process that post-recycling waste, we make renewable energy, and we take that ash and use it in lieu of dirt at our landfill to cover waste that couldn’t be processed,” he said.

Without burning, LCSWMA’s Lancaster landfill, established in 1989, would have been full in about 11 years, instead of the 30 now projected.

“Because we burn the trash and reduce the waste, we got 20 more years out of our landfill, and we generated millions and millions of kilowatt hours of renewable electricity,” said Warner.

A Neighbor

Acquiring the Harrisburg facility brought a regionalized face to the Lancaster-based LCSWMA, whose facilities include a waste-to-energy facility in Bainbridge, Conoy Township. It also added operational redundancies that expand waste-handling options. When there’s a problem or scheduled outage at one LCSWMA plant, waste can be transferred to another. In the next two decades, as the Lancaster facility reaches capacity, Harrisburg will be able to handle the overflow, Warner said.

“We felt that by regionalizing and acquiring this asset, we could bring our expertise here to serve the city and the county, but we also saw that there was processing capacity—that, after it serves the local community, it can combust for energy more waste than they produce,” he said. “As we continue to grow in Lancaster, where our plant is relatively full, we have the ability in the future to ship waste from Lancaster and process it here because we can’t process it at our plant.”

Transporting trash wouldn’t negate the green advantages of waste-to-energy.

“Route 283 gives us that ability to get here by truck in 50 minutes,” Warner said. “It’s not transportation-sensitive because we can access it in a short distance and a short amount of time.”

As part of its mission and outreach, LCSWMA has committed to community service that supports the goal of greening the area. It’s the lead sponsor for the nearby Capital Area Greenbelt Association’s “Tour de Belt” fundraiser. The company waives tipping fees for Tri County Community Action’s annual “Great Harrisburg Litter CleanUp.” It’s also working with the Susquehanna Area Mountain Bike Association on trails.

It’s about asking, “How are we a neighbor to the city of Harrisburg?” Warner said.

“We are much more than a waste agency,” he said. “We think as a public authority whose main responsibility is to manage the trash. However, we need to connect in our community.”

To learn more about the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority, visit www.lcswma.org.

Author: M. Diane McCormick

Confection Connection: Two of Harrisburg’s best-known bakers join forces at Raising the Bar.

September 30, 2016 | by Ann Knaus

The search for the perfect pastry can be challenging, particularly if you have a discerning palate or just crave baked goods that are created with basic ingredients and loving care.

Just ask Isabelle Rousseau, a Harrisburg resident and native of Quebec, Canada. Since moving to Harrisburg, Rousseau has been on a mission to find the perfect croissant—and that quest took her to Raising the Bar, a recent addition to the Broad Street Market.

Owned by Casey Callahan and Timishia Goodson, the bakery opened in July, and Rousseau has been visiting since day one.

“It’s so hard to find good croissants in the city,” Rousseau said. “The day they opened, I purchased a croissant, and, 15 minutes later, I returned to tell them how good it was.”

No doubt that Rousseau knows a thing or two about the buttery pastries—they’re a staple in many French Canadians’ diets. In recent months, she has become a Raising the Bar regular, stopping faithfully for the made-from-scratch treats.

Callahan, a graduate of the Restaurant School of Philadelphia, and Goodson, who attended Lancaster County Career and Technology Center and HACC, are passionate about their craft. They honed their skills while forging a friendship working 10 years together at Ciao! Bakery on S. 3^rd Street in downtown Harrisburg.

Callahan, a classically trained chef, was honing her baking skills, while Goodson worked there “just helping out” in the kitchen, adding that she never had an interest in baking until seven years ago, when she found herself in front of the oven. And the rest, they say, is history.

Both are still working multiple jobs but hope, as their business continues to grow, they can spend more time focusing on their entrepreneurial endeavor at the market, which has proven to be the perfect spot for Raising the Bar.

“We were looking at places in Lebanon and Elizabethtown, but the market is so up and coming, and we have clientele from our prior job who have followed us here,” Goodson said.

Callahan added that the pair pondered a long time before making the move.

“We talked about this over the past year, realizing we were working in a corporate environment and really wanted to do something different,” she said. “I like the idea of something community focused. I am raising my children here, and I wanted to work where I live. And, because we source many of the ingredients we use in our recipes from vendors right here at the market, it just makes sense.”

Raising the Bar—a name Goodson came up with—references the baked bars they make, including lemon and pecan, which, Callahan says, she’s been baking since culinary school. The shop also offers breads, breakfast strata, cookies, tarts and cakes.

The women focus on recipes that are simple, fresh and uncomplicated, saying that, sometimes, the more complex and clever some recipes aspire to be, the farther away they get from their culinary roots. That’s not to say they don’t enjoy coming up with new ideas to keep things fresh or adding little twists to items to appeal to customers. But each takes a different approach: Callahan prefers reading cookbooks and magazines, while Goodson looks to the Internet. They recently found a great cake recipe that they are trying to modify and develop into one of their famous namesake bars.

Callahan and Goodson are looking toward fall and winter when, they say, they hope to collaborate with other business owners at the market to develop special events that attract new visitors to their location. They already participate in the popular 3^rd in the Burg each month in Harrisburg. Patrons also can visit their Facebook page and Instagram account to find out what’s new and for listings about upcoming events.

Raising the Bar is located in the stone building of the Broad Street Market in Harrisburg. The bakery is open during market hours.

Author: Ann Knaus

September News Digest

September 30, 2016 | by Lawrance Binda

Courthouse Clears Hurdle

A proposed new federal courthouse for Harrisburg took a significant step forward last month, as a Congressional panel approved funding for the project.

U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta said the House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee approved full funding for the $194.4 million courthouse at N. 6th and Reily streets. Congress has already appropriated about $55 million for land acquisition, feasibility studies and design.

“This has been a long time coming, with various baby steps along the way, but now the Harrisburg courthouse will finally become a reality,” Barletta said in a statement.

The full House and Senate still must pass a final bill appropriating the money, but Barletta spokesman Tim Murtaugh called House committee approval the greatest obstacle.

“This was the major hurdle,” he said.

After many years of searching, the federal government selected the Midtown site in 2010, acquiring the land and razing a few old buildings. However, the site has sat empty since, as the project has awaited funds for construction.

Barletta said that he had re-considered the scope of the project, perhaps in favor of an annex to the existing federal courthouse downtown. However, he finally agreed that a new facility was needed.

The 243,000-square-foot building will contain as many as eight courtrooms, including three for district judges, two for senior district judges, two for magistrate judges and one for bankruptcy judges. The plan also calls for about 43 parking spaces.

Assuming that Congress appropriates the money, several years will likely pass before construction begins. Earlier this year, the U.S. General Services Administration released a priority list for new courthouses and annexes around the country, putting eight other projects ahead of Harrisburg’s.

Sinkhole Money Secured

Harrisburg last month secured nearly $1.7 million in federal funds to help remediate a sinkhole-ravaged stretch along the 1400-block of S. 14^th Street.

In its award letter, the Federal Emergency Management Agency specified that

Harrisburg must provide $550,000 in matching funds, which may come from other grants the city hopes to receive for the project.

The city envisions acquiring and tearing down 52 homes along the block. It then would fill in the sinkhole-prone area with backfill and soil, before turning it into permanent green space.

This was the second time that the city attempted to secure FEMA funds. Last year, the agency turned down the city’s request, directing money for sinkhole remediation to Palmyra. Harrisburg then asked FEMA to reconsider its project, which resulted in the award.

Giant sinkholes began opening up on the block in March 2014, making many of the houses uninhabitable and the remainder virtually worthless.

Council Weighs Market Contract

The Broad Street Market took a step towards a long-awaited restructuring last month, as City Council held a hearing that could lead Harrisburg’s historic market to become a nonprofit entity.

Most council members seemed to favor the proposal, which would permit a new nonprofit called the Broad Street Market Alliance, to enter into a lease agreement with the city, which owns the 150-year-old market. The lease would run for five years with an option for a 10-year extension.

Under the agreement, the city would rent the two market buildings for $1 a year to the nonprofit, which then would be responsible for maintenance and repairs. Under this structure, the market would be eligible to apply for numerous grants reserved for nonprofits and also could raise money, said market Manager Beth Taylor, who estimates the buildings have $1.5 to $2 million in deferred maintenance and capital improvement costs.

Currently, the market operates within a complex structure, in which the city owns the market, but the for-profit Broad Street Market Corp. manages it under the supervision of the Historic Harrisburg Association. The city also charges $1 per year in rent, but is obligated to pay for maintenance and improvements.

Under the restructuring, the alliance would have a 13-member board, and its efforts would be supplemented by the creation of a new support and fundraising group called Friends of the Broad Street Market.

At press time, council had not scheduled a final vote on the lease agreement.

Midtown Project Receives Funds

A key renovation project in Midtown Harrisburg is expected to move rapidly to completion, as the state announced last month that it will release funding to help finish the block-long historic rehabilitation at N. 3rd and Boas streets.

In a press conference, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that the developer, WCI Partners, will receive $3.5 million from the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, a state initiative that focuses on culturally and historically significant projects.

“We’re going to make sure that this project works, that courageous, hard-working people succeed,” said Wolf, who praised WCI for taking a risk to restore the long-vacant properties along the 900-block of N. 3rd Street.

The $8 million project consists of four buildings—the historic Harrisburg Moose Lodge Temple and three smaller townhouses, as well as a large parking lot.

WCI acquired the properties last year for $900,000 from Atlanta-based Mosaica Education, which had operated the Ron Brown Charter School there for five years. After its charter was not renewed, the school shut down in 2005, and the buildings have sat empty and increasingly dilapidated.

The 92-year-old, 38,000-square-foot former Moose Lodge opened last month as a fully renovated, mixed-use building consisting of 33 one-bedroom apartments and commercial space. The 6,500-square-foot ground floor is occupied by st@rtup Harrisburg, a city-based co-working space.

WCI Principal Alex Hartzler said that much of the RACP money will go towards finishing the project, especially the renovation of the three townhouses.

The back portions of the townhouses were chopped off years ago to expand the Ron Brown School’s parking lot and provide a play area. However, the long-empty buildings were not properly sealed, resulting in extensive water and infrastructure damage, Hartzler said.

More than 100 years ago, the townhouses were constructed with commercial space on the ground floors and apartments upstairs. WCI will return them to this mixed-use format, and TheBurg plans to occupy the ground floor space of two of the townhouses, which should be ready for occupancy early next year.

The state had not released RACP money since 2014. Several other Harrisburg-area groups, include Gamut Theatre Group and the Harrisburg City Islanders, have applied for funds. Wolf said funding for other projects would be announced soon.

Disclosure: Alex Hartzler is publisher of TheBurg.

Treasurer Criticizes Report

Harrisburg Treasurer Dan Miller last month gave a generally unfavorable assessment of a report that criticized the operations of the city treasurer’s office.

Before City Council, Miller said that the report, drafted by consultant Alvarez & Marsal, was correct in some of its conclusions, but incorrect in others. For instance, the report stated that the department lacked written procedures and policies, which, Miller said, was not true.

The report became controversial earlier this year when city Controller Charles DeBrunner made it public over the objections of Mayor Eric Papenfuse, who said its release was premature and unwise.

The city contracted with Alvarez & Marsal after former Treasurer John Campbell resigned following his arrest on theft charges not related to his city position. The report found no wrongdoing by Campbell as treasurer, but pointedly criticized how the office was run.

This was Miller’s first significant appearance before council since he was named treasurer in June to fill the unexpired term of former Treasurer Tyrell Spradley, who resigned the post.

“I have complete confidence in the city Treasury Department and operations,” Miller told City Council.

Home Sales Jump

Harrisburg-area home sales increased significantly in August, rising by 21 percent from the year-ago period.

Homes sales totaled 947 units compared to 783 units in August 2015, according to the Greater Harrisburg Association of Realtors.

The median price rose to $169,900 from $165,000 in the prior year, said GHAR.

In Dauphin County, 311 homes sold compared to 265 last August. In Cumberland County, sales totaled 336 units versus 268. Sales in Perry County increased to 38 units versus 27 in August 2015.

GHAR’s area covers all of Dauphin, Cumberland and Perry counties and parts of York, Lebanon and Juniata counties.

So Noted

Capital Joe Coffee has opened at 418 Forster St., Harrisburg, across the street from the state Capitol complex. Capital Joe serves Square One Coffee of Lancaster and pastries from Brew Crumberland’s Best of New Cumberland.

Impact Harrisburg last month awarded the city $250,000 in emergency funding to upgrade its IT infrastructure after city workers experienced system failures that prevented access to email and other shared files. The award should allow the city to migrate certain mission-critical functions to a cloud-based solution, thereby improving performance and reducing the risk of crashes.

Whitaker Center has announced the planned retirement of its long-time CEO and president, Dr. Michael Hanes. Hanes will retire at the end of next year, prompting the board to initiate a search for his replacement.

Changing Hands

Berryhill St., 2418 & 610 Fillmore St.: T. Le to D. Nguyen, $30,000

Benton St., 545: MBHH RE LLC to Triple Play Properties LLC, $30,000

Benton St., 601: M. Munro to S. Harrison, $102,000

Briggs St., 216: M. & P. Parsons to J. Vingsness & A. Posner, $205,000

Briggs St., 2024: S. Chapman to S. Maurer, $35,450

Brookwood St., 2213: PA Deals LLC to Mid Atlantic IRA & C. Hampton IRA, $50,000

Calder St., 268: K. Ciminello to B. Roller, $107,500

Chestnut St., 2048: S. Reyes to A. & R. Hart, $103,000

Chestnut St., 2215: J. & H. Kelly to J. & E. Colt, $179,900

Credit Union Place, 1: Pa. State Employees Finance Dept. to Commonwealth Charter Academy Charter School, $5,000,000

Derry St., 1316: Sandra Feigley Inc. c/o Thelma Johnston to S. Khan, $34,000

Derry St., 2035: S. Nagle to J. Guzman & M. Rodriguez, $89,900

Derry St., 2354: T. Pham to H. Pham & N. Le, $45,000

Emerald Ct., 2451: H. Conrad to J. & S. Theodorou, $82,000

Fillmore St., 610: T. Johnson to D. Nguyen, $30,000

Forster St., 1621: M&T Bank to PA Deals LLC, $47,000

Fulton St., 1738: PA Deals LLC to D. Reinhart, $124,900

Green St., 1623: B. Christine to S. Vemula & M. Chada, $115,000

Kensington St., 1952: J. & J. Belfonti to Tout USA LLC, $65,000

Lenox St., 1918: J. Zellers to A. Rosario & S. Castillo, $54,300

Lenox St., 1922: T. & J. Santiago to T. & B. Nguyen, $32,500

Lenox St., 1930: V. Bria to A. Perez, $62,500

Linden St., 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 117½ 119, 119½ & 100, 112 N. 13^th St.: Habitat for Humanity Greater Harrisburg Area to CPenn Patriot Properties Midtown LLC, $131,000

N. 2^nd St., 1618: K. Robinson to D. Payne, $249,900

N. 2^nd St., 2531: S. Mirza & F. Jabari to H. & S. Johnson, $157,500

N. 2^nd St., 2539: D. Garber to E. & A. Stockstill, $165,000

N. 2^nd St., 2812: M. Macholtz to T. Brinkley, $280,000

N. 2^nd St., 3016: S. Trent to D. Marcheski & L. Boykin, $156,000

N. 3^rd St., 1122: S. & G. Giambalvo to G. & K. Tennis, $197,500

N. 3^rd St., 1935: T. Stutzman to Monte Design Studio LLC, $40,000

N. 3^rd St., 3104: Secretary of Housing & Urban Development & ISN Corp. to M. Horgan & R. Kushner, $45,000

N. 4^th St., 1627: GWD Capitol Heights LP to J. Parfitt, $103,000

N. 5^th St., 2313: K. & D. Izer to BCR 2 Properties LLC, $30,000

N. 5^th St., 2437: Willowscott Investments to K. Hurst & N. Howze, $68,900

N. 6^th St., 1625: S. & C. Lane & New Heights South LLC to A. & A. Gee & PA Department of General Services, $42,000

N. 6^th St., 1633: HarrisPenn Trust to PA Department of General Services, $554,500

N. 6^th St., 2130: S&T Bank to N. Mitaka, $46,000

N. 13^th St., 146: L. Ware Jr. to W. Banks, $80,000

N. Front St., 1525, Unit 606: A. Moscato to J. Scarnati, $117,900

N. Front St., 1711: A. Haroundzadeh & D. Dohner to Harrisburg Redevelopment Group LLC, $1,065,000

Penn St., 1602: P. Larsen to M. Dinicola, $159,900

Penn St., 1916: WCI Partners LP to D. O’Hagan, $161,000

River St., 122: A. Rhoads & D. & S. Shatto to J. & G. Souders, $57,500

Rudy Rd., 1952: S. Schmidt to W. Zhang, $50,000

Rudy Rd., 2256: W. Ryan to Z. Rothfus, $176,900

Seneca St., 641 & 645: D. & K. Howard to DAP 7 Curtin LP, $55,000

Showers St., 615: J. & D. Groff to E. Hobbs, $155,000

S. 13^th St., 1400: J. & E. Cavitt to I. Medina & J. Culcay, $76,500

S. 20^th St., 209: R. Doerfler & J. Moffitt to J. & B. Readinger, $48,300

S. 27^th St., 710: D. & C. Howe to D. Barrick & A. Toci, $199,000

S. 28^th St., 728: S. Oscilowski to M. Marcus, $84,000

State St., 1604: Mid Penn Bank to C. Valdivieso, $37,000

Swatara St., 1523: Tri County HDC Ltd. To J. Macias, $102,900

Swatara St., 2145: S. & E. Reeves to M. Thompson & J. Longe, $64,900

Whitehall St., 1939: R. Miller Sr. to R. Howard, $50,900

Author: Lawrance Binda

Gov. Wolf Announces State Grant for Moose Lodge Redevelopment Project

September 7, 2016 | by Lawrance Binda

Gov. Tom Wolf (right) today announced a state redevelopment grant for a major project on a key block of Midtown Harrisburg, joined by state Sen. Rob Teplitz, Adam Porter of st@rtup Harrisburg, Alex Hartzler of WCI Partners and Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse.

A key renovation project in Midtown Harrisburg is expected to move rapidly to completion, as the state announced today that it will release funding to help finish the block-long historic rehabilitation at N. 3^rd and Boas streets.

The $8 million project consists of four buildings—the historic Harrisburg Moose Lodge Temple and three smaller townhouses, as well as a large parking lot.

WCI acquired the properties last year for $900,000 from Atlanta-based Mosaica Education, which had operated the Ron Brown Charter School there for five years. After its charter was not renewed in 2005, the school shut down, and the buildings have sat empty since then, boarded up and increasingly dilapidated.

WCI expects the 92-year-old, 38,000-square-foot Moose Lodge to open later this fall as a fully renovated, mixed-use building consisting of 33 one-bedroom apartments and commercial space. The 6,500-square-foot ground floor will be occupied solely by st@rtup Harrisburg, the city’s first co-working space, which is relocating from the 1500-block of N. 3^rd Street.

WCI Principal Alex Hartzler said that much of the RACP money will go towards finishing the project, especially the renovation and expansion of the three townhouses.

The back portions of the townhouses were chopped off years ago to expand the Ron Brown School’s parking lot and provide a children’s play area. However, the buildings were not properly sealed, Hartzler said. In addition, they’ve sat empty for a dozen years, resulting in extensive water and infrastructure damage, he said.

“This has been a vacant spot in Midtown Harrisburg for over a decade,” Hartzler said. “With our team, we’re bringing it back to life.”

Hartzler said that the project appeals especially to the “creative class,” creative professionals like graphic designers, illustrators and content providers who might want to work in st@rtup’s space downstairs and live in the apartments upstairs.

“If you’re a part of the rapidly expanding freelance workforce, if you’re a budding entrepreneur thinking, ‘I have an idea, now what?’ we’re here to help,” said Adam Porter, st@tup Harrisburg co-founder, who stressed the area’s walkability and proximity to the Capitol complex as key assets.

The state had not released RACP money since 2014, even though it’s intended as an annual awards program. Several other Harrisburg-area groups, include Gamut Theatre Group and the Harrisburg City Islanders, have applied for RACP funds. Wolf said that funding for other projects will be announced soon.

The Harrisburg Moose Temple lodge was built in 1924, designed in the Beaux Arts style by renowned Harrisburg architect Clayton J. Lappley.

Disclosure: Alex Hartzler is publisher of TheBurg.

Author: Lawrance Binda

Ideas Worth Spreading: TEDx has some thoughts to help Harrisburg “Thrive.”

August 31, 2016 | by Kate Morgan

Ashleigh Pollart has spent her whole life in the Harrisburg area, and she’s eager to see her community flourish. When the 25-year-old set out to organize the city’s first TEDx conference, the theme seemed obvious: “Thrive.”

TED (“Technology, Entertainment and Design”) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to promote “ideas worth spreading.” What began as a four-day conference in California three decades ago has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. The two annual TED Conferences feature “TED Talks” from scientists, philanthropists, politicians and other great thinkers on a vast variety of topics.

The TEDx program supports individuals and groups in planning and hosting local TED-style events, and Pollart worked with a team of organizers to craft Harrisburg’s first-ever TEDx Conference, which will be held next month.

“Living in Harrisburg over the past few years, I think we’ve noticed the need for something like this,” Pollart said. “The city is really going in a great direction. I think we’ve been climbing up and up, but we also realize that, if just a few key players stopped their community engagement, Harrisburg could easily fall back to where it was.”

Pollart feels that this event comes at a perfect time in the city’s development, so the theme of “Thrive” is both a celebration of Harrisburg’s progress and an investment in its future.

“I think right now is a really good time to hold an event like this to encourage learning and to highlight the great minds and efforts we have in our small community,” she said. “We hope to empower people to form relationships and keep Harrisburg moving forward along that trajectory.”

Different Perspectives

Months ago, Pollart and the organizing committee put out a call to the community, soliciting applications for speakers. She said she was overwhelmed by the positive response.

“Going into planning, we were unsure of how people would react, since this is our first time doing this,” she said. “We received maybe triple the applications we anticipated, which was a great problem to have.”

The conference’s 12 speakers run the gamut from the founder of a public art-based nonprofit to the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

“There’s one gentleman who runs a school in Harrisburg,” Pollart said. “His talk will focus on the need to teach students to love learning from a young age. Another speaker came here from Bhutan, and he’ll be speaking about the refugee experience. All the talks center around the theme of ‘Thrive,’ but they all have very different definitions and perspectives on thriving.”

Stephanie A. Jirard, a professor of criminal justice at Shippensburg University, will give a talk titled, “Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things.” The longtime attorney and former federal prosecutor and public defender will discuss the importance of pursuing social justice—and finding the courage to do so.

“Essentially, the subject of my talk is how people can find the intestinal fortitude to speak out about things they care about, specifically social and racial justice,” Jirard said. “How is it that, for some people, speaking out when they see something they consider wrong comes so naturally, while others are afraid to?”

Her talk will touch on major civil rights moments in history—women’s liberation, civil rights, LGBTQ equality—and the involvement of what she calls “ordinary people.”

“The success of these movements was dependent on ordinary people,” Jirard said. “Take the civil rights movement, for instance. Dr. King was the figurehead of course, but, really, it was everyday people who decided to sacrifice and to face all the societal ills to get us where we are today.”

Jirard said her talk’s central themes of courage and societal justice are well suited to Harrisburg’s inaugural TEDx conference.

“I find that, in Harrisburg, you have a phenomenally disenfranchised African-American community,” she said. “Throughout the state, there are all these resources, and then there’s Harrisburg, which seems like a community stuck in time. It’s like a throwback to a different era. What I would like is to bridge the gap between the communities I see, because the success of Harrisburg is the success of all of us.”

City resident Andy Enders will host the Oct. 10 event. The current HYP president, Enders said he feels a responsibility to begin conversations within the community—and keep them going.

“I think it’s a really beautiful opportunity for us as a community to figure out how others are leading this momentum forward,” Enders said. “I have to be an ambassador for that, to help portray this concept of ‘Thrive’ in a way that engages others. My singular goal is to drive conversation, before, during and after the event, to force the community to reflect on the things we’re talking about.”

Pollart said she hopes Harrisburg’s first TEDx conference won’t be its last. She’s anticipating a sold-out crowd, and ideally, she said, each attendee will leave inspired to help their community thrive.

“I honestly hope the audience leaves with more questions than answers,” she said. “I hope they get a sense of purpose to take action on the things they’ve learned throughout the course of the day. I hope we have a full audience, engaged in the day, and that we’re able to offer TEDx Harrisburg again in the future. One of the most beautiful things the TED brand brings is a sense that it can grow, and people will want to keep coming back.”

TEDx Harrisburg will be held Oct. 2 at Midtown Cinema, 250 Reily St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.tedxharrisburg.com.

Who, What

The following speakers and topics are planned for TEDx Harrisburg:

Al Chiardonna
“Life Work Integration”

Secretary Pedro A. Cortes
“From Carolina to the Capitol”

Josh Crain
“How to Talk to Anyone”

Tika Ram Dhungana
“Refugees Are Not the Garbage, They Are the Assets”

Brant Hansen
“Forgiveness in an Age of Anger”

Stephanie A. Jirard
“Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things”

Bailey Richert
“Life Crisis? Start A Business”

Chuck Russell
“Innovate Harrisburg”

Lynn Shiner
“The ABCs of Dealing with Death”

Bryan Speece
“Virtue of Public Art”

Dr. Melissa Vayda
“What’s Your Story? Family, Addiction and the Brain”

Dr. Eric Waters
“Learning is Breathing”

Author: Kate Morgan

Savaged by the Bell: Pro Wrestling Empire is bringing the drama, the fun–and the damage–back to Harrisburg.

August 31, 2016 | by Ashleigh Pollart

Illustration by Aron Rook

“I was blown away.”

This was the answer that Colin Bright, owner and general manager of Pro Wrestling Empire, gave when I asked about his first impression of the central PA professional wrestling scene. That impression was formed at a show held in New Cumberland.

“I was expecting to see, you know, guys in cutoff jeans and tank tops bouncing around in front of 40 or 50 people,” Bright said. “But it was a legitimate show.”

Bright, so impressed with what he saw, jumped feet first into the ring and gave the semi-professional world a spin.

“I wouldn’t have gotten involved if I didn’t see something real, and I’m really proud of what we have done,” he said.

By “we,” he means the five main team members that make up Pro Wrestling Empire. What they’ve “done” is build off of that initial show to organize wrestling events from the ground up: a ring manufactured by the same company that works with the WWE, big personalities, big drama and all.

Case in point: in October, the team will welcome one of wrestling’s true legends—Ric Flair (aka “The Nature Boy”)—to their next show, “Clash of the Titans.” It will be held at the historic Zembo Shrine, which has a history of hosting some of the biggest names in wrestling, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.

“There’s a long list of very well-known Hall of Fame-caliber wrestlers that have been in that building and wrestled under the same lights that we get to perform under,” Bright said, citing as examples Hulk Hogan, Bruno Sammartino and Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka.

Spectators and fans attending the show can expect an entire wrestling experience, complete with vendors selling goods such as protein shakes, comics and more. It’s being organized as a true fan experience. The creative juices and passion behind the project are enhanced because the Pro Wrestling Empire team is not only fans, but some are also performers.

A few of the team members even appeared in the last show, threw some punches, and, in the case of Bright, took a very hard hit.

“I got double-crossed at our last show, and a guy almost took my head off with a cheap shot—and the crowd just went nuts,” Bright recalled, showing me a video on his phone. “That’s what’s really rewarding, too. We’re putting on shows that, if I was watching them on TV, I would be pumped!”

A Lineage

Bright considers Pro Wrestling Empire a second chance at a dream. After college, he strongly considered attending a professional wrestling school.

“There’s a well-respected school out in Allentown that’s run by the Wild Samoans that are from the family of the Samoan dynasty,” he said.

For those not in the know, the Wild Samoans are a famous tag-team wrestling pair and members of the WWE Hall of Fame. Since the 1970s, their camp has trained some of the sport’s best-known wrestlers.

“It’s a pretty distinct lineage in professional wrestling, and I was about set to go,” Bright said. “It just didn’t work out. My career got in the way. You know, being an adult.”

He laughed.

“I’ve played it safe if that’s what you want to call it,” he added referring to his regular-guy career in financial planning. “I wanted to take an opportunity before it passed me by again.”

That opportunity isn’t just bringing professional wrestling to more people in central PA. It’s also the opportunity to create and tell a story to the audience.

“That’s another thing that distinguishes us from other companies,” he said. “We do it like they did it in the ‘90s. We run soap opera-style storylines that have multiple pieces to them.”

A Believer

“Clash of the Titans” will be a continuation of the last story shared at a Pro Wrestling Empire show—a story that 800 people came to see.

Besides Ric Flair, there will be thrills like a “Six Pack Challenge” (six wrestlers at once) and a “Hell in a Cell”-style match they’ve dubbed “Chamber of Hell” (a giant cage placed over the entirety of the ring).

With a goal of ensuring the entertainment was not financially out of reach, the team priced tickets at a level more affordable than some movie tickets. Pro Wrestling Empire also provides the Salvation Army in Harrisburg with complimentary tickets and donates a portion of their proceeds to the organization.

“You think professional wrestling, and some people have their opinions about it, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still has to be treated like a real business and run,” Bright said.

I may have had my own pre-conceived notions about professional wrestling, but I’m now a convert. After hearing what this team has in store, even I’ll be making an appearance at “Clash of the Titans.”

“Clash of the Titans” takes place Oct. 22 at the Zembo Shrine, 2801 N. 3^rd St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.prowrestlingempire.com or follow “Pro Wrestling Empire” on Facebook.

Author: Ashleigh Pollart

What We Did Last Summer: While you were away, Harrisburg was busy rebuilding.

August 31, 2016 | by Lawrance Binda

Illustration by Rich Hauck.

September is here, and, yes, that means we have to kiss summer good-bye.

Like many others, you may be adjusting to the grim reality that it’s time to put away the beach ball and pick up the time sheet.

Your editor also had some time away this summer, and we’ll get to that in a bit. But, first, I thought that we should catch up on some important local news—things that flew a bit under the radar or may have been forgotten somewhere in the middle of that second margarita.

Two-Way 2^nd

“Multimodal Collaborative Project.” Have I already put you to sleep? I hope not because behind this dense phrase lies a series of infrastructure projects with the potential to truly transform Harrisburg.

In July, the nonprofit called Impact Harrisburg released nearly $5.5 million, half to the city and half to Capital Region Water. Combined with a match from PennDOT, this money is slated for road (and utility) improvements that could undo some of the tremendous damage wrought in the 1950s, when the state turned charming neighborhood streets into forbidding freeways—making Harrisburg both less livable for residents and easier to flee for workers.

Most importantly, the money allows the city to begin the process of returning N. 2^nd Street, from Forster to Division streets, to two-way traffic. Mayor Eric Papenfuse told me that preliminary work would begin next year, followed by actual construction, he hopes, in 2018.

The money would fund related improvements to N. 6^th, N. 7^th and Division streets, both to handle additional traffic and to make those roads more pleasant and pedestrian-friendly. A chunk of the money also would go to repaving much of N. 3^rd Street, a project slated for next year once the utility work is done, and towards making a dangerous section of Berryhill Street safer for pedestrians.

TheBurg has long advocated making 2^nd Street in Midtown/Uptown two-way as a vital step in revitalizing Harrisburg, reintegrating neighborhoods and returning this major thoroughfare from commuters back to residents.

Papenfuse wasn’t all smiles over the actions of Impact Harrisburg. He wanted the money that went to Capital Region Water to pay off the city’s loan for the recently completed streetlight project, with the savings then used for repaving neighborhood streets. In his opinion (though not CRW’s), opportunity lost.

Bar Stays Open

Papenfuse also wasn’t wild about county Judge Andrew Dowling’s order that forced the city to issue a business license to the Third Street Café, a Midtown bar that the administration has targeted for closure. Dowling found the city’s argument against the bar (that it attracts crime) to be weak and said, in any case, that state regulation trumps city restrictions for businesses that hold liquor licenses.

So be it. I’ve previously argued that the Third Street Café has a detrimental impact on the quality of life, the redevelopment and potential safety in the heart of Midtown. In my view, those things remain true. However, I can’t disagree with Dowling that city did not present a strong case for closure.

Dowling’s decision, though, is not stopping the redevelopment of one of the most forlorn commercial streets in Harrisburg, one with tremendous potential. Last winter, Zachary Nitzan purchased the block’s two largest historic buildings—the former home of Midtown Paint & Hardware and the former Volunteers of America building—and he spent much of the summer restoring them. One will house his high-end, custom-design rug business, and the other will be divided into two renovated storefronts, returning the building to its original format. Pass by, have a look and smile.

It seems that 3^rd Street will have to rise on its own, without the help of the heavy hand of government (that is, unless the city’s long-shot appeal works). In other words, it will have to come back in the way that forsaken blocks in many other cities have—slowly, by risk-tolerant people with vision and patience.

Cut the Tape

Fortunately, Harrisburg has a number of such risk-tolerant people, as this past summer saw the completion (or near completion) of several important projects.

Downtown, Harristown began signing leases for the Flats at Strawberry Square, the first of its three apartment projects in the immediate area. Several blocks away, a few intrepid European investors brought a couple of desolate blocks of N. 2^nd Street back to life, opening expansive restaurants called Capital Gastropub (the old Ceoltas) and the Bridge’s Social Club (the old Quarter).

Across Forster Street, WCI put the finishing touches on its renovation of the historic Harrisburg Moose Lodge at N. 3^rd and Boas streets. The ground floor is the new home of the co-working outfit, Startup, and the upper levels feature high-end apartments.

Speaking of redevelopment: I spent part of my summer in Portland, Maine, which (like vacations I’ve written about before) provided me with no end of inspiration for things we could do here.

Like Harrisburg, Portland is a small, historic city that had to remake itself following industrial decline. It’s further along in the process, having succeeded in playing to its natural strengths: charm, walkability, waterfront, seafood, tourism and all-things craft.

I was especially struck by a former industrial area, which has been rezoned and repurposed. Where there once were warehouses full of boxes and forklifts, you’ll now find tourists sampling craft beer, sipping small-batch spirits, eating gourmet food truck fare (I had something called “Japanese street food”) and listening to musicians. And I thought to myself—Cameron Street!

The transformation of Cameron has already begun, pioneered by Appalachian Brewing Co., now joined by Midstate Distillery. With their open spaces, high ceilings and rock-solid build, the structures there are ideal for the new urban industry—craft, artisanal, hand-crafted anything—with a little concrete, noise and ductwork no deterrent to foodies, beer snobs, wine geeks and bespoke fans (in fact, it may be an attraction).

Lucky for us, Cameron Street—from the Farm Show complex to the incinerator—is loaded with exactly this type of building. Any takers?

Lawrance Binda is editor-in-chief of TheBurg.

Circling Back: After a lifetime of career challenges, Gloria Vazquez Merrick has returned to serve the community where she was raised.

August 31, 2016 | by Susan Ryder

A common assumption holds that successful people set specific goals, create plans, and carefully orchestrate their success. For some, this might be true, but, for others, success happens after life places them along a winding path.

Gloria Vázquez Merrick, executive director of the Latino Hispanic American Community Center, was born in a little alley in Harrisburg—Honey Street. Her father immigrated to the United States in 1951 from Puerto Rico after being recruited by a prominent construction company.

“It was common to come [to the United States] to make money and then send for your family,” she said.

The family moved to Market Street, the first Latino family on the street. This would be one of her many firsts.

She worked odd jobs as a Bishop McDevitt High School student—at Rudy’s Market and the St. Francis Roman Catholic Church’s rectory. In her senior year, she received an opportunity that would direct her whole life. The Governor’s Office of Administration sought high school graduates who were not headed directly to college. Vázquez Merrick took a clerical position, which eventually led her to work for the Pennsylvania Commission for Women.

“It empowered me to learn and to obtain a lot of self-help for myself, which actually pivoted me towards my future direction, building my confidence, my positive self- image,” she said.

This growing confidence allowed her to accept an opportunity at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. In her 13 years at PennDOT, she developed an English class for the clerical pool, formed the first foreman academy and created the department’s first new employee orientation program.

Later, she returned to the governor’s office as director of management development. While there, she was invited to participate in the Leadership Development Institute for Women in State Government, a program where she became the director.

“I was never one to be always looking and looking,” she said. “People would find me and call me, and I never said no. I was always up for a new challenge.”

In 2006, after facilitating the Latina Health Summit, she was approached by the Department of Health to work with then-Deputy Secretary of Health Robert Torres.

Vázquez Merrick cites her willingness to take chances as key to her accomplishments.

“You don’t know how many times I went into territory I had never known anything about,” she said.

She had confidence in her ability to perform “because I knew that I had those embedded, transferrable skills that could take me from an executive leadership development arena to now a health arena.”

She left work at the commonwealth in 2007.

“I thought I could just relax and have a nice time and breathe and enjoy life and break out all my cookbooks,” she said. “I wanted to do some traveling and spend some time with my daughter.”

Reciprocity, Growth

As with most of Vázquez Merrick’s transitions, another opportunity soon found her.

She was offered a position on the board of the new Latino Hispanic American Community Center (LHACC). When the executive director took leave in 2011, she assumed the post.

“I thought—I’ve done a full circle back to where I was born, in my community where I grew up,” she said. “And now I’ll take everything that I’ve learned, everything that I did and all those skills, and bring them to fruition by way of working for the Latino Hispanic American community.”

Program development experience proved integral to her work at LHACC. Youth participate in the newly formed Leadership Institute Star Training Opportunity, while senior citizens have the Sharing Wisdom Program. These programs involve reciprocity. Seniors benefit from the program when youth show them proper use of their cell phone and other technology; youth benefit from the years of wisdom shared by the seniors.

Work at LHACC includes creating a bridge between cultures, embracing diversity.

“The richness of those cultures is very important because you grow as a person, you grow intellectually,” she said. “You grow spiritually by experiencing other cultures.”

Vázquez Merrick also noted that the center offers an opportunity for Hispanics to connect and be informed about their own culture. Not all Hispanic cultures are alike, and she said that Hispanic American Heritage Month offers an opportunity for Latinos to “learn about the diversity in the diversity.”

Running an organization like LHACC is not without its difficulties. Recently, the city denied the center Community Development Block Grant funds, which has made up one-fifth of its budget.

“We are now struggling with how we are going to meet the huge void that we are going to begin to feel come October,” she said.

Vázquez Merrick speaks of her achievements nonchalantly, but she said that, each time she took on a new position, she thought, “What am I doing? I can’t do this.”

She credits her many mentors—whom she describes as the voices in the back of her head—with encouraging and empowering her. So, now she shares this advice to others: “Don’t be afraid to go into the area of the unknown because that’s how you grow.”

The Latino Hispanic American Community Center (LHACC) is located at 1301 Derry St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.lhacc.org.

LHACC’s Hispanic Heritage Kick Off Festival takes place Sept. 10, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., on Derry Street between 13^th & 14^th streets in Harrisburg.

Author: Susan Ryder

Brooklyn to the ‘Burg: Gabriel Olivera has risen through the ranks to become the city’s first Latino police captain.

August 31, 2016 | by Rebecca Oken

On a late Tuesday afternoon on 2^nd Street, Thank Blue, this past July’s event to recognize Harrisburg’s police, was coming to an end. The music and radio DJs rumbled in the distance from where I sat in Café Fresco, waiting for Harrisburg Bureau of Police Capt. Gabriel Olivera.

As he arrived, he stopped for brief, friendly chats with staff at the restaurant. Looking polished in a stylish and modern suit, you’d never know he was a police officer if you passed him on the street.

Olivera came to Harrisburg from Brooklyn in the early ‘90s to provide his three then-young children with an upbringing free of the violence and crime in his lifelong home in New York. His neighborhood was the birthplace of the crack epidemic on the East Coast and saw 300 homicides per year, Olivera said.

“I got to see a lot of violence growing up, either personally or indirectly,” he said. “You learned how to survive.”

When his daughter, in second grade at the time, came home one day and told him one of her classmates’ brothers was killed as though it was no big deal—she’d told him of similar incidents in the past—he knew it was the final straw.

Olivera’s mother had moved to central PA earlier, settling in Selinsgrove, and, although he wanted to be closer to her, he still wanted to be in a city, albeit one very different from the Big Apple.

“To this day, I am still amazed at what’s not available on weekend or late nights or holidays,” Olivera said, traces of a New York accent still in his voice.

Olivera was a plumber in New York, so he applied for similar jobs in this area. He received a letter about taking the police entrance exam but didn’t think anything of it until the incident with his daughter’s classmate.

“I decided that I wanted to do something to make [things] safe for my kids,” Olivera said.

In 1994, he began on the force where all officers do—uniform patrol. For about seven years, he patrolled the streets during the night shift and spent time with his kids during the day when they weren’t in school.

“It was kind of funny because my kids weren’t sure what I did,” he said. “They knew I was a police officer, but I was always home. They would go to sleep at nine in the evening, and I would leave at 10 o’clock at night, and when they got home, I would be there.”

Olivera moved around the force after leaving patrol, first to auto theft investigations. Next, he worked as a school resource officer, where, after four years, he was promoted to corporal to supervise that unit.

Coming full circle, he went back to supervise both the uniform patrol and auto theft units. He moved around to supervise other units and helped start the county gang task force in the early 2000s. Surpassing his career goal of becoming a lieutenant, he was named acting captain in September 2015 and promoted to full rank in January.

Olivera has also been a Dauphin County crisis negotiator since 2004, crediting his brains-over-brawn upbringing and bilingualism (he’s Latino and speaks Spanish) for his success in that position in talking to individuals and getting them to safely surrender.

Over the course of his career, Olivera has evolved with Harrisburg, prioritizing his community-focused approach to try to make it a better place, acknowledging gentrification in some neighborhoods and decline in others.

“You have all the issues—and dynamics of a large urban city but in a big town setting,” Olivera said. “There’s enough happening here that you become a very experienced officer very quickly.”

In light of last month’s police-involved shooting of Earl Pinckney in Harrisburg and other racially charged tensions with police nationally, Olivera emphasized the importance of being involved in the community to address these issues. He also pointed out that the media sometimes presents a generalized picture of police.

“The reality is that our officers have a really good relationship with the community,” he said.

Dealing with fewer personnel—down to 128 people from 186 when he started—and loss of resources, Olivera works closely with his colleagues and friends Chief Thomas Carter and Capt. Deric Moody to continually improve the force.

Keeping his staff informed and motivated is key, especially during times of heightened stress and particularly demanding work. Olivera still goes out on search warrants and gets in uniform from time to time to maintain perspective for what his staff is going through.

Plus, as the first Latino captain in the department, his role as community liaison is more important than ever.

“I think a lot of times the Hispanic community feels that they don’t have a voice,” Olivera said.

He recalled the lasting connections he made with community members when working on Allison Hill and how humbled he felt at the Latino presence during his swearing in as captain.

The presence of community dialogue has been vital in recent weeks for Olivera as the bureau has handled the investigation of Pinckney’s death.

“I think, unlike many other places where they’ve had violence, I think we’ve created room for dialogue,” he said. “I think everyone’s on the same page where we want to see if we can address things. We want to improve things.”

Author: Rebecca Oken

Unfriendly Fire: We’ve met the enemy–and he is us.

August 31, 2016 | by J. Alex Hartzler

Photo by Dani Fresh

Pennsylvania is on the national political map in 2016. Many pundits believe that the race for president will be close in PA, and the candidates have been paying attention. The Democrats hosted their convention in Philadelphia in late July, while Donald Trump campaigned in Scranton the same week.

Immediately following the DNC, Hillary Clinton staged one of her first rallies of the general election campaign in Midtown Harrisburg, right in front of the Broad Street Market. Not to be outdone, Donald Trump arrived a few days later for a rally at Cumberland Valley High School.

For a brief moment, it looked like the Harrisburg region had an opportunity to put its best foot forward, as the candidates and the national media turned their spotlight here. But instead of an opportunity for us to shine, things turned ugly quickly when Trump, while campaigning the day after his visit, said that Harrisburg “looked like a war zone” from his plane. Almost immediately, the offhand comment was put up on PennLive as the lead story, and, just as quickly, online trolls came out to vent their sympathetic loathing of Harrisburg in the comments section of the article.

The comments, more than 700 of them, shot the story to the top of the “active discussion” list, where it remained for several days. As expected of a story of such controversy, it generated a significant number of related stories, each with its own angle or opinion on the matter—and each with a new opportunity for anonymous posters to bash Harrisburg.

I happened to be on a cross-country flight when the story broke, so I took time to read through many of these comments. It’s safe to say that anyone from outside the region reading through them would come away with a very bleak view of the people and area where we live and work.

To their credit, columnists John Micek and Nancy Eshelman wrote pieces condemning Trump’s flippant comment and offering more positive and accurate views of the city. Despite these efforts, as Micek’s engagement with the negative posters in the comment section of his own article illustrate, they still couldn’t escape the cycle of negativity and controversy that PennLive, and most of today’s media, is ultimately built upon.

Each and every article that appeared on Trump’s comment, whatever its content, served to sustain the negative headline about our community, generate clicks and provide further forum to all of the cynics and haters about all things Harrisburg, no doubt to the delight and benefit of PennLive’s advertisers and its owners, based in Manhattan, who depend on those advertisers for their income.

How else does one explain the headline, “Was Trump right about the Harrisburg ‘war zone’?” when the answer is so inherently obvious to anyone who lives here? In a sense, it’s not a dissimilar model from the one that Trump employs himself: It doesn’t matter what is said, as long as everyone talks about it, watches it and clicks on it—and the owner of the platform gets paid (in his case, Trump is the platform).

The problem with this model is that real damage is done to a community when the headlines and the anonymous online commentary are repetitively sensational, cynical and destructive. As I’ve often said, when the story we tell about ourselves to ourselves is relentlessly negative and bleak, our beliefs and actions eventually begin to fall into accordance with that view, whatever the reality might be, which is usually orders of magnitude better than what the headlines project. So, people may not buy a home or locate a business or rent an apartment or eat at a restaurant due to relentless and unfair negative media coverage. That community’s real and potential wealth then is destroyed.

But that’s only the half of it. There’s a flip side, and it’s that, while a community’s wealth is being destroyed by unnecessarily sensational and negative headlines, a billion-dollar media corporation’s wealth is being enhanced by the clicks and comments and advertising dollars that those headlines generate. I think it’s not too far of a stretch to state that every time we witness sensationalized and negative news coverage of Harrisburg on PennLive, a transfer of wealth occurs from a relatively low-income community to a billion-dollar corporation in Manhattan. Perhaps it’s indirect, hidden and hard to measure, but it’s no less real and right before our eyes (quite literally) with every headline we read.

Good and honest people, like the folks, I suspect, who work at PennLive, may try to dispute this reasoning by saying that they only report and write about what happens (they didn’t make Trump’s comment, he did), and that they only publish and promote the stories that people want to read, essentially by “voting with their clicks.”

While perhaps true, it misses the larger truth, where the real and fundamental logic of a privately owned, profit-driven media corporation exists—and that is to make money. However much the journalists and editors on the ground may try to work against this logic, it’s always there, in every sensational headline and every angry comment we read. And if the logic of making money requires sensationalized headlines and negative articles about Harrisburg—because it’s what drives comments and clicks and advertising dollars—then that’s what we’ll continue to see, to our own community’s detriment.

So what to do in response to this state of affairs? Well, perhaps lots of things, but let’s start by stating three.

First, and most immediately as it relates to Trump’s comments—let’s bluntly set the record straight. Harrisburg is not a war zone and doesn’t look like one. The comment is ridiculous on its face. Like so many things Trump has said, it was designed to garner headlines and focus on him, not to be an accurate statement of reality. In contrast, a more nuanced and accurate statement would have gained little attention. Sarcastic or not, the statement achieved exactly what it was intended to do—get people talking about Donald Trump.

Second, as it relates to the comments section on PennLive, it’s clear that the people in our region who habitually hate on Harrisburg have no idea what they’re talking about or what goes on in the city on a daily basis, except for what they may read or watch from the suburban media outlets. Readers of TheBurg know full well what I mean when I say there is a separate reality out there that exists for media outlets that continually report on crime and dysfunction in order to make money and another reality entirely—where 95 percent of daily life unfolds—that is quite different, quite enjoyable and well-worth reporting on.

Third, and on that point, I travel regularly both around the country and internationally, and I have seen many places that offer both more and much less than what Harrisburg has to offer. I’ve come to the conclusion that, whatever its flaws, Harrisburg and its region offer a relatively unique combination of affordability, opportunity, openness and compassion, natural beauty and accessibility to the wider world. We offer values like family, hard work, stability, charity and self-reliance with an important historical past.

Perhaps most importantly, we have a stunning, livable city, along a beautiful, scenic river, with wonderful architecture, thriving businesses and amazing, diverse residents. I love it here, and I know most of you do, too. Because of that, we at TheBurg, thanks to the support of our community publishers and advertisers, look forward to delivering that message and news to you each and every month.

J. Alex Hartzler is publisher of TheBurg.

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