Tag Archives: harrisburg

No Parking

January 29, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

The proposed interior design of the Alter Ego Brewing Co. brewhouse, in back of Midtown Cinema.

“It’s Just Too Big!”

So read the signs that, over the course of a few days, suddenly sprang up on dozens of small, rectangular front yards about a decade ago on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where I owned a rowhouse.

One afternoon, as I walked down the street, deeper into the neighborhood, I saw the first sign and wondered, “What exactly is too big?” Then I saw several more and thought, “What are these people protesting?”

Soon afterwards, a friend filled me in that some of her neighbors (she lived closer to the source of the “problem”) were objecting to a plan to convert a huge, old building, the former Capitol Hill Hospital, into condominiums. Their main gripe: parking. The project provided off-street parking as required by city statute, but the neighbors thought that the one-spot-per-unit allocation wasn’t enough.

“What if they have visitors?” I remember one resident remarking in a story in the Hill Rag, the neighborhood newspaper.

Long story short: the protesters won. They successfully delayed the project until the developer went bankrupt. Street parking didn’t change. But neither did the old hospital, which gobbled up an entire city block and remained almost completely empty, a hulking, ghostly building that created an eerie, isolated, dangerous vibe for blocks around.

I think of that story sometimes when parking issues arise, as they often do, in Harrisburg. Like back in D.C., parking often pits residents who want to see their neighborhood develop, become denser and have more amenities against those who are worried that their street parking will vanish.

Both sides have valid points. Like most people, I want to park directly in front of my house, but I also want the cafe, the movie theater, the restaurants–all the things that make city life worthwhile.

Last night, I attended a community meeting held by the owners of Alter Ego Brewing Co., who are proposing to build a brewhouse in the building at the rear of Midtown Cinema at the corner of Reily and Green streets. The meeting was well-attended, attracting about 50 neighbors, most in support, but some airing legitimate concerns about noise, traffic, odors and the serving of alcohol.

Before long, the discussion became largely about parking, a topic that continued today on TheBurg’s Facebook page. Some neighbors, as well as some out-of-city patrons, are very concerned about parking, even though the Cinema has off-street parking for 49 vehicles, far more than required by the city, even with the addition of the brewery.

In the course of the evolution of a city, a time arrives when a decision must be made about priorities. Is it in the best collective interest of Harrisburg (or Midtown or Engleton) to see the continued development of the commercial district around N. 3rd and Reily streets? Or is it better to keep development at bay so that residents can continue to park in front of their houses?

In the end, I suspect that the parking issue will follow a similar course here as it did in D.C. Yes, the neighbors won the battle against the hospital conversion, but only because the developer already was financially fragile and couldn’t hold out any longer. However, they lost almost every other time.

They complained about parking as the H Street and Pennsylvania Avenue commercial districts were revived and built up, a process that has only accelerated since I left. They lost badly as the Barracks Row corridor went from a seedy strip of check-cashing joints and liquor stores to a booming restaurant district.

All along, they asked, “But where am I gonna park?” along with the related question–“Who’s gonna come here because there’s no parking?”

Turns out–a lot of people.

As the core, then the outskirts, of Capitol Hill improved, people flocked in, as did restaurants, cafes, bars and stores. The lack of parking may have deterred some, but, in the aggregate, the places to eat, drink and shop brought in far more people than were lost to tougher parking.

Sure, some upset residents departed for the suburbs, where they got their private driveways, strip malls and acres of surface lots. But the area’s redevelopment and amenities enticed others to move in, making the area a safer, more vibrant place to live, while dramatically raising property values.

D.C., of course, is fortunate to have a reliable subway, and I can only fantasize that Harrisburg, some day, will have a trolley or light rail system, which could revolutionize life in this city. But, today, Capitol Hill has far more visitors coming via every means of transportation–subway, car, foot, even bus.

In the not-so-distant past, you could walk down Barrack’s Row day or night without encountering another soul, other, perhaps, than someone bumming change off you. Today, the wide sidewalks are full of people; the streets with cars; the restaurants and cafes with patrons. And there’s no more parking today than there was 15 years ago.

In contrast, the old, large Capitol Hill Hospital today remains an under-utilized medical building (a long-term care facility) that adds little to the surrounding residential neighborhood. Every once in awhile, residents may hear an ambulance siren, but, for the most part, the entire city block seems lifeless each day, a bit dodgy at night.

So, around Capitol Hill Hospital, the protesting neighbors won. On Barrack’s Row, they lost. But, looking back now, it sure doesn’t appear that way.

Change of Plans

January 17, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

That was fast.

Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse was sworn into office just 12 days ago, but already we’re witnessing a dismantling of the structure put into place by the state to guide the city to financial recovery and help ensure more professional governance.

On Tuesday, Papenfuse announced that he is asking City Council to defund the position of chief operating officer and, yesterday, the state petitioned the Commonwealth Court to eliminate the state-imposed receivership. Assuming these requests are granted, Harrisburg will be back organizationally to a strong mayor who controls most of the levers of city government.

Whether you judge this to be a welcome development depends upon two key factors.

First of all, do you believe that Harrisburg continues to need the strong hand of the receiver and the professional management (at least in theory) of a COO?

The state created the receivership to formulate and implement a financial recovery plan for the city, to force that solution on feuding parts of the city government and to fortify the Thompson administration with additional expertise and oversight.

Over the course of two-plus years, the receiver accomplished these goals, although a few elements of the Harrisburg Strong plan, notably a new labor agreement with the firefighters’ union, are unfinished. The city will remain under Act 47, which means that a coordinator appointed by the state Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) will continue to have some influence over city operations.

As for the COO position, it was one of the key reforms of city government proposed by David Unkovic, the city’s first receiver, and, until recently, seemingly supported by the second, William Lynch. It was designed to professionalize how government operated on a daily basis, helping to ensure that the city was not again brought low by the political and personal agendas and limitations of its powerful mayors.

Many municipalities, in fact, are run daily by a professional city manager, and, under the reform, Harrisburg, though structured differently, would largely have followed that model.

On Tuesday, in his budget address to City Council, Papenfuse characterized the change more as a reclassification than an elimination. The COO, he said, would morph into the position of business administrator—with a $30,500 pay cut.

However, this is no reclassification. If defunded by City Council, the COO job is gone, and Harrisburg will revert to its strong-mayor form of government. The business administrator will serve as the mayor’s right-hand man (or woman), important but clearly beneath the mayor in the hierarchy. The huge pay cut emphasizes this point, with the business administrator’s salary tellingly just a whisker ($500 a year) below the mayor’s.

These changes are quite an achievement for Papenfuse, so early on in his administration. If both the receiver and the COO go away, he will have effectively re-consolidated the power of the office of the mayor. He also will have clarified the city’s hierarchy of authority, which has been muddied for more than two years, first by the creation of the receiver then by the addition of the COO.

Evidently, Lynch and others at DCED have enough confidence in Papenfuse that they no longer deem either office necessary. On Tuesday, Papenfuse told council that Lynch supports ending Harrisburg’s COO experiment, which, admittedly was no great success under two short-lived, if very well paid, administrators.

And that brings me to the second way of judging these developments.

Ultimately, how you view the re-creation of the powerful mayor’s office depends upon how you view Papenfuse. If you believe he can handle the office effectively and responsibly, you might be happy that he has consolidated power so quickly. If not, then you probably aren’t.

So far, I like what I’ve seen from the administration. Papenfuse’s appointments have been solid, and I support his decisions to work closely with council and to make government more accessible and friendly. His early moves have been pragmatic, not dogmatic or personal.

That said: it’s very early. I would be reluctant to reach any conclusions until at least six months have passed—and that’s why these recent moves give me pause.

I expected the receivership, which was extended just in November, to end well before its two-year term, but not just weeks into it. I expected the COO job to go unfilled for some time, until the administration got its bearings and the flow of government settled.

As a resident, I would have felt more comfortable had the receiver allowed more time, so that the new administration could settle in and show itself capable of governing well. As it stands, these changes appear rushed. I understand that the re-opening of the budget was viewed as an opportune time to make adjustments, but the resulting changes are huge. A more gradual evolution in the city’s power structure may have better served the still-wary, skeptical residents of this city.

Harrisburg Receivership to End

January 16, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

The state today submitted a petition to end Harrisburg’s 26-month-old receivership, stating that “critical components” of the city’s financial recovery plan had been completed.

If approved by the Commonwealth Court, the receivership would conclude on March 1, concurrent with the end of the state-declared “fiscal emergency” for the city. At that time, an Act 47 coordinator would replace the receiver to oversee and help guide implementation of the rest of the Harrisburg Strong Plan.

Just last November, the receiver’s term was extended for two years.

“The receiver is no longer vital and necessary to successful implementation of the remaining components of the Harrisburg Strong Plan in the absence of a fiscal emergency, and the remaining components of the plan can be successfully implemented by a coordinator appointed by the secretary (of DCED),” according to the petition by C. Alan Walker, secretary of the state Department of Community and Economic Development.

While most of the plan has been implemented—including the sale of the incinerator and the long-term lease of the city’s parking assets—a few parts remain unresolved, such as a new labor agreement with the city’s firefighters’ union.

The state imposed receivership on Harrisburg in November 2011 after the city could not reach an agreement to resolve its financial crisis. Bond lawyer David Unkovic served several months in the post, drafting the initial recovery plan.

After Unkovic resigned, Air Force Maj. Gen. William Lynch took over as receiver, overseeing the creation of the final recovery plan and its implementation to date.

Read the entire petition from Walker to Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter: ReceivershipPetition.

Inspiration Reconsidered

January 10, 2014 | by Lawrance Binda

“Can’t I get the job done and inspire you at the same time?”

So asked then-long-shot-candidate Eric Papenfuse in a text message to me, shortly after he announced his intention to run for mayor of Harrisburg. He was responding to a column in the March 2013 issue of TheBurg, in which I had written that I would settle for basic competence from my next mayor, as opposed to some type of inspiration.

Since then, Papenfuse and I have revisited that topic several times, including in an extensive Q&A in the current issue of TheBurg, as well as in several casual conversations. I set the bar at competence; he raises it with both competence and inspiration.

Therefore, I was pleased, if a little surprised, at the stone-cold pragmatism he’s demonstrated during his first week in office.

It started right at the beginning, during his swearing-in on Monday. His address focused not on grand ideas, theoretical concepts, dreams or history, but on repairing the bedraggled municipal building. After brief, plain-spoken remarks, he led reporters on a tour of City Hall’s dirt, disrepair and dank, hoping to use the assembled media and rolling cameras to put out a public call for private funds.

I’ve written that I see a mayor, primarily, as an administrator tasked with delivering a core group of critical services to the people–the residents–who are paying for them. And nothing is more fundamental to that mission than providing a decent environment for workers who must deliver those services. That said: even I was surprised by the smallness of the small ball. That’s not intended as criticism, but as an acknowledgement that reform and advancement of city government must start at the bottom, building up from there.

Papenfuse’s cabinet appointments similarly showed attention to the practical realities of governing and delivering services. We already knew that the well-connected and respected Joyce Davis would serve as communications director. He then named Neil Grover, a founder of Debt Watch Harrisburg and special counsel to City Council, as city solicitor. Former Councilman Bruce Weber will serve as budget and finance director, and Aaron Johnson, Papenfuse’s former rival for mayor, will lead the Public Works Department.

Taken together, the appointments serve another important and practical function. These department heads all have ties to City Council, which should help Papenfuse with Harrisburg’s often-contentious legislative body. He seems to understand the reality that he cannot dictate, that, in order to get anything done, he needs the support of council members. That may sound obvious, but it’s a lesson that both mayors Reed and Thompson never seemed to learn, to their–and the city’s–great detriment.

When I was a young reporter in New Jersey, I covered our area’s local legislative delegation. At the time, a long-time state assemblyman was appointed to the Senate following a vacancy. When I learned of the appointment, I called him and asked what his priorities would be as a state senator. I suppose that I expected the articulation of some great goal or, lacking that, at least a few talking points out of the Republican playbook (less government, lower taxes). Instead, he told me that he wanted to make sure that the grass was cut regularly along state highways, that he was always bothered by the overgrowth and weeds in the medians and at the sides of the roads as he motored along to Trenton. So, he’d make that his first order of business.

Standing in Harrisburg’s City Hall the other day, I remembered that story. Given my past conversations with Papenfuse, I was expecting his inaugural speech to be gilded with soaring rhetoric, grand ideas, lofty goals–words and phrases designed to inspire. Instead, he wanted to patch some ceilings and repair some walls.

I was OK with that. Harrisburg badly needs to fix itself, and the municipal building seems like a fine place to start. As the week wore on, I began to see an administration playing the long game, not issuing edicts from on high but courting council and the public, laying down a foundation for actions to come. I also saw a focus on basic municipal services, as well as action on a few other practical, first-order items (a help desk instead of a security check, no metal detectors, no security detail, a meeting with Attorney General Kathleen Kane).

Perhaps, in weeks or months, Papenfuse will unpack the inspiration that I’m sure he still considers important. But, personally, I found this first week encouraging. As a resident, I want the grass cut, the potholes fixed, the roads striped, the trash collected. That’s what I want from my local government, and that requires several necessary conditions: a motivated workforce, good managers and a healthy relationship with City Council.

What’s Left Behind: Artist focuses his lens on the once-beautiful, once useful, now disposed.

December 31, 2013 | by John Duffy

As an art-obsessed teenager Matthew Christopher despised photography.

“I thought it was bullshit,” said the Harrisburg-area native. “I thought it was cheating: point and click. I didn’t understand the intricacies.”

His perspective changed when, as an employee at a Philadelphia-area mental hospital, he visited a shuttered state institution, one of those Victorian-age solutions that, by the mid-20^th century, were seen as despicably archaic, little more than warehouses for the unwanted.

“I was immediately interested in the philosophical implications of how we as a country have dealt with mental health,” he said. “What is the difference between incarceration and hospitalization? Who defines sanity?”

It later became the subject of Christopher’s MFA thesis and the beginnings of a body of work that would take on all manner of decaying or disused structures: factories, houses, hotels, theaters, resorts, schools, churches, prisons. Some 3,000 images are collected on his website, abandonedamerica.us

He also has shown his work locally. In recent years, he has mounted exhibits at the Yellow Wall Gallery at Midtown Scholar Bookstore, the Gallery at Walnut Place and McKissick & Associates, all in Harrisburg, as well as at galleries in Lancaster, Lebanon and Perry counties.

Sweat & Dreams

Like few other societies, America, since the Industrial Revolution, has gotten good at building things by the sweat and dreams of one generation, only to let them crumble by the next. Built either on imperial-age colonialism or post-war exuberance, the America of the millennial age is dotted with these wrecks as never before.

And to Christopher, they say something profound about our national character. Often what economists call “creative destruction” and sociologists term “de-urbanization,” Christopher sees as merely hubris. His catalog is dubbed “an autopsy of the American dream.”

“I look at our society as a big party of people who go out to dinner, eating and drinking as much as they can, and then realizing they don’t have enough to pay the tab,” he said. “They assume someone else was covering them.”

The study of this process is nothing new. James Howard Kunstler’s groundbreaking study of urban landscapes, “Geography of Nowhere,” is 20 years old, and people were chronicling the decay of a deindustrialized America in numerous forms even before that.

But, in Christopher’s images, layers of dust seem too delicate to be real, limping floor joists roll like waves, wallpaper flakes seem like snow. There is a tragic beauty in the decay that few others have been able to render. And, while almost none of Christopher’s work shows actual human presence, almost every one leads the viewer toward thinking of who once lived, loved, toiled, learned, worshipped or battled madness in these buildings.

Such places are left with uncertain futures and wait again to be useful, or in most cases, to simply be erased. “People are very attached to places even years after they no longer live or work there,” he said. “To many, letting a factory or a school fall into disrepair, in a way, invalidates the time they spent there, the work they did.”

Troubling Currents

Christopher has become not only an expert on the artistic schema of decay, but the mechanics as well. Looking at a crumbling wall, there is a clear difference between ordinary structural failure and the work of scrap hunters. He’s been on this quest so long that, most of the time, he admits to being immersed in the technical aspects of his work on location, and less so in the emotional. “Some places just reek of despair, though.”

Churches and schools are probably the most difficult, he says. “Churches are unlike any other building in that the whole purpose is to be art, to be beautiful, to awe people into thinking of divine things, of this plane and that which is holy.”

As mainline urban churches fall out of use due to the demographic tide of suburbanization, some are bought up by small Pentecostal or evangelical upstarts. Many are not. “Considering what they were built for, there is a troubling symbolism in that.”

Schools are the civic equivalent of churches: vessels of hope and aspiration. “The idea of the American dream has always included that, with hard work and ingenuity, you can rise above your caste,” he said. “That’s always been facilitated in large part by our educational system. When schools go, then you’re knocking out the rungs of that ladder.”

Even when old, decaying schools are replaced by bright, new ones, there are often troubling currents, as in once case in Philadelphia recently. “They were demolishing the old building and there was a pile of textbooks in the courtyard…two stories high. The kicker is that they were in good condition. And we hear about how so many schools don’t have supplies?”

Disposable consumption has a cost, and only now are we beginning to tally the bill, his work implies.

All of Christopher’s photos, even the most minutely detailed ones, hint at similar narratives. “If you’re working just from an artistic standpoint, you are going to be missing out on most of the story, and, if you shoot solely as a documentarian, then your pictures won’t be interesting.”

Christopher looks for the transcendental, timelessness, a permanence to things that goes beyond the temporality of the subject itself.

Take a pair of shoes, for example. “You leave them by your bed. When you come back they are still there. That’s something we filter out because it’s quite normal.”

Now imagine an identical pair of shoes next to a bed in a farmhouse shuttered and ignored for 30 years. “Immediately, you start asking questions. Who did these shoes belong to? Where did they go? Why were they left here?” All of a sudden, a simple pair of shoes is telling a story.

Christopher’s work has, at times, mistakenly been lumped into the “ruin porn” discussion, an accusation leveled at some who gravitate toward dying rustbelt cities like Youngstown, Detroit, or Braddock, Pa., to shoot the wreckage in a fashion that residents often see as exploitative. Christopher has weighed in on that debate but has now grown weary of it.

Surely, a photograph of neglect and decay can be an indictment, and that is indeed a subtext of his work, the artist admits. But even exploitative art can begin a discussion, and it’s a discussion that needs to begin, he adds. “And an image is about the only thing that can grab anyone’s attention anymore.”

Learn more about Matthew Christopher, see more images of his work and learn about his exhibits at abandonedamerica.us.

Sunshine on a Plate: Oranges add flavor, color, warmth to a bleak winter day.

December 31, 2013 | by Rosemary Ruggieri Baer

One of my favorite winter memories growing up was accompanying my parents every couple of weeks to a place called the Orange Car.

The Orange Car was a warehouse-type building somewhere near Paxton and 2nd streets in Harrisburg. I am not sure if any of the current structures at that rather bleak intersection once housed this business or if the building is gone. But our trips there were one of those childhood experiences in which sight, smell and feel all combined into something I have never forgotten.

The Orange Car was only open during the winter. It was located near the railroad tracks, and train cars unloaded citrus fruit from Florida right on to its dock and conveyor belt. It was freezing cold in the unheated Orange Car, but it smelled heavenly. There were boxes everywhere brimming with pink and white grapefruit, tangerines, juice oranges, navel oranges, temple oranges and my favorite memory—plump kumquats still attached to bunches of leaves from the tree.

Well, my parents, always prone to excess when it came to good food, bought it all. They often gave crates of oranges as gifts and served the fruit as dessert almost every night during the winter. Sometimes, we bought beautiful jars of sparkling orange marmalade, a special treat to spread on our morning toast.

Italians love oranges and cook with them often. I was enthralled seeing orange groves in Sicily seemingly growing everywhere in the warm Mediterranean sun. Sicily is also home to the unique citrus fruit known as the blood orange—with its bright red color and intense sweetness. Oranges find their way into baked goods, fish dishes, roast chicken and a traditional Sicilian salad of orange slices, cured black olives and thinly sliced red onion. And did you know that not just limoncello, but orangecello, is a delightful after-dinner cordial? You might even find a blood orange martini somewhere in this day of designer cocktails.

My favorite orange dish is something I simply call “my favorite orange chicken.” I no longer remember where I got it, but the little cutout recipe has seen much use. The dish is easy to make, can be served to company and makes for an elegant casserole to take to friends or neighbors who, for whatever reason, might be in need of a meal. I have served it on holidays as well as on ordinary workdays. It is sunshine for a cold, gray winter day.

Rosemary’s Orange Chicken

Brush 6 chicken breast halves with ½ cup of melted butter. (I often use breast halves with the bone in because they have less of a tendency to dry out. But you can use boneless if you prefer.)
In a shallow dish, combine 6 ounces defrosted frozen orange juice concentrate and ¼ cup honey. (Just plain orange juice will not work.)
On a plate, mix together ¾ cup fine, dry breadcrumbs, ½ cup flour, 1 teaspoon paprika, ¼ teaspoon dried thyme and ½ teaspoon salt.
After brushing the breast halves with the melted butter, dip them in the orange juice concentrate and honey mixture and then roll them in the breadcrumbs and flour.
Place the chicken in a large, greased baking pan and drizzle the breasts with any leftover melted butter and honey mixture.
Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 45 to 50 minutes depending on the size of the breasts.

When the breasts are done, place them on a pretty platter and garnish with parsley or thyme sprigs. I like to serve this dish with steamed broccoli and rice (white, jasmine, brown or wild rice—all are good). If you want to make more than six breasts, increase the amount of honey, orange juice and breadcrumbs for coating.

I guess there are not a lot of things to be joyful about in this dark, cold month of January. But nature’s gift of beautiful citrus fruit may be one of them. I hope this recipe for orange chicken becomes one of your favorites, too.

The Harrisburg Orange Car is gone, another happy childhood memory for me. And I don’t know if I will ever visit Sicily again. But I treasure the beautiful citrus fruit of winter—sunshine for January.

Felice Anno Nuovo!

A New Reality Takes Shape: Harrisburg’s new mayor indicates things are about to change — a lot.

December 31, 2013 | by Lawrance Binda

The past two months have been a whirlwind for Eric Papenfuse.

Since winning the Nov. 5 election, he’s had to pivot quickly from candidate to mayor-elect, setting up a transition office, establishing priorities, deciding on personnel and gearing up to lead Harrisburg, a city itself in transition.

In the midst of it all, he carved out some time last month to sit down with us to answer a few questions. The interview revealed a man who has thought deeply about his role: what it means to be the city’s mayor at this time, what he believes the office represents, and what Harrisburg needs to do to move beyond its troubled past.

It also showed just how fluid the situation here remains. Despite months of headlines on the Harrisburg Strong plan, the city’s multi-year financial recovery really is just starting. Meanwhile, the new administration plans major changes in how city government is run, with significant personnel changes expected, just as receiver William Lynch’s role begins to recede.

We were curious about all these issues—and many others—as Papenfuse met us in his transition headquarters just around the block from his future office on the second floor of City Hall.

TheBurg: What made you decide to run for mayor?

Papenfuse: I decided to run for mayor because I felt that our political discourse was broken. This is something that I had felt actually for a long time, but I was trying, through my efforts as a business owner at Midtown Scholar, to try and correct that, to provide a place where people would come together from throughout the city, diverse in race and class, including people from the West Shore and other parts of Dauphin County, all coming together to discuss the issues of the day. I felt that type of third space did not exist in Harrisburg until we really expanded the bookstore, and that was one of the reasons why the discourse was broken—not the only reason, but one of the reasons.

I also looked at our political leaders, and I felt that there was an opening for someone to run on a platform that actively sought to bring people together rather than to keep the city divided. By no fault of their own necessarily, but I felt that a Linda Thompson/Dan Miller matchup would have split along racial lines and class lines and geographic lines. And it wouldn’t have provided the unity necessary for a real recovery of the city as a whole. So, that’s why I decided to run, and I had hoped that someone else would step up and allow me to support that individual, but it didn’t happen. And I felt that I had an obligation to the community, to my family, to my business, to try and make this city better.

TheBurg: How would you describe what will be your governing style?

Papenfuse: I think it is appropriate that we’re doing this interview today because we’re about to hold the public meeting for the transition process. Tonight, at the high school, I’m bringing together all the various heads of my transition team to field public questions, to try and engage the public really for the first time ever in the transition process, let alone the governance process. I’m hoping that tonight signals two things. One, a new spirit and desire to really engage the public and to not see governance as simply top-down, where your leaders tell you how it must be, and you react. But, instead, the foundation of good government is in civic dialogue and conversation with the public.

So, that is my overarching strategy for how to move Harrisburg forward. It’s to model a new spirit of conversation with the public, to get the public invested. That’s going to be manifested in many different ways in the new administration. You’re going to see a desire to view City Council as equal, as an independent legislative branch that must exist on equal footing with the executive branch. And I’ve already gone out of my way, from a transition standpoint, to invite every member of City Council to be a part of the transition. Even in the inauguration, we are planning one event and opening it up to City Council and their families. It’s not going to be an elite event or an evening event. There’s no inaugural event. It’s going to be a humble event that hopes to signal this new spirit of collaboration.

One of the things we’ve talked about that, hopefully we’ll be able to see very, very early on, is fundamentally transforming the way individuals see government when they come into the city government center. Instead of having a metal detector and uniformed security guard, we envision a help desk. We envision people greeting you, actively fielding phone calls on behalf of the city, mobilizing volunteers—an active, engaged, vibrant, positive place to be, not one that seems somehow walled off from the community or is only a place where you go to pay a bill or something like that.

TheBurg: What do you see as the first order of business on day one?

Papenfuse: I have said that, on day one, I would meet with the attorney general. We’ve already put in a request to Kathleen Kane’s office, and we’ll try to make that happen before the close of business that day, as well.

Recently, I took my first tour of City Hall. Have you ever done a basement up tour? I had my first one. Room after room after room in City Hall are filled with files and documents that are orphaned or abandoned that no one really knows what’s there. We have to find out. We also have to look structurally and spatially about how we reorganize City Hall.

TheBurg: So, you’re saying that there may be documents in there that somehow are relevant to the city’s recent history?

Papenfuse: Yes. And I also think symbolically we need to move City Council out of the basement. They’re in substandard conditions at the moment. I think they deserve a bright, beautiful office where they can conduct business, as well. I’m going to look to do that very early on.

TheBurg: What is your first policy priority upon taking office?

Papenfuse: I’d have to say that the first priority is the reopening of the Harrisburg city budget. Now, there are many priorities, so don’t misinterpret that and say it won’t be focusing on public safety, etc. But it’s all going to be in context of the budget. The budget sets those priorities, and you’ll see an effort to reallocate funds within the budget to reflect the reports of the transition team.

So, the way the process is working is that the transition team—there are seven transition teams—they’re each going to author a report that will come to me before the Christmas holidays. We’re then going to spend a week or so synthesizing those reports, putting them together into one document, which eventually will become a public document, but which will also be the guiding document that we use to reopen the budget in January. My understanding is that we’ll have two weeks—intense weeks—to reopen the budget and to reallocate funds from one place to another.

We’ve looked through the budget carefully. We don’t see any additional revenue streams. I think the budget is responsible in that it doesn’t over-anticipate too much, but there’s certainly not an additional funding source available. So that means, to the extent that we feel economic development is a priority or something else is a priority, we have to fund that by reallocating funds from somewhere else. And that’s going to be the initial conversation. It’s going to be the initial focus of January, and hopefully there will be very good dialogue on that. I will make it a point to make sure that individuals on City Council—that I’ve had a one-on-one with them beforehand, that there are no surprises in any of the allocations that we’re requesting. Indeed, we’ve asked City Council members to be parts of all the transition teams, so hopefully they’ve had a hand in shaping the recommendations by those teams.

TheBurg: Where would you like to see more money disbursed?

Papenfuse: I will not prejudge the transition team report, but I think there is a consensus around this point that the city—and it’s in the Strong Plan—the city has to have a renewed emphasis on economic development. We really only have one option. Yes, we need to make sure that Harrisburg is a safe place to live. Yes, we have to make sure that the government is functioning well and communicating well, and there’s an emphasis on civic engagement. We have to do all that. But, unless we can expand Harrisburg’s tax base rather dramatically over the course of the next three years— unless we can bring in additional revenues through development, through making Harrisburg a place where people want to come and conduct business—then, ultimately, the Strong Plan will not be successful because it gives the city a finite window of time to rebuild its financial foundation. And the subsidies within the Strong Plan aren’t going to be there forever. So, we have to take advantage of this moment.

TheBurg: My philosophy has been, if you set the groundwork for what a city is supposed to do and make it more attractive through infrastructure improvements and through a more responsive and responsible government, you would have the desired effect of making the city a more attractive place to live and work. I say that as opposed to putting effort into a more directed economic development strategy apart from that.

Papenfuse: I don’t think it’s apart from it at all. I think the strategy needs to be linked exactly to that foundation that you’re describing. It’s not a sort of outside influence coming in. We have to create a desirable environment. We have to create an environment where people will be attracted to want to come and live. And that’s precisely what you’re discussing.

At the same time, we have had no emphasis at all on economic development. So, we have no one out there trying to recruit new businesses to come into the city. We have no one out there trying to look at arts and grants that are available as potential catalysts for other things in our city. We haven’t done that. We haven’t re-made Harrisburg’s image. We haven’t done anything on the marketing side.

So, yes, that requires the real act of engaging the public and hopefully empowering the neighborhoods to foster a sense of pride and engagement. But it also requires government performing its functions well and helping get the word out and helping coordinate, and that’s something that government can do.

TheBurg: Many times, municipalities, and the Reed administration was a poster child of this, find themselves in a situation where the tail wags the dog. So, they ignore or minimize things like good government and infrastructure improvements and focus on economic development initiatives that often go awry. That’s my concern always when we talk about the government getting involved explicitly in the effort of trying to attract and spur business.

Papenfuse: I think that economic development should reflect the priorities of the community. It can’t be something that is top-down. It has to be bottom-up. But I think it can be linked to the comprehensive planning process that will be reignited in the new year. We’re going to be going neighborhood by neighborhood, assessing the needs and the desires, trying to encourage neighborhood organizations to grow maybe where they aren’t and have a network. I think, through that process, we’ll be able to re-establish a new zoning code and economic development will follow. So, it’s not something that is going to lead that conversation; it will follow the conversation. But it’s something that we have to start paying attention to. The city has the capacity for tens of thousands of more residents and, with the large proportion of tax exempt properties, we have to get more individuals contributing financially to the city, if it’s going to be successful.

TheBurg: Speaking of economic development, I—and you as well—have been a vocal critic of this thing called the mayor’s revolving loan fund, which has been revived. What is your position on that?

Papenfuse: I believe in the power of micro-loans. And I believe that there is a role that the city can play in helping lend to individuals who can’t find that opportunity through a conventional bank. So, let’s say you have a small business that is looking for just a small line of credit to help expand, and it’s got a good business plan, and it’s been vetted through a committee that is really reflective of the community, and they just need a line of credit up to $10,000. It’s very hard to find something like that with a conventional bank. In coming from a small business that really has been as successful as it has been primarily because of the ability to access credit, I recognize the limitations of the current system for particular individuals and particular careers. So, I would like to see the revolving loan fund take a different emphasis. It certainly shouldn’t be duplicating a service that can be handled by the current marketplace. I would not support that. But I think there is a role, targeted and strategic, to help support business initiatives that otherwise can’t find financing.

I have talked to the members of the committee. Right now, while it was revived, they haven’t awarded any funds, and they’re open to the concept of a different mission for that. Look, we can only loan funds to the extent that we have access to the money. But my understanding is that there is some money available. The question is, how do we want to lend it?

I’m also in favor of re-invigorating the effort to track down and find payment for the loans that were made under the previous fund. I don’t understand why that hasn’t been a priority up to this point. To the extent the records are missing, we will open up an active investigation into where those records are.

TheBurg: I’ve heard that there are many records missing, and the ones that exist are fragmentary. The Thompson administration did make some effort to recover funds, but it seems to have been episodic.

Papenfuse: I think the public has a right to know what was leant, what is still out and who owes what and who has paid what. I don’t know if those records have been made public. We’ve heard snippets and parts. I understand that those records may not be located at the moment, but they went somewhere. We have an opportunity, I think, to rebuild the city archives and establish a pattern of recordkeeping for the city of Harrisburg that really hasn’t existed for a long time. These are public documents. This was public money. To the extent that that money can be reclaimed and reinvested into the fund to support better, vetted projects that really could have a community impact, I’m all for that.

TheBurg: There are many resource constraints in this city—everyone wants to do more than they actually have the ability to financially support. How do you expect to maximize the resources that are available as per your priorities?

Papenfuse: There are finite resources available, and we are going to use that transition report as a guiding document for the budget reallocation process. I’ve established a budget committee. I’m going to be right there trying to have the budget reflect the priorities as best we can.

The larger question is how do we access additional revenues and additional funding streams because we are relatively limited in what we can do. There are little things. For instance, the city doesn’t even have a list of sponsorship opportunities. For instance, maybe some know what the fireworks cost on the Fourth of July. Others may not know that this fire station needs some new equipment or we could really use something else to help make the housing department more efficient. Who knows? I’d like to develop a list of sponsorship opportunities and to help publicize that, to begin working to try to create public/private funding sources that could help the city. By the same token, I’ve looked into reviving the Harrisburg Parks Partnership, which existed in the Reed administration and was a private foundation means of getting funds donated to help support our parks. That sort of has gone by the wayside. That should be reinvigorated.

So, there also should be a renewed emphasis on grant writing. There are a lot of opportunities there that aren’t fully tapped. So, I think you’ll see, at least in the initial budget document, we will be somewhat limited in what we can do. We’re not going to be asking for new money that isn’t somehow already there. We’re just going to be reallocating. But, all of our department heads—everyone will be focused on developing alternative and additional revenue streams over the course of the next year or so, so that, perhaps by 2015, we’re in a position to do a little bit more here or a little bit more there.

Plus, we’re going to be establishing these new siloed-off nonprofits that will be part of the Strong Plan. If that money is spent wisely—and, by wisely, I mean if it’s used to leverage more money as opposed to being used once and gone or used to balance the general fund or however else it might be used. If we can make sure that that money is really invested wisely, and that means generating additional funds, we’re going to be better off. And you’ll start to see that take effect, I imagine, by the end of 2014. So, hopefully, we’ll be in a new position by 2015.

TheBurg: How will your administration be different from what Harrisburg has known recently?

Papenfuse: We have covered some of that. I think it’s going to be that commitment to engaging from the grassroots and not simply having a top-down style of leadership, but one that’s more bottom-up, or at least one that’s founded upon dialogue. I think you’ll see that reflected in the relationship with City Council, at least I certainly hope. I’m working hard on that. Also, just in the very ability to access City Hall and to get information. I know that the communications transition team has been working diligently on the issue of the phone system, the need for a new website. These are very much on the forefront of everyone’s minds now. How much we have in the way of resources to do this is another question. But, if we can muster volunteer support, that’s really going to be the key. I’m not against having volunteers help answer the phones in City Hall if we can do it. And that will be different, I think, than past administrations. I want to build connections to the surrounding municipalities and the West Shore and everywhere else.

I was told just recently at an event I went to in Camp Hill that I was the first mayor of Harrisburg ever to come to this event in 20 years. I think, for too long, we just had a very insular focus on the city, and we haven’t seen it in relation to the rest of the region. If we start doing that, we’ll be able to tap a much wider array of resources than we’ve ever been able to bring to bear in Harrisburg before.

TheBurg: Harrisburg would really benefit from a greater perception that it is not just this island, but is a central part of an entire region.

Papenfuse: That’s right. And it goes both ways. The county, for instance, continues to somehow still talk about the city as being distinct from the County of Dauphin when, in reality, we are part of the County of Dauphin. We vote for our county commissioners the same way that we vote for our City Council representatives. These divisions—I will put the blame on the city over the past 30-plus years for fostering this sense of itself as an island unto itself. But these divisions have to be healed, especially as we look at the regionalization of other services, whether it’s issues of public safety or parks or you name it.

TheBurg: That seems to be where the future is moving. It’s reversed course from this psychology that you need to have smaller, standalone entities.

Papenfuse: Harrisburg has exacerbated its own problems by sort of taking a pride in that and not encouraging individuals to contribute when maybe they could have, not seeking to bridge that. So, we’ll be working on that. That’s another difference between myself and the past administrations, I think.

TheBurg: Numerous times, I’ve written that I’ve perceived the mayor as essentially an administrator who is charged with delivering a group of services to taxpayers. Can you share with me whether you share that perception or if you see the mayor as something else?

Papenfuse: That’s a really good question. It gets to different individuals’ philosophical views of what government should be and what government can be. There’s no question there is an important administrative aspect of the next mayor. By the same token, the Strong Plan has established the COO position, which is essentially supposed to be the chief administrator of the city of Harrisburg. How that person relates to the mayor and relates to the department heads—that has yet to really be worked out. It hasn’t been worked out yet, and maybe it wasn’t able to be worked out until we were at the point where we could at least start with a balanced budget and have the specter of bankruptcy removed, and now we really can begin to see it.

I actually see the mayor as being much more than an administrator, and I have to say that I have felt this already with the weight of the transition and the importance of the transition—I’ve had a chance to really deal with that in my own mind. I think there is a symbolic role for the mayor, and there is a role of being the custodian of the aspirations and the hopes of the community. And it has to be somebody who is able to give voice to the voiceless, connect the disconnected and embody through one’s actions the hopes and spirit of where we want to go from here. That’s not just an administrative function. It’s something of a visioning function.

I think we’ve maybe disagreed in the past over this very issue, in part because, at one point, I think you wrote that you didn’t want your mayor to inspire you. You just wanted the trash to be picked up on time. I want the trash to be picked up on time, so don’t think I’m discounting that. But I do think that there is a healing that has to happen, a reconciliation that has to happen in Harrisburg because we haven’t had a strong connection to the mayor’s office for too long. So, I’m going to just, I think, disagree philosophically on that. I also feel that we have an opportunity to re-market and re-brand the city and emphasize new things.

Don’t underestimate the degree to which individuals relate and look to the mayor as the embodiment of their aspirations for where they want to be. This is a very weighty thing. I’m hoping that I can live up to that. But I certainly feel the pressure of the moment. I believe there is more goodwill and more consensus and hope for Harrisburg’s future now than at any other moment that I’ve known in Harrisburg. It’s going to be up to the mayor in conversation and in collaboration with everyone else, but fundamentally to access that goodwill and turn it into something positive.

TheBurg: It will be interesting to see how the power structure shakes out between the mayor, the COO and the receiver. It still seems fluid.

Papenfuse: It will continue to shake out. I think the receivership will disappear in the short-term. How short, I don’t know, but I’d say it’s extremely likely to happen before the end of the year, and that will further redefine roles and expectations. I have to choose a new COO for the city of Harrisburg. That is something that I am reluctant to do until I’ve established my other department heads, and I have had a chance myself to really assess city government. So, I consider myself the acting COO and chief of staff, at least in the initial run here, so that I can properly assess what needs to happen. So, there is going to be a lot of change, and some of that is certainly beyond the control of the mayor’s office.

I believe that we have been very fortunate in Harrisburg to have had two receivers, both with very different styles, but who fundamentally weren’t interested in taking power away from the mayor’s office to do the day-to-day operations of the city. Whether you consider that to be an administrative function or representative function, as I sort of do, they don’t want that, and they have resisted that at every turn. So, I think we will have something of a seamless transition away from receivership, and that’s because the receivers themselves have seen to it that they didn’t really overstep their bounds, even when it could have been fairly easy to do so.

TheBurg: I would agree with that. When Harrisburg entered receivership, I thought it would be a certain type of thing, and it ended up being quite different, and for the better.

Papenfuse: I would admit to feeling similarly. I was skeptical, and I think the skepticism was warranted. Having gotten to know receiver Lynch now much better, we’re really fortunate to have him. I think he has the best interests of Harrisburg at heart.

TheBurg: Last question—if you had one wish for the people of Harrisburg for 2014, what would you wish for?

Papenfuse: My wish for the public of Harrisburg is that they will feel a renewed sense of pride and prosperity and connection to their government for the first time in a long time. And that they’re going to want to get involved in a call for action that we’re going to lead as we go through neighborhood by neighborhood. And that, for the first time really, hopefully, feel inspired to hear that call to work in collaboration with the new administration.

Eric Papenfuse will take the oath of office as mayor of Harrisburg at a ceremony on Monday, Jan. 6, that begins at 10 a.m. in the lobby of City Hall.

Cause for Optimism: In addition to resolving its financial crisis, Harrisburg may benefit from a growing preference for urban life.

December 31, 2013 | by David Butcher

We are at a promising time in our city’s history.

This is due, in no small part, to the obvious and recently well-publicized reasons: the election of a new mayor; the imminent resolution to a debt crisis caused by the city’s incinerator; and the outline, at least, of a comprehensive foundation laid out by the receiver’s team to address a decades-long structural deficit. Optimism, after several difficult and uncertain years, is finally, welcomingly warranted.

There is, however, an additional and more fundamental reason to be optimistic about our city. For the first time in more than 60 years, certain trends in residential preferences and business location decisions—or economic geography, as it is sometimes called—favor urban centers like Harrisburg.

These trends have been well-documented and analyzed, most notably by the urban economist Richard Florida in his book “The Rise of the Creative Class” and, more recently, by journalist Leigh Gallagher in her book “The End of the Suburbs.” As Florida, Gallagher and many other observers have pointed out, these trends are animated by a few key, interconnecting factors:

1) The shift in the economy to increasingly creative, knowledge-based industries.

2) The emergence of a generation—born between 1979 and 1996, known as Millennials—whose living and work preferences favor walkability, access to mass transit, unique architecture and design, close proximity to restaurants and shops and a diversity, authenticity and overall “coolness factor” generally not found in the suburbs.

3) The labor market alignment of Millennials with the knowledge, technology and innovation industries, which together fashion a new “creative-class” economy and metropolitan geography.

Anyone who has visited New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston or Washington, D.C., lately will have seen the impact these trends are having on their downtowns and surrounding neighborhoods. After six decades of decline, each of these cities has registered significant gains in new residents in the 2010 census. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, the 30 largest U.S. cities (not metropolitan areas, which are sometimes conflated with the word city, but actual center cities) have gained population by a median of 5.5 percent from 2000 to 2010. And the Brookings Institution recently released a report showing that, between 2011 and 2012, center cities within the 51 largest U.S. metropolitan regions (averaged together) grew more than their surrounding suburbs for the first time since 1920.

Talk of a national urban revival is no longer just wishful thinking by city boosters. The trends and supporting data are real. We are at an inflection point in metropolitan migration patterns throughout the country, driven in large part by the living and work preferences of young adults ages 20 to 34. Charles Lesser & Co., a real estate consulting firm, recently surveyed the preferences of this age group and found that:

31 percent prefer to live in a center city (twice that of previous generations of the same age cohort).
Two-thirds seek walkable places or town centers.One-third are willing to pay a premium to be within walking distance to shops, restaurants, bars and other amenities.
Half are willing to give up living space in order to live in a walkable neighborhood.
Diverse neighborhoods, close proximity to jobs, “authenticity” and places that foster social connectedness are highly valued.

In other words, the places with attributes that Millennials prefer (walkability, social amenities and “cool factor”—i.e. cities) have an inherent competitive advantage to their surrounding region in growing their economy and population. Furthermore, unlike the “old economy” model of labor-market geography, where workers tended to follow the jobs, now the jobs, at least in the creative, knowledge-based industries, are increasingly following the workers. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Companies Say Goodbye to the ‘Burbs,” stated that, “…U.S. firms have begun a new era of corporate urbanism… The bottom line: companies are under pressure to establish an urban presence that projects an image of dynamism and innovation [to attract younger workers].”

Despite being a smaller, “third-class” city, Harrisburg is not immune to these trends. In fact, for the first time since 1950, Harrisburg registered a modest, but still meaningful, population gain in the 2010 census. Not surprisingly, the gain was driven by young adults. The 2010 census reveals that Harrisburg increased its share of 20- to 34-year-olds by 8.7 percent, or 979 residents. In fact, this increase in young adults is actually larger than the total population gain of 578 residents, underscoring the trend’s strength in offsetting losses in other age groups. As this census data indicates, Harrisburg, despite popular negative perceptions, actually offers many of the positive qualities that young adults now prefer.

Our real estate development company, WCI Partners, has witnessed this trend firsthand with our Olde Uptown neighborhood redevelopment project. In 2007, we began renovating vacant, historic row homes in a blighted part of Midtown that had suffered from four decades of disinvestment, decline and concentrated poverty due to the aftermath of the Agnes flood. Since that time, we have renovated more than 100 properties and built 16 new ones within a four-block area, in addition to completing numerous neighborhood improvements like new sidewalks, streetlights, street trees and banners.

As a result, we have seen an influx of about 250 new residents to the area over the last six years (which, in turn, has created a vibrant community with a 90 percent drop in crime). The majority of these new residents (but certainly not all) fit the Millennial profile of professionals and creative types ages 24 to 34, who prefer the walkability, diversity, interesting design and architecture and proximity to bars, restaurants, coffee shops and downtown jobs that the neighborhood affords. The trend (if not quite the magnitude) is as real in Harrisburg as it is in Philadelphia or Washington D.C. As we say in the real estate business, there is demand for city living, at least from a certain (not so insignificant) segment of the market.

Consistent with the “creative-class economy” model of geographic preferences described above, there is also demand from knowledge and technology-based businesses to locate in the city. We have seen this trend at WCI Partners, as well. In fact, over the last half-year, we have been renovating an historic Front Street mansion in Midtown for WebpageFX, an Internet marketing company currently located in Carlisle that will be moving about 50 college-educated employees (almost all of them in their mid-20s) to the city this spring.

WebpageFX began its search almost three years ago, considering locations around the central Pennsylvania region. The company ultimately decided to locate in Harrisburg due to one overriding factor: the city—and its attributes that Millennials prefer—provided the strongest competitive advantage in attracting and retaining young, place-conscious talent. As WebpageFX’s owner Bill Craig told me, “The city is where our employees want to be. They want the proximity to restaurants, bars, coffee shops, the riverfront and other amenities that it offers. Everyone is really excited for the move.”

This and broader examples (andCulture, Red Privet, Pavone, WebClients and others) demonstrate the virtuous cycle that these “new economy” trends generate. Vibrant cities attract creative, young people who, in turn, attract creative businesses that together create more vibrant cities.

This virtuous cycle can be seen more widely in recent development projects and the emergence of “creative-class” services and amenities in the city. Projects like COBA and LUX by Brickbox serve to confirm the demand created by the trend in urban living preferences. New student housing projects, like International House, in concert with the emergence of the HACC Midtown Campus and Harrisburg University as educational anchors, reinforce the city as a “new economy” location. Millennial preferences for urban amenities have driven the development of 2nd Street in downtown, as well as the emergence of neighborhood businesses like Little Amps, Midtown Scholar, Midtown Cinema, Stash, TheMakeSpace, St@rtup and others. And continually growing organizations like Harrisburg Young Professionals help to provide the scaffolding of social activity, civic engagement and consumer spending necessary to sustain and bolster this positive cycle of urban growth.

To be sure, most cities, like Harrisburg, still have a variety of serious challenges to overcome, many of which cannot be easily solved and some of which serve as obstacles to the very trends that would alleviate them. And it often seems that the smaller the city, the bigger the challenges, due to less critical mass and a smaller pool of resources to marshal. Nonetheless, it remains encouraging that the prospects of meaningful growth for cities (including Harrisburg) are real and even seem to be strengthening. For so long, cities have struggled, with frequently frustrating results, against the predominant trends of suburbanization. Now that some of these trends are reversing, it will be the job of public officials, business leaders and various other stakeholders to implement the policies, initiatives and strategic partnerships that will effectively harness them.

David Butcher is president of WCI Partners LP.

We All Profit: Our new Community Publishers are ensuring the future of the social good we call TheBurg.

December 31, 2013 | by J. Alex Hartzler

The New Year brings a sense of re-birth, excitement and hope to Harrisburg and our region.

With a new mayor and a “Strong” plan for a new fiscal reality, there is a palpable sense of optimism in the air around town. As Dave Butcher points out in his excellent article in this issue, national demographic trends that favor the re-birth and renaissance of cities nationwide are also beginning to have a small, but perceptible, impact here at home. These trends, coupled with focused, effective leadership, a re-invigorated citizenry and a business community that believes in the promise of better days ahead, bode well for 2014.

This month, TheBurg turns 5, and we have much to celebrate. Larry Binda has led a transformation of our publication over the past year. Together with our lead writer Paul Barker, our designer Megan Davis, our sales manager Lauren Mills, our web designers and managers at WebpageFX (who will move their company and their 50-plus employees into the city in early 2104) and all of our many contributors, TheBurg has gone from good to great in under a year.

Equally important, leading individuals and businesses in the region have noticed our work. These community-minded leaders appreciate the importance of the public service TheBurg provides through engaged reporting. More than noticing, they have agreed to join with me as “Community Publishers.” Their names include: Select Capital Commercial Properties, Integrity Bank, Greenlee Partners, Capital Blue Cross, Sutliff Chevrolet (who also continues to support 3rd in TheBurg), WCI Partners (where I am also a partner), Consolidated Scrap Resources, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and RE/MAX Realty Associates Ray Davis and Wendell Hoover.

Inside this month’s front cover and inside the cover of every month and on our website, you will find these leading brands and individuals. Each month, they— along with our advertisers—will bring TheBurg to you, free of charge. Through their annual commitment to TheBurg, they will allow us to write the stories, publish the pictures and distribute the paper you have come to know and expect.

In effect, these Community Publishers are joining with me to create an entirely new business model for a local monthly print publication. Implicit in their support is the realization that advertising alone is not enough to sustain a publication. At the same time, they understand that the entire community benefits from engaged news reporting—and that someone has to pay for it. The problem, in the age of the Internet, is that other media and venues are taking advertising dollars once directed to print. It is equally hard to efficiently mail or distribute paid subscriptions. The “free-rider” problem is endemic. Many, if not all, would like to see a quality product— particularly one that mentions their name and good work from time to time—but many more would prefer if someone else pays for it. Fortunately, these leaders have the vision to see and support this reality.

I call this new model the “all-profit” model, as in “we all profit” from having TheBurg around. Even though I have pledged to my fellow publishers to take zero profits (as in “none”) out of TheBurg personally, I know that I profit along with the community. Even though no one makes monetary profits, our lives are greatly enriched as we open and read the stories of our neighbors each month and follow along on the web and through blogs and social media.

In the end, our community life—and quite a bit of our personal lifestyle and standard of living—is greatly influenced by the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, in the public sphere. If those stories are undeservedly negative, as they have been in Harrisburg for some time, the community suffers. If we tell the real story—about the 95 percent that goes right every day instead of the 5 percent that goes wrong—we all benefit.

Let’s be perfectly clear: this is not about charity. This is enlightened self-interest that recognizes that doing well and living well are not measured by bottom-line profits alone. Conversely, it is the recognition that, while there are other measures of success, conducting a business that can pay all its bills is a necessary condition to ensure long-term sustainability.

Our community publishers “get it.” And, since they do, you too will continue to “get” TheBurg. We have room and, in fact, a need for more of them. You will know that we have reached our goal of financial sustainability only when each logo box is occupied by an actual logo. If you know anyone who shares our vision and loves TheBurg, please tell them about us and encourage them to join us. Most importantly, please join with me, as we say “thank you” to all of our community publishers for their wonderful support.

J. Alex Hartzler is publisher of TheBurg.

Music Traveler: Miles and miles gone by, Harrisburg native Koji stops at home.

December 31, 2013 | by Samantha Moore

On the odd occasion he rolls into town, Andrew Koji Shiraki (Koji) spends most of his time at Little Amps on Green Street in Harrisburg or the Climbnasium in Mechanicsburg. A coffee shop seemed more conducive to steady eye contact, so here we sit, beside the giant red roaster.

I ask Koji to “tweet” me his bio face-to-face: “Artist and activist, born and raised in Harrisburg, who works out of Philadelphia but spends most of the year traveling for music.” He’ll avidly tell me later that people can’t be neatly packaged into 140 characters.

In his army-green pullover, tall collar and wide Ray-Ban glasses that nearly match his almost-black goatee, Koji, 26, explains his history with the DIY (“do it yourself”) ethic. As a kid, he made punk rock zines (small circulation, self-published magazines), organized a fourth grade petition to change the dress code punishment at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, and set up his first music show at age 12. Later, as a teenager, he attended punk shows in D.C., New York and Boston, which gave him a feel for DIY punk subculture movements, such as riot grrrl, which addressed feminist issues starting in the early ’90s.

Today, Koji tours around the world doing music he hesitates to classify. “I can’t pare it down to a genre,” he says. “Call it punk, call it indie, call it folk. I think what it comes down to is that I make ‘people music.'”

As ambiguous as that sounds, most of Koji’s lyrics are based on improvisation—there’s no real formula to his writing—and his influences are sundry. He tries to be “as soulful as Otis Redding, as hard and as vast as The Clash, as direct and artful as my favorite rap records,” he explains. “And I want to make a statement like Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan.”

Koji’s rhetoric is so smooth that it’s easy to forget the diverse paths he’s traveled to get to where he is now. In high school, Koji helped start the Lower Paxton Youth Center, which organized poetry readings, music nights, visual art shows and food pantry collections. For a brief time after high school, he attended Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art. At 18, he dropped out to join a band, but left shortly after due to a messy contract clash with the record label. For a couple of years, Koji attended Harrisburg Area Community College. He left HACC before graduating and decided to settle back into Harrisburg temporarily, still disillusioned with the music industry, he says.

During that period, Koji officially founded COLORMAKE, a Harrisburg-based arts and activism collective/screen printing shop/studio space that coordinated music and gallery shows, skate and bike jams, political demonstrations and more—think Lower Paxton Youth Center for young adults. Its headquarters was a warehouse on S. 10th Street, which closed after a four-year run following a blowout Halloween party. Still, COLORMAKE remains an online destination for artists and activists worldwide. Its Facebook page has more than 2,000 likes and its Tumblr page chronicles Koji’s latest jaunts. Currently, COLORMAKE is undergoing a makeover and is set to relaunch soon, so keep your cursor on the refresh button.

While managing the collective, Koji continued to write music and play guitar. In 2010, around when the warehouse was on its way out, Koji said to himself, “Forget it. I’m just going to go on tour.” (The “it” refers to his lingering disdain for the music business, not COLORMAKE). “So I put my head down and went on tour. Before the end of it, someone [Run For Cover Records] hit me up and said, ‘We want to put out your record.'”

Koji says he initially lied to his parents about how little money he made and about sifting through dumpster trash for food. Most of the cash he did make flowed into his gas tank. “Now I do tours that are [more than] two months long, 70 shows in 74 days,” he says.

In January, he will have just wrapped up a multi-country European tour with Into It Over It and Slingshot Dakota. But he’s already eager to play a homecoming holiday show when he gets back, his first Harrisburg performance in more than two years.

Despite having completed a handful of U.K. tours, Koji tells me that his favorite place to play is Michigan. “When I’m singing there, I look at people that are frustrated because they [outsiders] define Detroit by the decay and statistics, just like Harrisburg and Philly,” he explains. “It shakes me emotionally. It’s an underdog place. We have the same chip on our shoulder, the same unbreakable spirit.”

This compassion for others is what has inspired Koji to keep art and activism together. In addition to COLORMAKE, he’s worked with larger humanitarian projects, including Resolve and Invisible Children on the issue of child soldiers in Uganda, the Congo and Sudan. He also speaks and performs at universities, children’s hospitals and inner-city youth programs on topics ranging from international politics and lobbying to the music industry.

Above all, Koji says he wants kids to know that their voices matter. Just being able to engage in dialogue—to inspire young people to speak and stand up for social and political change—is a step in the right direction, he says. He excitedly adds that art has the power to open up this dialogue.

It’s clear that whatever paths present themselves in the future, Koji will continue to merge his advocacy with his music. And he encourages others to be equally proactive. “People really take for granted the gravity of what it takes to just live a life of intention,” he says, stretching down his goatee. “Whether you’re writing or making art or starting a small business or trying to be an excellent son or daughter, [strive] to not be passive—to really have a direction or trajectory.”

“I think maybe that’s what my art serves to represent.”

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