A team of Collaborative volunteers is working with Cedar Parks Neighbors to create design strategies for redeveloping the commercial corridor on Baltimore Avenue from 49th to 52nd Street. The volunteer team led by David Hincher, an architect at Kieran Timberlake, recently held a community meeting to get neighborhood input on design ideas and to discuss visions for revitalizing the corridor.
Landscape improvements along 63rd Street in Overbrook Farms designed by Sara Pevaroff Schuh.
Pedestrians and drivers along the 63rd Street Commercial Corridor in historic Overbrook Farms will get a treat this spring when the sidewalk planters built by the Overbrook Farms Club emerge from the snow and begin to bloom.
The landscape improvements were designed by Sara Pevaroff Schuh, Principal of SALT Design Studio and a regular Collaborative volunteer, as part of a larger effort by the Overbrook Farms Club (OFC) to enliven its neighborhood commercial corridor, which extends from City Line Avenue to Woodbine Avenue. The initial idea for the project came from a master plan for the corridor that Collaborative volunteers developed in 2007 to provide OFC with a vision for revitalization and strategies for beautification, façade improvements, and site identity.
At 8:30 a.m. bright and early on a Thursday morning, a group of local business owners and intern architects were huddled over photos and diagrams in the Frankford Community Development Corporation’s office sketching and discussing lighting and signage.
The meeting was organized by the Community Design Collaborative as part of the rStore program, which provides preliminary design consultations to groups of small business owners organized by community-based nonprofits. Each rStore project includes a consultation day in which storeowners meet one-on-one with volunteer design professionals.
Drawings of conceptual designs from past rStore projects.
The Collaborative is working with six community development corporations this year to promote storeowner investment in building façade improvements through its new rStore program.
“Façade improvements like new awnings, lighting, security grills or windows may seem like small projects, but they can have a significant influence,” says Emily Stromberg, Community Design Collaborative Project Associate who is managing the rStore program.
rStore is a special type of service grant that provides design consultations targeted directly to storeowners on neighborhood commercial corridors. The Collaborative has partnered with the City of Philadelphia Commerce Department on rStore to help invigorate commercial districts and increase the accessibility of quality design.
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