Real estate development is looming large in Greater Brewerytown in the new year and 2016 looms on the Greater Brewerytown Community Development Corporation (GBCDC) with promise for continuing the services it provides to the community. James Carter, GBCDC founder and director, said he looks forward to not just continuing those programs, but to improving them.

New housing openings also continue. Projects have been underway for years and some are slated for completion this year. They include:

Developments on 31st Street between Master and Jefferson Streets and 32nd Street at Master Street. Bare ground awaits the first bulldozers, expected to arrive this spring, but nearly complete is Fairmount at Brewerytown, on the Southeast corner of 31st and Master Streets. The luxury efficiency and one- and two-bedroom lofts should be available for rent this spring. The apartment building is built into the West Tower of the former Acme warehouse that occupies the entire south side of the 3000 block of Master Street. Lofts are already being rented in the East Tower at the Lofts of Brewerytown development.

On the GBCDC’s northern border, a renovation development is taking shape at 30th Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue called Eastern Lofts. Carter said the development will be comprised of about 30 units. Most of them will be sold at market rate, but ten will be affordably priced for community members. It is expected to be finished by early fall of this year, Carter said. The abandoned building, formerly used by Eastern Electrical Supply, covers much of the block between Oxford Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue and 30th Street and the CSX railroad tracks.

Luxury apartments will also become available at the “Girard 27” building, to be built on the empty lot on the southeastern corner of 27th Street and Girard Avenue by MM Partners.

With all new developments taking place on the fringes of Brewerytown, Carter is dismayed that no new housing stock is going up in the heart of the community. The fact that the new construction is out-of-sync with the prevailing architecture of two-story rowhouses is also a sticking point with him.

But what troubles Carter perhaps most of all is that the new housing would be priced beyond the reach of current community members and would be available only to new residents.

“Gentrification is still a problem,” he said.

With that in mind, the GBCDC is talking to District City Councilman Darrell Clarke, who is also Council President, about providing affordable housing in Brewerytown. According to Carter, the Philadelphia Housing Association is also in on the conversation. Already there are 200 PHA properties in the neighborhood, but Carter would like to see more. He said the PHA has indicated that might happen, but there is currently no firm plan.

Carter said although there are no statistics on homelessness in Brewerytown, there are many homes comprised of multigenerational families. Such an arrangement may not always be by choice, due to unavailable or unaffordable housing, and in that case, he added, is a form of homelessness.

Due to a lack of green space in Brewerytown, Carter said the GBCDC will try to increase that amenity this year, but there are no existing plans to create new areas. He said he would like to to obtain empty lots through the Philadelphia Housing Authority by the process of eminent domain and turn them green, but PHA has not promised the CDC a location.

Also in the new year, Carter plans to talk with SEPTA about redirecting its route 32 bus from 33rd Street to 31st Street. Though the shift is only two blocks to the east, 33rd Street marks the western border of the neighborhood and Carter said he would like to have the route travel through Brewerytown instead of around it. But as new challenges focus the GBCDC’s attention on areas not yet visited, its mainstay programs will not be forgotten.

Included in the regular continuing GBCDC services that Carter hopes to improve are summer youth programs. The youth entrepreneurial program teaches young community members about the particulars of the business world, starting off last summer with a session on a car washing businesses. He’d like to expand that to include landscaping and operating a newsstand.

The community’s youth are also the focal point of a program involving the farms that GBCDC owns. Two scraps of land, one at at 24th and Master Streets and the other at 31st and Oxford Streets are used to cultivate crops, teaching youth not only how food is produced but the value of doing so, Carter said.

In addition to maintaining the green space that does exist in Brewerytown, Carter said the GBCDC has its own landscaping equipment for that. The organization conducts its own community cleanup days as well as participating in official city clean-up days.

If funds permit, Carter would also like to expand the GBCDC’s work with the senior members of the community. In the past that has included serving a luncheon at Thanksgiving time at which seniors are given turkeys.

Gifts are also given at holiday times to kids at the annual Christmas Party. As those gifts are donated, so, too, are slightly-used coats that are given out each winter.