The new year brings a new vision for the Fairmount Community Development Corporation. With sights on assessing two features of the neighborhood, CDC executive director Kevin Moran hopes to sharpen its character.

In January and February, the CDC will begin the first project: to research and create a report on the health of area businesses on the commercial corridors of Fairmount and Girard Avenues. They will also conduct a study of neighborhood demographics which will provide a snapshot of where the neighborhood is today and how it relates to the commercial corridor.

The study will consist of ten neighborhood volunteers walking both corridors noting the types of retail operations that exist and the number of abandoned properties, Moran said. That assessment will be compared with demographic picture of the surrounding communities. Currently, Moran said, the assessment of business activity will be purely quantitative, but later in the year a more qualitative analysis may be taken.

In addition to assessing and enhancing the economic picture of the neighborhood, the CDC is also looking at how to improve the physical background for any commercial growth with an eye toward enhancing  the Girard and Fairmount streetscapes.

Money for improvements to Girard Avenue have already been provided by the city’s Commerce Department. The $1.5 million grant will provide work completed by the city for improvements that may include bike racks, signage and street trees, according to Moran.

New signage under consideration would take the form of three or four gateway signs, announcing the West Girard commercial district. They would be placed between the zoo and Corinthian Ave. Seven or eight “way-finding” signs will point the direction of landmarks in the community.

The city grant would not cover work done on Fairmount Avenue so, the CDC is searching for alternative sources of support. They are also addressing the lack of public funding by looking at more creative strategies on how to make improvements, Moran said, such improvements may include upgrading pedestrian lighting and installing decorative planters from Broad Street to Fairmount Park

Moran would like to initiate a long-term planning committee for Fairmount Avenue that would include planners and architects to create concrete ideas for aesthetic improvement projects.

As part of that effort he plans to look beyond the problems of today with an eye on the long-term to points only imagined. He suggested, as an example, planning for the effect of driverless cars on parking availability.

This month, the CDC will form a committee within the community to bring back and revamp the Fairmount Arts Crawl. Moran said he will invite residents, businesses and potential exhibitors to join the committee. Last year, after problems felt by the general community, the artists and businesses who hosted exhibits, the event transitioned from small exhibitions within area businesses into a street fair on Fairmount Avenue. But Moran said after a year without the popular event, people talked about how much they missed it and a decision was made to revive the event.

Moran began as the CDC’s head at the end of June 2015, when the organization’s fiscal year ended.  Before that, he honed his community service skills at the Philadelphia office of the Washington D.C.-based International Downtown Association (IDA), which helps to create “healthy and dynamic cities around the world.” There he helped assemble information for IDA’s Local Employment Data index, a comparison of a neighborhood’s daytime and nighttime populations .

Moran says he would like to create a similar index for Fairmount. The information would be helpful to allow businesses to adjust their services be supportive of the community at either time, benefiting both businesses and residents.

But life in Fairmount is about more than business, and Moran would like to see residents take better advantage of existing recreational amenities. Though Fairmount lies next to the green space that shares its name, streets and landforms deny easy access to and use of  Fairmount Park by neighborhood residents, and Moran wants to build on the connection between the park the neighborhood. He will start by determining how people currently using the park and looking at what kinds of improvements can be made to create a seamless transition between it and the neighborhood.

Although throughout the city many neighborhoods have a local park, Moran added, there is a lack of small green spaces in Fairmount and its surrounding neighborhoods. He would like to strengthen ties to the nation’s largest municipal park system to make it feel like the neighborhood park.