Downtown Revitalization - Project Detail

Since the start of the Historic Tacony Revitalization Project in October 2011, to revitalize the commercial corridor along Torresdale Avenue in the Tacony section of Northeast Philadelphia, the Board has been interested in helping property owner's and tenants improve their facades. The Design Team of the organization took up its first project to create design guidelines which were prepared by volunteer architects Ray Brogden and Anthony Zul. We provided samples for them and the resulting design guidelines are available on the Historic Tacony Revitalization blog.

The TCDC Board also wanted to participate in the City of Philadelphia's Storefront Improvement Program (SIP) which offers 50/50 matching grants to property owners and tenants who wish to make improvements to their commercial facades. The Board decided to offer additional incentives to Torresdale commercial property owners and tenants to make these repairs affordable and thus decided to offer an additional 35% match for improvement projects and to wrap both programs together. Any property owner/tenant along the 5200 to 6400 blocks of Torresdale Avenue could participate and provide only 15% of the cost for their project. 

The program called TCDC Facade Improvement program was launched on June 1, 2012 with a deadline for applications on June 25, 2012.  We wrote the application and guidelines for the Facade Improvement Program.  This program has been extraordinarily successful with far more applications than ever anticipated. We will update our blog with before and after pictures of completed projects as they become available in the Fall and Winter of 2012.