Upper Darby has received a $1 million grant from the state\u2019s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program to fund the first phase of a new community center to serve the state\u2019s sixth-largest municipality.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just really excited that we got the awards\u00a0 \u2026 This might be one of the first projects that\u2019s purely of this administration, which is really exciting,\u201d Mayor Barbarann Keffer said.\n<\/p>\n
The grant will go toward the feasibility phase of the project, during which the township will work on planning for and design of the prospective new center, as well as gauging community interest and evaluating costs. When construction is eventually completed, the facility will replace an older multipurpose building at 7000 Walnut St. Local officials hope that it will bring revitalization to the area.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in the Stonehurst neighborhood in Upper Darby, and I think it would be fair to say it\u2019s a traditionally underserved community, and we\u2019re very excited to bring a green roof and a bright, modern, forward-looking facility into that neighborhood,\u201d said Vincent Rongione, Upper Darby\u2019s chief administrative officer. \u201cAnd we love the idea that it\u2019s accessible to public transportation and in a very walkable neighborhood, and also close to our big business district.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
From after-school tutoring and basketball courts to a yoga studio and supplemental classes, what the facility looks like on the inside will be up to township residents.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be having some community meetings in the next couple months, they\u2019ll be on Zoom, and we\u2019ll probably have some socially distant outdoor meetings on the site, so people can get a feel for it,\u201d Keffer said.\n<\/p>\n
The architecture firm Buell Kratzer Powell was tapped to do an initial design of the project\u2019s exterior. If you take a closer look at the artist\u2019s rendering of the new center, you might notice that the property isn\u2019t very big. Upper Darby officials say that they have a fix for that.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upper Darby has received a $1 million grant from the state\u2019s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program to fund the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[212,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-178891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-delaware-county","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}