BY TODD SPANGLER
DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

PHILADELPHIA -- Many of the streets of this part of West Philadelphia used to be considered mean, despite the proximity of the University of Pennsylvania, an elite Ivy League institution. The advice was: Don't go west of 40th.In the last 15 years, that's all changed, thanks to a program of homeowner incentives and investment like one being attempted in Midtown Detroit.

In West Philadelphia today, restaurants bustle and coffeehouses abound along tree-lined streets as trolleys whoosh past toward Center City.

Similar efforts are under way in other places -- Baltimore, Cleveland -- but the Midtown effort is a direct descendant of the Philadelphia example. The top consultant to the Detroit project was part of Penn's program to improve the surrounding area and the first to take the incentive to move in. He still lives in the neighborhood.

So what could it mean for Detroit's Midtown, where employees of the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System and Wayne State University are being offered incentives to move in? If the outcome in West Philly is an indication, it could result in higher property values, a drop in violent crime, better schools and a neighborhood where former suburbanites are eager to move.

Doug Jerolmack, a 32-year-old geophysicist at Penn, bought into the neighborhood just four years ago, continuing a trend that started in the late 1990s, when homeowner initiatives were launched to bring professors and other employees in. He walks to work and has all the services he needs -- plus dozens of friends -- within a few blocks.

"Now that we're there," he said, "I don't want to live anywhere else."





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