The Skyline's Limited

This column originaly appeared on Sunday, Dec. 30, 2007

There is no easy way to put this.

If there was an easy way to put this, you can be certain that I would take it. We in the news businesses – with the possible exception of Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer and some of the folks who work at E! Entertainment’s crack Britney Spears Division -- are very comfortable, shall we say, with taking the easy way when it comes to life.

Believe me, I don’t like the hard way. I avoid the hard way like the folks at the E! Entertainment's crack Britney Spears Division avoid discussions on Salman Rushdie’s latest novel. If the hard way was walking down the street and I spotted it coming in the opposite direction, I would cross over and pretend to do some window shopping at Fairman’s Skate Shop.

So believe me when I say it is not easy to admit that the skyline that greets me when I return to Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from traveling out west makes me want to yawn.

There, I said it. The sight of Chester County’s border along about mile marker 300 is boring with a capital “Is that it?” It’s unidentifiable. It’s non-descript. It’s a vacuum in the skyline sense. My sister once drove to Chester County from her home in Cincinnati and didn’t even know she had passed the so-called “most beautiful place on earth” until she hit the New Jersey Turnpike.

You cross into Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Berks County and you might as well be left in a time/space warp in which you continually return to the same Berks County landscape that you just left, only with fewer animal food processing plants.

Travelers the world over get awe-striking views of the cities they enter that stick with them for years. New York City’s skyline upon boating in on the Staten Island Ferry is one. Driving around the bend in the Schuylkill Expressway near the Philadelphia Zoo when that city’s Boathouse Row comes into view at night is another. Even coming into my hometown of Cincinnati from the south, where the skyline emerges above the stately Ohio River, always left me with a bit of a tickle on the back of my neck.

Coming into Chester County from the west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike leaves me thinking, “What should I cook for dinner?”

This calls for action. This calls for change.

We need to create some better skyline, some identifiable landscape, that will stand up and be noticed. We need to create a skyline that speaks to the Chester County-ness out there, something that will leave travelers passing by open-mouthed and drooling and leave residents coming home from the west with a warm feeling in their souls like they just rescued the neighbor’s puppy.

What that scene should be is not up to me. No, I’ve fulfilled my role in this situation. I’ve identified the problem, and now I’m leaving it up to others to deliver the solution. It could be politicians, it could be business leaders, it could be -- dare we say -- Lani Frank. I don’t care. As I said before, I’m about the easy way.

And when they come up with a new skyline for the entrance way to Chester County from the west, I’ll be here, waiting.

As for the eastern skyline, we’ve got the Gateway Shopping Center and that’ll do.

Will The Real Chester County Stand Up?

This column originally appeared on Dec. 23, 2007

Have you ever closed the refrigerator door and wondered whether the light inside has actually gone off, or is rather still burning, illuminating all the leftover meatloaf and pasta with pesto and rapidly deteriorating lettuce that is taking up space in there?

Ever shut the front door behind you on the way to work and imagined your kids had stopped running around like 5-year-olds and had sat down calmly on the sofa to discuss options for reducing the family household’s carbon footprint, rather than tracking actual carbon footprints from the Webber grill detritus through the living room?

Then you can understand the way I feel at this time of year, when I leave Chester County behind and travel to my original hometown.

I have spent the past 25 years as a resident and registered voter in Chester County, and have stayed relatively put during that quarter century. I don't move much. Suffice to say, the state constables know where to find me if -- or more accurately, when -- my parking ticket warrants reach maturity.

But I have never spent a single Christmas Day in Chester County. Each year I make the sojourn back over the Alleghenies and across the Monongahila and the Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit my family. I may stay only a day or two, sometimes as long as a week, but I have never failed to return there for Dec. 25.

And that has me thinking, as you do when you shut that refrigerator door, what in the world goes on in Chester County when I’m gone? What if it’s nothing like I'm used to? What if everything changes? Could it be that for the few days I’m absent from the Brandywine Valley, the lay of the land reverts to some other reality that only exists just after the Winter Solstice?

Could it be that all of those quaint Revolutionary War stone farmhouses that dot East Bradford are replaced by cheesy Yeadon-style rowhomes? That the breathtaking beauty of Route 162 through Unionville transmorphs into a streetscape comparable with the Golden Outlet Mile outside Lancaster?

Could it be that for a few days the Democrats start running the county courthouse, and that they vote to replace the Ten Commandments plaque with a framed copy of “It Takes a Village?” That Bill Scott and Andy Dinniman have a quick holiday luncheon at Rex’s Bar and not a word passes between them besides, “How ‘bout that Bam?”

Could it be that former Commissioner Colin Hanna whips up a batch of tacos and margaritas and invites his favorite atheist, Margaret Downey, over to the family manse to join him in a few verses of “Feliz Navidad?”

Could it be that while I’m sitting down to a plate of Skyline Chili (onions, no cheese, and two Coneys on the side, please), noted defense counsel John Duffy is standing up in a courtroom somewhere and saying, “Now that I think about it, You Honor, my worthy adversary on the prosecution just might have a point there?”

I don’t know if any of these things actually happens, but if they do and you know about it, keep it to yourself, please. I’ve got one reality and I’d like to stick to it.

Trump Trumped

This column originally apered on Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007

Did you see the news item the other day about the Scottish landowner who is standing up to billionaire egomaniac Donald Trump and his plans to build a $2 billion golf course and condo development project on the Aberdeen Coast?

Did you hear how Michael Forbes, a multi-tasking fisherman and farmer, has refused to sell his 23 acres of “wind-scoured coastline” even though Atlantic City’s favorite comb-over casino mogul had offered him more than three-quarters of a million dollars for it?

Did you tell the story around the dinner table of how the local Scottish business community was up in arms about Forbes refusal to sell, seeing the golf complex as a boon to the local economy?

Did it remind you of anything?

No, I am not referring to that paltry little dust-up in Coatesville over the Iron Eagle Golf Course and one man’s refusal to give up his family farm so that duffers would have a place to shoot a round within spitting distance of a beleaguered steel mill.

I’m talking about the epic confrontation involving Knox Oil and Gas Inc., the residents of Ferness, Scotland and crusty old beachcomber Ben Knox, who owned the beach at Ferness and refused to sell out so that Felix Happer could build a multi-million dollar oil refinery there.

If you didn’t read about that situation in the papers or see it on CNN, don’t feel loop challenged. The confrontation took place only in the sublimely comic imagination of Scottish writer and director Bill Forsyth.

In 1983, Forsyth released the film, “Local Hero,” a story about a Texas oil company executive named “Mac” McIntyre who gets orders to travel to Scotland to wrap up the Ferness land purchase for the oil refinery, an assignment that fell to him largely because of his Scottish heritage. Except that Mac is the descendant of Hungarians and really doesn’t like to travel (“I’m more of a Telex man,” he says.)

The film has everything you’d want in a comedy, if by everything you mean an injured rabbit with two names; a small town populace looking to make a killing and pick up a few Maseratis on the way; a mysterious and beautiful marine researcher who may or may not be a mermaid; a Russian fishing boat captain with a serious investment portfolio; a crazed motorcyclist; the aurora borealis; and a red telephone booth.

The film does in fact have a character that refuses to sell his beach property because he loves living there. Old Ben Knox turns down Mac’s offer to buy him a beach anywhere else in the world, and tricks the exec when he offers to set a price equal to the amount of sand he holds in his hand. It’s wonderful to hear the dialogue between characters as they discuss the modern world versus the traditional world, as in the exchange where Mac wonders how one negotiates business deals with a man who has no door and is told: “The ethics are the same.”

I don’t think The Donald is going to end up with a plan like oil company owner Felix Happer (deliciously played by Burt Lancaster), who eventually decides to scrap the refinery plan and build an institute dedicated to the sea and the sky at Ferness.

But it is wonderful to see life imitating art in some small way, and to know that there are people off the movie screen who regard a stretch of beach as being worth something more than money.

Some Words to the Wise (And O'Rourke, Too!)

These posts go out to my Google Groups list, and show up in (at least) my e-mail without any paragraphing, just one big blog blob. (Say that five times fast!)

If you want to see how the columns/stories look with paragraphing, go to www.michaelpcolumns.blogspot.com.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Ode to a Road

This column first appeared on Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007.

While taking in the sights and sounds of Old Fashioned Christmas in West Chester Friday evening, it occurred to me that although there have been literally dozens of Christmas carols written for our listening enjoyment, there are exactly no poems available to those of us who want to sing the praises of state Route 926.

Forgive me, but that’s the way my mind works. You do not even want to know what occurred to me after taking in the sights and sounds of the Phoenixville’s Blogfest.

In order to correct that situation, I hearby submit the following, “Ode to a Road.”

926! 926! 926!
Your lanes cross open fields.
And the homes that dot betwixt
All bear security shields.

We adore your wooden barns
And landfills named SECCRA.
And across from Landhope Farms
A chiropractic Mecca.

Oh, your ponds must have toads
And your pastures fine horses,
And round about Lamborton Road
There’s room for golf courses.

Springdel and Chatam and 841
Post a speed limit 45.
But squinting at morning’s new sun
On you at 30 we drive.

Your balm of Friends Meeting,
London Grove, is like talcum,
Owning much to the greeting
First Day School, “All Welcome.”

We think as New Bolton nears
“With joy must come woe.”
And then we raise up our beers,
And toast Barbaro.

It’s the watershed of Red Clay
That get’s us to thinkin’
Where will come the day
You’ll be a highway like Lincoln?

For although your number
Is more than 30 times as sweet
We can’t help but wonder
Why this road’s name is “Street.”

New Justice Center Emphasizes Security

This article first appeared on Monday, Nov. 26, 2007.

WEST CHESTER – Chester County’s new Justice Center on West Market Street has one district court, seven floors, more than a dozen cells – group and individual size -- for prisoners, enough space for 18 courtrooms, and a stairwell with 152 steps.

But most tellingly, it also has 172 individual panic buttons to bring courthouse security personnel on the run.

That final figure is the result of changes in design for the 422,000 square foot, $100 million building brought about by a bloody attack in the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta two years ago.

In March 2005, a man on trial for rape overpowered a court deputy, took her gun and killed three people – the judge overseeing his case, a court reporter and another deputy who confronted him as he fled the courthouse. He later pistol-whipped another man whose car he stole and shot and killed a federal marshal unconnected to his trial.

The courthouse killings in Atlanta came just two weeks after a federal judge’s mother and husband were found murdered in their home, and set off a flurry of concerns about the safety of judges, prosecutors and others who work in courthouses across the country.

What had thus been planned as a somewhat standard-issue building housing the county’s Common Pleas courts and court-related offices underwent a metamorphosis into a high-tech structure whose complexity rivals hat of a hospital and whose security suggests something close to a modern maximum security prison.

“This is in no way a run-of-the-mill building,” explained Don Thompson, the county “owner’s representative” who is overseeing the work on the Justice Center, as he did for the Chester County Prison expansion in Pocopson and the county’s Juvenile Detention Center in West Bradford.

“This is a big building. A really, really big building. It is a special place that requires service you can’t ever imagine would be done at another facility,” Thompson said during a recent tour of the building. “The normal frame of reference of an office building that you and I would work in just doesn’t apply.”

Among the security measures that are incorporated in the Justice Center include a basement sheriff’s lock-up that is state of the art in its safety measures to keep prisoners from escaping; judges chambers that are accessible only by security card or electronic entrance; separate elevators for the public, judges and prisoners; and courtroom corridors that are inaccessible to the public and are used only by sheriff deputies and their charges.

It is a far cry from the current courthouse facility, where shackled prisoners walk down hallways in plain view of the public, and can be brought into the courtroom only one at a time. No longer will someone riding one of the courthouse’s four elevators be ordered off so that the deputies can transport a defendant to the courtroom of his or her destination.

“I think the county is going to get a good building,” said Thompson. “Perfect, no. What they paid for? Yes.”

The decision to build a new court facility was years in he making. As long as a decade ago the county’s judges began urging the commissioners to expand the court facility to make room for the new judges the county gained because of its striking increase in population, and all the component personnel – extra prosecutors and public defenders and courts clerks, for example.

The decision was first made to expand on the footprint of the current courthouse, located in the center of West Chester bordered by High, Church, Gay and Market streets. But a dispute between the county and the borough over the density of the planned construction and the proposed demolition of historic properties led to the ultimate decision to relocate the court facilities to the 200 block of West Market Street, across from the site of the county’s new parking garage.

In some ways, the delay itself became a favorable circumstance; because construction did not begin until after 2004, the county was able to incorporate the security changes brought about by the Atlanta courthouse shooting into its design while the building was still being built, instead of after it was completed.

Thompson said that when he came aboard the project, the design by architects Bernardon Haber Halloway of Kennett Square were already on the books. It became his task, he said, to go to all of the county’s court-related department heads, show them the design and ask them what changes they needed.

Which leads Thompson, a friendly man who needs only a small invitation to talk about the project in his hands, to tell the story of the district attorney’s restroom.

In the original design, the DAs office had no interior restroom facilities. In his conversations with District Attorney Joseph Carroll, however, Thompson discovered what a mistake that had been; if left unchanged, it would have put criminal witnesses and victims in the uncomfortable, if not unsafe, position of having to share the facilities with someone connected with their case – perhaps even the defendant.

The DAs office now has its own washroom, Thompson said.

The original design also showed judges having to share courtrooms; now, each judge on the bench currently will have their own courtroom – although they may have to trade off during criminal sessions. Not all courtrooms have been given the necessary individual prisoner lockups, so a judge who hears mostly civil cases would have to move to another courtroom temporarily if he or she is hearing a criminal matter.

When the Justice center opens in late spring or early summer, it will have 15 completed courtrooms, one for each of the county’s judges. There are three additional courtrooms that will remain unfinished until more jurists are added.

Thompson says that special touches in the building – terrazzo floors and milled cherry wood paneling, for example – make it somewhat elegant. Those touches also prove less costly to maintain, however, so that the county will end up spending less money in the long run. He refers to the center as a “50-year building,” ready to stand up for the long haul.

The commissioners, who every month or so are faced with the decision to approve construction change orders that add to the cost of the building, have expressed faith in Thompson’s proposed changes.

“I’ve got lots of confidence in Don,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell, who owes that nevertheless he has ridden Thompson hard on some of his requests.

“I think there were design flaws in (the center) that hadn’t been thought out clearly,” he said. “But Don does not come in with changes lightly.”

Thompson predicted that the final cost of the building will be within three percent of the original budget.

“I’m very proud of that,” he said.