Penn pulls plug on popular UC Brite initiative

Officials said the program, which was widely hailed as a model of Penn-community cooperation, was not meant to last forever. After spending more than a quarter-million dollars on a highly touted program to light up residential areas of University City, the University is pulling the plug on the 1 1/2-year-old UC Brite initiative because it would cost too much to continue. Instead, University officials are redirecting the funds to a new program, UC Green, which aims to beautify the area by planting trees, shrubbery and flowers. Administrators and community leaders said UC Brite -- a program promoted repeatedly by Penn officials as evidence of the University's efforts to improve its relationship with the community -- had successfully run its course. Under the program, electricians placed about 2,200 lights -- and will install 159 more -- on about 12,000 properties in University City, said Esaul Sanchez, the University official who coordinated the program. Penn spent between $250,000 and $300,000 on UC Brite. "There are [just] so many lights you can put in the neighborhood," said Sanchez, the University's director of neighborhood initiatives. He said that Penn made it clear from the start that UC Brite "was for a limited time only." Joe Ruane, president of the Spruce Hill Community Association -- a group of local residents -- said that "people [in the community] did appreciate the fact that Penn was lighting up areas that needed to be lit." Although Ruane said he felt UC Brite deterred crime from the areas where lights were installed, he said that in some of the areas crime was not heavy to begin with. The program was organized after the murder of well-respected Penn biochemist Vladimir Sled in the fall of 1996 on a dark 4300 block of Larchwood Avenue. UC Brite was aimed at improving lighting in an area bordered by 40th and 49th streets and Market Street and Woodland Avenue. Electricians will install the remaining lights on 43rd and Locust streets and 40th and Chestnut streets on a total of 30 properties during the next month, said Sanchez. As part of UC Brite, the University paid for half of every $25-to-$50 light installed during the program's duration. Local landlords Campus Apartments, University City Housing, University Enterprises and Alan Klein Properties also contributed to the effort. The University also paid for a third of the total costs of managing the program, Sanchez said. He said these costs were a major factor in the decision to end UC Brite. Penn is not paying for any lights for which people applied after August 31, Sanchez said. Through a neighborhood e-mail listserv, the University warned residents living in non-participating neighborhoods that the program would end in August, Sanchez said. "Everybody was given a fair chance," he said. "We really bit the bushes to get people to participate." Although the University will not pay for replacement light bulbs, Sanchez said he believes the community will keep the lights working. "The neighbors are really responsible," he said, adding that "once [a light] is there, you realize how much you needed it." Sanchez also said UC Brite "created a lot of very good feelings in the neighborhoods." These good feelings were one of the main goals of the program's organizers, according to College senior Hillary Aisenstein, who is now the project manager of UC Brite. She cited the program as one of the first new initiatives by the University to improve relations between the University and its surrounding community. Other recent initiatives include its plan to build a new K-8 school at 42nd and Spruce streets and give approximately $700,000 per-year to the school when it opens in 2001. The University also plans to relocate a science magnet-school from North Philadelphia to 38th and Market streets to cut down on its overcrowding. UC Green began a few months ago, according to Sanchez. Forty-two students taking part in the Into The Streets community-service day will begin implementing the program this Saturday, planting shrubbery on Pine Street and Baltimore Avenue near 43rd Street. Aisenstein added that she felt the program had been effective in another of its goals -- helping cut local crime. "[The] environment is safer than it was two or three years ago," she said. "We've definitely had some effect." This semester, Aisenstein hopes to organize statistics in order to map and assess UC Brite's effectiveness in decreasing crime.