After five months without permanent leadership, the University City District will formally announce today that Eric Goldstein has been named the organization's new executive director.
Previously the UCD's director of capital programs and planning, Goldstein will now oversee the entire organization, whose safety ambassadors and cleaning crews have become a fixture in University City.
He succeeds Paul Steinke, the UCD's founding director, who resigned in April after more than three years at the helm.
"Eric has been a key leader and innovator at the UCD," Penn Executive Vice President John Fry, the UCD Board Chairman, said in a statement. "We are highly confident that Eric's superior abilities and leadership will carry the UCD forward to even greater achievements and long-lasting contributions to the city and region."
Goldstein, who is a registered landscape architect, was selected from a national pool of nearly 100 candidates, according to Campus Apartments President and UCD Board member David Adelman, who chaired the five-person search committee.
Other contenders had backgrounds in real estate, urban planning and in running various non-profit organizations.
But Adelman said Goldstein's knowledge of fundraising was a key asset in winning the position.
"There were a lot of projects that Eric wanted to take on, and we said, `Sure, you can do them, but you're going to have to find alternative sources of funding,'" said Adelman, who is also on UCD's board of directors. "He found the money to achieve his goals."
The UCD has an annual budget of $4.3 million, which, unlike other business improvement districts, is funded solely by voluntary contributions. Similar districts in other parts of Philadelphia are financed through mandatory property tax assessments.
And with many of the original five-year funding commitments from major donors -- including Penn and Drexel University -- set to expire next year, the ability to secure and renew contribution agreements is seen as essential in taking the UCD "from start-up to stability," according to Adelman.
One such project that Goldstein sought and received funding for was the master planning project for Clark Park, located at 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue.
The initiative was awarded $55,000 from the private William Penn Foundation, and an aggressive drive is just beginning to raise $2 million needed to begin the improvements. Goldstein says he has no doubts that he will meet that goal.
Since its inception in 1997, the UCD has expanded its original mission of "clean and safe" streets to include urban design projects such as Clark Park, in addition to marketing University City and conducting such neighborhood rehabilitation initiatives as home maintenance workshops.
Goldstein said he hopes to continue in that general direction, but increasingly use community partnerships to leverage its resources.
While he was instrumental in establishing services like the LUCY shuttle, he said he takes the most pride from his work in Clark Park.
"It's the project that brings the most different people in the community together," Goldstein said. "Residents, students, black, white, rich, poor -- it doesn't matter, they all use the park."
"And it was the one -- and possibly the only one in my three years here -- that was actually my idea," he said. "Clark Park was was something I could bring to the organization as a landscape architect having a knowledge of park planning."
Prior to joining UCD, Goldstein worked for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, where he managed the design and construction of several Center City parks. He said that joining the UCD represented a new challenge to him.
"I wanted to diversify a bit -- [the Horticultural Society] was all about public parks and not a lot about anything else," Goldstein said. "Here, I've had the opportunity to do streetscape improvements, transportation initiatives, public parks as well as interesting art projects like banners and murals."
Having already begun to move into his new office -- which he plans to paint the UCD's trademark blue and yellow -- Goldstein describes his newest role as being "very, very different" from his previous post.
"In capital programs, I was focused on a specific project and getting them planned, funded and implemented," he said. "But the executive director needs to be essentially a cheerleader for the whole community, so it's a little different scale."
Goldstein describes himself as a "very hard-driving, straight-forward individual." He hopes his informal nature will make the UCD a productive, but fun, workplace for its 11 full-time employees.
"I'd characterize myself as more likely to have business lunches at Tony Luke's than at the Palm," he said, favoring Center City's no-frills cheesesteak shop over the swanky steakhouse that is home to Philadelphia's political elite.
But he said that he will spare no expense to bring the best concepts in special service districts to this corner of West Philadelphia.
"We'll beg, borrow and steal any good idea," Goldstein said. "We have no shame."
Goldstein will be introduced to the UCD's board of directors at an invitation-only reception tonight to commemorate the UCD's five-year anniversary. He officially assumes his new role on Oct. 15.
