Centro De Oro Streetscape Project

[eldondre]

The $3.8 million project, led by the Main Street Program of the Hispanic Association of Contractors and Enterprises (HACE), will stretch from Lehigh to Indiana Avenue on Fifth. To make it happen, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided $2 million, the Philadelphia Cultural and Commercial Corridor Bond Program $900,000, and the state Department of Transportation $977,500.

What neighbors commonly call golden sidewalks will finally be repaved and repainted.

"Now, we are not literally repaving the street with gold," Nutter said in the groundbreaking ceremony last week, "but it will look like it. Well, you know, we have budget challenges."

Those freshly paved sidewalks will get a new coat of bright yellow paint along a squiggly pattern, meant to refresh the corridor's Caribbean theme.

Metal palm trees will line both sides of the street. New benches, planters, and other adornments will be added. The lighting will be improved.

Renovations also will include landscaping, the disposal of dead overhead wiring, and the construction of bump-outs at Somerset and Cambria Streets and Indiana Avenue.

North Philly's Golden Block getting a makeover | Philadelphia Inquirer | 07/16/2010

[desolate]

man what a deal!

3.8 million...

(it's becuase the demanded expensive "custom" concrete and fake plastic trees and a bunch of special trash cans and....)

Bad reporting...it's not paint it's custom concrete work.

He man, just remember when they cut everything that this project needed "special bull****'

[cwd22]

I like that stretch of 5th Street. It feels pretty safe and lively for a North Philly commercial strip. The problem lies in the surrounding blocks; all you have to do is go half a block off of 5th St and there are drug dealers everywhere. Hopefully this will help push them away from the immediate area.