Community members and some students met Tuesday night in Amos Recreation Center on the corner of 16th and Berks streets to discuss Temple’s proposed stadium, a possible public bank in the area and voting registration.
Nearly a dozen community members attended the meeting. Five block captains attended the meeting, unlike the expected 15, head of the Page Street Garden Residential Association Will Mundy said.
To begin the meeting, Mundy passed around a list of names, employment and location of the Board of Trustees. Mundy and Jacqueline Wiggins prepped the group for the upcoming “Stadium Stompers” meeting on Thursday, where the Board of Trustees were invited to attend.
“We are going up against Goliath, who is the Board of Trustees… This is not going to be easy for us,” Mundy said during the meeting. “A lot of us are going to lose sleep, a lot of us are going to miss appointments but in the long run, we will slay Goliath.”
Wiggins, who lives on Page Street near 19th, updated attendees that 300 to 400 signatures were returned on petitions against the proposed stadium.
A student from the “Stadium Stompers” group read the letter from President Theobald about the budget deficit. Community members laughed during the part of the letter where Theobald references the diversity Temple has held since implementing the Temple Option, which allows university applicants to apply without standardized test scores.
Community members added that they feared Temple would buy out George Washington Carver High School located near the proposed stadium site, and use it for parking for the stadium. Attendees also discussed fears of Amos Recreation Center being closed were also discussed.
Attendees also discussed Information about City Council talks about a possible public bank located in the community. This public bank, spearheaded by Councilman Derek Greene, would be regulated and funded by the state.
“There are phases of the state of [community]: some people are informed and angry, there are some people who are don’t know [about the stadium] and there are some people who are just trying to figure out what does this mean.” Wiggins said about Temple’s proposed stadium. “I don’t think they’re thinking in terms of noise, traffic, tailgating and taxes.”
“[I learned] that we need to get the facts, because we don’t want to have stories floating around that are just not correct information,” added Judith Robinson, leader of the 32nd Democratic ward.
Yorktown resident Rochelle Johnson said talks about the stadium not only involve what Temple is doing, but also how the community is approaching the issue.
“Being a past president of a community organization and running an organization for the past 10 years, we focus on some of the wrong things,” Johnson said. “The only thing we focus on is what Temple is doing—but what are doing? What’s our strategy? What do we want for our community? We need to direct that energy onto what we want, because what we focus on expands.”
Gillian McGoldrick can be reached at gillian.mcgoldrick@temple.edu or on Twitter @gill_mcgoldrick.
Be the first to comment