South Philly Review's "Rough Play"

Our little eyesore has gotten some news media attention - front page, attention, too, with a nice (well, okay, appropriately ugly) photo! - from the local South Philly Review. It's great to see the news media catching up with this story.

Fred Durso's cover story contains some real news - City Councilman Frank DiCicco's claim that the general contractor, Uliano Construction, has been replaced within the past 30 days for not living up to the anticipated timeline. But it looks like DiCicco's completely wrong about that, as Durso suggests in the article.

Maybe that's the real news here: our City Councilman doesn't even know the status of the contractor on the project, and then he misinforms the news media about it. And DiCicco should know better, too. If you know anything about City contracts, you should know that you can't drop a contractor and then replace them within a mere month or so. Oh, no, the City's handling of its contracts isn't that speedy, as we residents around this Milestone in Philadelphia's Progress know only too well!

But you can't blame DiCicco for thinking that the contractor was replaced. We all have our little dreams. It is indeed hard to believe that the City has kept them on the job given the excessive delays in the project.

DiCicco also claims that he's been told by the "City" (whoever that is) that the building will be done by the end of March. Let's hope he's got his facts right on that one.

Kudos to Eddie, my neighbor down the street, who called the South Philly Review in on this story. Eddie's even coined a new name for the project: it's not a Rec Center, it's a Wreck Center.