The fly on Rendell's wall

It was one measure of Ed Rendell's self-confidence - or ego- that he let the hard-eyed reporter Buzz Bissinger watch his every move as he tried to lead the city out of a crushing fiscal crisis. Bissinger emerged with a great book about America's cities. Too bad for his sales that the city was Philadelphia.




SILENT WITNESS TO THE CITY'S STRUGGLES
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: FEATURES ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT; Pg. F01

For four years he was commonly mistaken for one of the mayor's aides.

Which is just as Buzz Bissinger wanted it.

Believing that "access is king," he'd perch on a leather loveseat in Room 212 of City Hall for hours and days at a time, dressed in a nondescript gray suit and conservative black shoes, jotting down everything he overheard as Ed Rendell plunged in to manage the basically unmanageable city of Philadelphia.

If asked, he would say who he was and what he was up to. But people rarely asked because he was so obviously one of those earnest young suits always seen dancing at a politician's beck and call.

He was so convincing a nonentity that Henry Cisneros, then secretary of Housing and Urban Development, turned to him after discussing some very hush-hush matter with the mayor and instructed: "Don't let any of this get to the press."

Well, Mr. Secretary, you'll be relieved to know that he didn't give it to the newspapers or TV.

But, er, sir:

He put it in hardcover.

Voices sound off on crime

In his second term, Mayor Ed Rendell was hugely admired for having revived Philadelphia's finances and injecting bolts of confidence into a city that never had much to feel good about. But he hadn't been paying enough attention to public safety. And people let him know it.





IN PHILA., RISING FRUSTRATIONS OVER CRIME
RESIDENTS AND LEGISLATORS SOUND OFF - AND WONDER IF RENDELL IS LISTENING.
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. A01

The voices are of citizen outrage.

Lorraine Dubzak, Rhawnhurst: "I go to Center City periodically. I have a permit to carry a weapon . . . The 15th Street Concourse, I haven't been down there for a while. I'm walking, I'm like . . . where the hell is everybody? . . .

"I had a guy follow me down there. I just reached into my waistband, clipped my clip in, and I walked and I just watched what I was doing. . . . You have to watch yourself."

Inez Porter, Cobbs Creek: "I don't have a drug corner in my area, I have an infestation. . . . I see the nonchalant attitude of the police on the street and the radio. . . . Nobody answers my letters."

The Rev. Kermit Newkirk, Logan: "People are leaving the city in droves. It's crime, schools. People in the inner city, they aren't even surprised by car theft anymore. We have people come out of church, the car is gone. It's not a major thing. It's just the cost of going to church."

Voices of outrage - out of earshot of Mayor Rendell.

In every corner of the city, sentiment is rising for a smarter, more aggressive attack on crime.
To many Philadelphians, crime is no abstraction, no statistic, no headline. It's the anxious undercurrent of everyday life.

And they're wondering if the most popular mayor in the city's recent history hears their cry.

Library makes for good story

Covering a municipal government is usually an immersion in stories of frustration. So I seized the chance to report good news like this.





LATEST CHAPTER ON THE FREE LIBRARY IS TALE OF SUCCESS
IN TWO YEARS, 16 BRANCHES HAVE BEEN UPGRADED INSIDE AND OUT. THE RESULTS, INCLUDING COMPUTERS, HAVE DRAWN MORE PATRONS.
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. A01

The paint was peeling, the roof unreliable, the fluorescent lights too dim. One recent January, the heater conked out for most of the month.

For an awfully long time, the Paschalville branch library in a shot-and-a-beer section of Southwest Philadelphia had the used-up and left-behind look of a city ruin.

But two years ago, the branch underwent a major overhaul. New paint, new lights, new
computers.

New customers.

"The community loves the building," said Frank Ferguson, head librarian at the branch for 13 years. He tallied 9,500 people coming through the doors in October - the most he can recall.

"The only thing is we're so busy now, we need more staff," Ferguson said.

All across the enormous Free Library of Philadelphia system, tarnished buildings are being restored and outfitted with up-to-date technology in an unprecedented public-private drive slated to yield $75 million by 2000.

And the public is responding. Last year, the central library and its 52-branch system recorded 4.8 million visitors - 800,000 more than in 1993. Borrowers took out 6.5 million items - a half-million more than in the 1960s, when the city had a half-million more people.

The system is in such a frenzy of renewal that two employees spend the bulk of their time planning grand reopening celebrations.

Saving the shipyard

One of the things that distinguished the Philadelphia Inquirer was its frequent use of the reconstruction. Soon after a major news event, reporters would interview the participants to recount behind-the-scenes events and tell the story as a whole, instead of daily increments. The reporting had to be deep, the writing quick.





BEHIND THE SHIPYARD DEAL: A 'HAIL MARY' THAT WORKED
THE NEGOTIATIONS INCLUDED EAGLES GAMES AND CAPITOL HILL INTRIGUE. RISKS WERE TAKEN - BY BOTH SIDES.
BYLINE: Howard Goodman and Russell E. Eshleman Jr., INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS, Inquirer staff writer Craig McCoy contributed to this article.
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. A01

The clock was ticking on the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in the late summer of 1995, and the city's desperate play for resurrection - a deal with the German shipbuilder Meyer Werft - was collapsing, too.

A week before the end, Terry Gillen saw it coming. Freighted by foreboding, with 2,000 jobs on the block, the city official looked upon a sea of faces at a union meeting.

"What are we going to do with all these people?" she thought.

She was still wondering when the yard formally closed, on Sept. 15, 1995, then again a few days later, when the Meyer Werft deal died.

Yet within two weeks of that debacle, Gillen and William Hankowsky, both of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., sent letters to every shipbuilder big enough to possibly expand here.

It was a short list, about two dozen companies. They read a simple plea: We have idle dry docks and a pool of public money; are you interested?

It was a long shot, a Hail Mary, a message in a bottle.

But word came back.

Through the industry grapevine, the Philadelphians heard that one company, the Norwegian conglomerate Kvaerner ASA, might bite.

So began a secret, two-year courtship between a region with a sadly abandoned industrial asset and a global high-tech business giant with a niche to fill.

Constitution Center gains steam

Part of the excitement of the Rendell administration was his frenzy to create new cultural landmarks for Philadelphia. Here's the creation of one of them.






RENDELL UNVEILS A REVISED CONSTITUTION CENTER PLAN
IT SHOWS A LOWER COST AND A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT LOCATION. VISITORS WILL TAKE AN INTERACTIVE TOUR THROUGH HISTORY.
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. A01

It will be a temple to America's civic religion and a multimedia show, a theme-park ride through U.S. history and a forum for scholars and debates, a tourist lure and an oasis for reviving citizenship's soul.

The National Constitution Center, for nearly a decade a fuzzy concept with a toehold on Independence Mall, is coming into sharper view.

As Mayor Rendell outlined it yesterday, the center will be a $123 million facility on the north side of Arch Street, facing Independence Hall two blocks south. Target groundbreaking: Sept. 17, Constitution Day, 2000.

Flanked by University of Pennsylvania President Judith Rodin at a news conference at City Hall, Rendell announced that Penn will serve as the center's academic arm, producing conferences, radio programs, a Web site and scholarly works to help bring constitutional issues to life.

Rendell also unveiled an 8-minute video, narrated by actor James Earl Jones, former President Bush and newscaster Andrea Mitchell, featuring artists' conceptions of the center, showing how state-of-the-art museum technologies can be harnessed to illustrate how the Constitution affects everyday Americans and has inspired millions of others around the world.

Rendell said center officials intend to run the slickly produced video for government, business and foundation leaders - President Clinton among them - as they launch a national fund-raising drive.

"We have no illusions that this will be easy," Rendell said, evoking a center that will be as much national asset as local tourist attraction. "But this will be a museum of immense importance."
Rendell, chairman of the project since December, said he has overcome his own skepticism about the project. When he took over, he said, he demanded a hard look into whether the would-be high-tech celebration of the Constitution was either practical or necessary.

Now the consultants' studies are in, he said, and it's clear that the center is doable. More than that - in a nation in which six out of 10 Americans are said to be unable to identify the Bill of Rights - it's a must.

"There's an extraordinarily great need," Rendell said, for a facility that will "open entirely new vistas of understanding and knowledge about the Constitution."

Rendell in overdrive

Philadelphia hosted a "summit on volunteerism" that featured three Presidents and Gen. Colin Powell. It was the hyperactive mayor who stole the show.





A WIRED RENDELL PAINTS THE TOWN
HE'S HERE, THERE - EVERYWHERE.
BYLINE: Howard Goodman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
SECTION: THE PRESIDENTS' SUMMIT; Pg. B01

Five thousand T-shirted volunteers and an invasion of national media poised expectantly at Marcus Foster Stadium heard the first strains of "Hail to the Chief."

And who should emerge, bounding onstage a few steps ahead of the President, the vice president and two former presidents . . . no one but Ed Rendell.

Who else?

Philadelphia's mayor put his signature all over yesterday's opening of the Presidents' Summit.
Not that he tried to outshine the luminaries. He was just himself - to the nth: a ubiquitous presence, a tireless orchestrator, a gemutlich host, a local hero.

And for a man who has stressed the need for America to repair its broken cities, it was just his kind of day.

Rendell's gamble