Jay Street

Jay Street is a mixed commercial-residential route on the city's west side. Traveling west, it passes through the following neighborhoods:

• Brown Square
  

• JOSANA Neighborhood (Jay Orchard Street Area Neighborhood Association)
  

• Dutchtown
  

• U.N.I.T. Neighborhood

Major intersections are State Street, West Broad Street, Child Street, Ames Street, and Mt. Read Boulevard.

Like nearby Lyell Avenue, Jay Street has a rich Italian-American heritage and historically was a bustling commercial strip lined with many ethnic businesses. In more recent decades, however, it has fallen on hard times, with parts of it located in the Crescent of Poverty. Jay received considerable attention, however, in the JOSANA Neighborhood Master Plan, released February 2011, which observes that:

Within the neighborhood’s core, prevalent vacancy is the main cause of interruption in the residential fabric. Jay Street, once a robust east-west commercial corridor lined with local shops, hosts only a few stores today; a network of religious institutions and social service providers now contribute to the mix of uses along Jay Street that still distinguishes it from other predominantly residential streets. (p. 33)

Later:

Jay functioned as a Main Street, lined with German and Italian businesses, and factories operated at full speed and capacity. As jobs and people left the neighborhood, so too did local business, and today, Jay Street hosts just a few remaining businesses. The majority of JOSANA’s retail opportunities are now found along Lyell Avenue, but here too, vacancy causes a lack of retail concentration. (p. 67)

Current plans, at least for the JOSANA portion, call for Jay to be converted to a residential street. They also hope to add bike lanes and turn Jay into a "Green Collector." You can read the rest of the document here (large PDF).

Traveling west.

• 190 : Rocky's
  

• 431 : Charles Street Settlement House
  

• The Orchard
  

• 1099
  

• Blue Tower Tech
  

• Coordinated Care Services Inc.
  

• Neighborhood Empowerment Team
  

• 1100 : Club Xtasy

• Gruttadauria Bakery
  

• Nazareth Academy

Comments:

Note: You must be logged in to add comments