Neston Heights model home in Easton opens its doors

With new streets, fresh new homes with porches and a renovated community center, Eastons Neston Heights is open for renters and buyers across the socioeconomic spectrum.

But the full renovation wont be complete without homeowners, Easton Housing Authority Executive Director Gene Pambianchi said at the grand opening today of the Neston Heights model home.

Rising at the former Delaware Terrace public housing development, Neston Heights offers family rentals, a senior living area and, now officially, customizable homes for ownership.

The South Side always had the feeling of being on the wrong side of the tracks, said Mayor Sal Panto Jr., who grew up in that section of the city. "But changing neighborhoods changes society."

The look and feel of Delaware Terrace and the Delaware Terrace Annex, with its rundown barracks-style homes, did little to inspire pride among residents, said Panto and Mark Dambly, president of Neston Heights property manager Pennrose Properties. They were home to a perception and, repeatedly, reality of crime.

Rental properties in Neston Heights have not been crime-free, but Panto said the one little incident of Dashawn Cosme, a 19-year-old who allegedly shot and injured two men March 25, was blown way out of proportion. Cosme is still at large, police said today.

In addition to all-new housing, Neston Heights has new infrastructure, a clean-lined community center to replace the old Boys and Girls Club building, and includes elements such as a Neighborhood Networks Computer Center.

Delaware Terrace was built in 1953. Throughout the 1950s, public and low-income housing designers tended toward Bauhaus-style high-rise buildings free of embellishments, but this created the feeling that public housing was punishment, Dambly said.

The Neston Heights properties follow the tenets of New Urbanism, a way of mixing renters and property owners and low-income and high-income housing to create a sort of ready-made community spirit, Dambly said.

For more than 40 years, the Delaware Terrace property was under a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes system, meaning it represented very little tax value for the city. While the city is attempting to create a tax-incentive zone for home-buyers in the area, "these properties will be fully on the tax rolls, so this is a benefit to the city," said City Administrator Glenn Steckman.

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Neston Heights model home in Easton opens its doors