Naked Philly Blog Posts Archive - OCF Realty

Nov 12

Wide Home On the Way for Narrow Street in Bella Vista

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Nov, 12, 2018 | No Comments | Bella Vista

Last year, we directed your attention to the 800 block of Percy Street, an incredibly skinny block in Bella Vista with some hidden but significant storm water management infrastructure. We noted that most of the lots on the block only go back about 30 feet, making for shallow homes with tiny rear yards. This was a fairly common condition in South Philly a hundred years ago, but as far as modern development standards are concerned, those are some [...]
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Nov 12

New Apartment Building Will Cover Mural at 47th & Chestnut

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Nov, 12, 2018 | No Comments | West Philly

Real estate development has obviously changed dramatically over the last hundred years, though some aspects of the experience remain the same as they ever were. Today, if a developer gets their hands on a sizable parcel, it's common practice to build a bunch of new homes that look exactly the same or at least strongly resemble each other. This was also true in the past, as you can see on various blocks all over the city. While [...]
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Nov 09

500 Block of Brown Street Getting Two Huge New Homes

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Nov, 09, 2018 | No Comments | Northern Liberties

Until the early 1960s, the blocks between 5th Street, 7th Street, Brown Street, and Poplar Street were traditional Philadelphia blocks, lined with row homes, apartment buildings, and the occasional mixed-use or industrial building. Of course, that's not the case today, thanks to an urban renewal effort from the Redevelopment Authority. The PRA (then the RDA, still) condemned and demoed all of the buildings on these blocks roughly sixty years ago and sold the properties to Liberty Place Inc., a private developer that's not [...]
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Nov 08

Little Leopard Street Has a Couple Projects On Deck

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Nov, 08, 2018 | No Comments | Fishtown

Leopard Street is such an amazing street name. You know you'd feel amazing about yourself if you had a Leopard Street address. Who wouldn't? So it's kind of a shame that Leopard Street only exists for two blocks in the entire city, running north-south between Front Street and Frankford Avenue, starting at Richmond Street and disappearing after Thompson Street. Exactly 47 property owners have the pleasure of a Leopard Street address, and the way we [...]
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Nov 07

Triangle Home Hates Particle Man

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Nov, 07, 2018 | 1 Comment | Point Breeze

Architects, contractors, and developers all agree that it's easiest to build a new building in the shape of a rectangle. Well, a square probably works too, but the key point is that right angles are desirable, angles create a challenge, and rounded corners look cool but they're a real pain during construction. Thankfully, downtown Philadelphia is built on a grid for the most part, and the majority of the buildable lots are shaped like rectangles. But you still [...]
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Nov 06

Delorean Time Machine: 3900 Market Street

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Nov, 06, 2018 | No Comments | West Philly

Market Street, as the name implies, has served as a commercial corridor in Philadelphia since the days of Billy Penn. Though plenty of residential and institutional uses exist on various blocks of Market Street, commercial or mixed-use are generally the norm. Going west from Front & Market, it takes until 39th Street to find a totally residential use: the 70 garden-apartment style townhomes on the south side of the 3900 block of Market Street. How did these [...]
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Nov 05

King of Jeans Replacement Really Changes Things on East Passyunk

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Nov, 05, 2018 | 7 Comments | East Passyunk

It's been a long and winding road for 1843 E. Passyunk Ave. over the last half dozen years or so, so much so that there's surely a whole contingent of people that don't even remember that King of Jeans and its amazing sign called this address home for many years. The old building was demoed back in 2015, but we first wrote about it during the summer of 2011, when it was listed for sale for [...]
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Nov 02

Mixed-Use Building at 51st & Baltimore Will Take Advantage of Affordable Housing Bonus

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Nov, 02, 2018 | 1 Comment | West Philly

The triangular parcel at 5050 Baltimore Ave. has been vacant for as long as we can remember, having fallen into a state of decline along with many other properties along this section of the Baltimore Avenue corridor. But as we've shown you over the last several years, there have been several positive developments on this block, including the renovation of a retail space into the bar-restaurant Booker’s, another rehab that created event space Petit Fete, and the construction of a [...]
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Nov 01

Auto Shop is Gone on Frankford, Mixed-Use Building Coming Soon

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Nov, 01, 2018 | 1 Comment | Fishtown

Traditionally, whenever someone mentioned Frankford Avenue in Fishtown, they were almost definitely referring to the section of the corridor that starts above Girard. If not, then they were probably thinking of the section of Frankford between I-95 and Girard, home to Barcade and Garage. They almost definitely weren't considering the 900 and 1000 blocks of Frankford, between Delaware Ave. and the highway, which have always been the red headed stepchild of the corridor. But things have changed considerably [...]
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Oct 31

What’s With the Warehouse Under Construction at Randolph & Oxford?

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Oct, 31, 2018 | No Comments | South Kensington

A couple of readers have reached out to us of late, wondering about the ongoing construction at the corner of Randolph & Oxford, in South Kensington. This corner is the rear of an old industrial building, and nobody would have claimed that the building possessed much street presence before the work got started. To be fair, you'll be hard pressed to find many buildings with good looking back sides, but the fact that this building backed up to a [...]
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