Naked Philly Blog Posts Archive - OCF Realty

May 17

Plans Coming Into Better Focus at 16th & Carpenter, Not So Much at 16th & Washington

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May, 17, 2019 | No Comments | Graduate Hospital

Just last week, we told you that developers had the Hoa Bin shopping center at 1600 Carpenter St. under agreement, surely meaning the end of the line for the vast majority of the businesses located therein. We saw the zoning application and indicated that the developers were planning to subdivide the property into two pieces, with a plan to develop a residential project on the northern side and to leave the southern side idle in [...]
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May 16

Theater Gone, Apartment Building Underway at 6th & Poplar

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May, 16, 2019 | No Comments | Northern Liberties

If you visit the intersection of 6th & Poplar, a few things should immediately attract your attention. The first is the dramatic contrast between the northern and southern side of the block. On the south side are a collection of homes that are part of the Liberty Place Town Homes development, built as affordable units in the 1960s with the architectural stylings of the Northeast. On the northwest corner is a row of homes built within the last [...]
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May 13

Former Church Going Residential Near the Divine Lorraine

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May, 13, 2019 | No Comments | Spring Garden

A few readers have reached out to us in recent weeks, wondering about what looks like some early stage construction activity near Broad & Fairmount. We wrote a story about the former Apostolic church at 1406 Fairmount Ave. waaaay back in 2011, pondering its future after its owners unsuccessfully listed it for sale for $1.4M. Even with the property going back on the market in 2012 with the price dipping to $1.15M, nobody stepped forward to purchase the [...]
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May 10

Addition Shaping Up Nicely on West Girard, With Some Brunch Across the Street

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May, 10, 2019 | 3 Comments | Brewerytown

For decades, Fairmount has been one of the more stable neighborhoods outside of downtown Philadelphia. But this town has always been a city of neighborhoods, often changing block by block. So it's a little odd in the abstract that neighboring Brewerytown languished for many years as Fairmount hummed along, but that was not terribly uncommon in other parts of town (looking at you Rittenhouse and Graduate Hospital). And as has been the case in several [...]
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May 09

Hoa Bin Plaza at 16th & Washington Likely Closing as Developers Propose Homes and Duplexes

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May, 09, 2019 | 4 Comments | Graduate Hospital

Between its building and its parking lot, the Hoa Binh shopping center takes up most of the square block enclosed by Washington Avenue, Carpenter Street, 16th Street, and Chadwick Street. We've personally visited a few of the businesses located in this shopping center over the years, including the Big 8 Supermarket, Nam Son (delicious Vietnamese hoagies), and Huong Tram restaurant. We've learned that the property is under agreement with developers though, and those businesses and several others could [...]
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May 08

Sheridan Street Lots Could Be Redeveloped After Decades of Vacancy

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May, 08, 2019 | No Comments | Bella Vista

As we've detailed over the years, Bella Vista and Queen Village both possess some unique features from a street grid perspective, owing to their status as older neighborhoods. For reasons we can only guess, surveyors established a number of tiny streets in these neighborhoods when they plotted the grid way back when, so there are plenty of blocks around these parts that don't see much foot traffic. One such block is the 800 block of S. Sheridan Street, [...]
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May 07

Stable Lofts Project a Solid “Addition” on North Broad Street

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May, 07, 2019 | 4 Comments | West Poplar

The building at 631 N. Broad St. dates back to 1867, and as you might expect from a building that's been around since the Andrew Johnson administration, it's had a number of uses over the years. It was originally constructed as the Edwin Hart Stables, a function that's called out on an inscription that has remained on the building's facade after all this time. As the years passed, several car companies, a sewing machine company, a hosiery company, [...]
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May 06

Student Housing Replacing Stubby Homes on 35th Street

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May, 06, 2019 | 1 Comment | West Philly

When we think about West Philadelphia, wonderful architecture is one of the first things that comes to mind. With a mix of Victorian homes with colorfully painted bays and a range of aesthetically pleasing apartment buildings, we can geek out in numerous West Philly neighborhoods for hours on end. As we've detailed over the years, an explosion in student housing development over the last handful of years has resulted in the demolition of some terrific buildings on this side of [...]
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May 03

New Bridget Foy’s Progressing at 2nd & South

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May, 03, 2019 | 2 Comments | Queen Village

The restaurant Bridget Foy's operated at the corner of 2nd & South since 1978, a constant in the sea of changing urban landscape. Sadly, a 2017 electrical fire severely damaged the building out of which the restaurant operated, thanks to a combination of fire, smoke, and water. The fire was not only unfortunate because it closed a longtime business, but also because it resulted in the demolition of a rather unique building that dated back to [...]
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May 02

Eight Units Under Construction Next to the 34th Street Bridge

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May, 02, 2019 | No Comments | West Philly

We were trekking through Mantua the other day and were cheered when we noticed some significant progress at a long vacant property where 33rd Street hits Mantua Avenue. We brought this triangular 13K sqft parcel to your attention about a year and a half ago, noting that it had been sitting vacant for as long as we could remember and feeling no sense of shock that the property was City-owned. As is often the case [...]
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