Risking life and limb by heading to this area during freshman move-in, we found ourselves on 38th Street the other day jonseing for a slurpee. You can imagine our shock when we sauntered up to the 7-11 at 38th & Chestnut and found this instead:

Huh?

7-11 has made its home here for as far back as we can remember, which is at least a decade. Based on the cleanliness of the floors even back then, we’d imagine it was here even before we can remember. And now, with an utter lack of fanfare, it seems this business is gone forever. Did the lease simply end? Were they scared off by the renovations being done to the Wawa at 38th & Spruce? We can’t find any information about what happened.

This may be the first 7-11 we remember seeing closing its doors, aside from a few in the suburbs like twenty years ago. And while this won’t be a crushing loss to the community, it’s always a bummer to see a long-established business close its doors. Bummer aside, we now are left to wonder what will come here to replace the shuttered business. If we had to guess, the owners of the property will probably build something new and much bigger on this lot, which we believe runs from Chestnut to Sansom and covers about 10K sqft.

Or else they’ll just sell it to Penn. One or the other.

We’ll keep an eye on it and let you know if we hear anything.