Many neighborhoods in Philadelphia have experienced dramatic improvement of late, but the city still has a remarkable blight problem. Depending on who you ask, we've got somewhere between forty and sixty thousand vacant blighted properties scattered around Philadelphia. Demolition costs for all those properties would easily exceed $500M, even conservatively.

On and around East Chestnut Street, the dominoes continue to fall.The 1100 block is in the midst of a major transformation, with Brickstone creating 115 new apartments and a ton of new retail through a combination of renovation and new construction on the south side of the block. And maybe a Trader

Too often, as West Philly has seen more than its share of new student housing rise over the last several years, developers have skimped on the design side of things, opting for function over form. It's not that the new apartment buildings in the neighborhood are unattractive per se, but

The intersection of 13th & Locust has long been a thriving and commercially dense area.  However, our interest is with a corner at which very little of great importance seemed to take place prior to the 20th century.  The image here below, taken from G.W. Bromley’s 1895 Philadelphia Atlas, shows a southeast

It might be awhile before developers have a chance to appear before the Fishtown Neighbors Association zoning committee for their proposal to transform a large corner vacant parcel at 623 E Girard Ave. into a new mixed-use building.Developers from Ascender Investments failed to appear for a scheduled appearance with the FNA

It was more than a year ago that we first broke the news that a bunch of new homes were soon to rise on the 2100 block of Walnut Street at the intersection with Van Pelt Street. Back then, developers from Conservatory Group USA had presented plans for the construction of

A story from Michael Klein clued us in a couple weeks ago about the recently opened Sarah's Place at 29th & Flora in Brewerytown. This building was, for many years, home to Sara's Place, which shut its doors a few years back. But new owners from MM Partners, a company that's

The Porch at 30th Street Station, now a couple of years old, has been a big success story for University City District. The public plaza replaced a sad stretch in front of our main train station, with events and food trucks adding life to the landscaped streetscape. It's been great

As Fishtown has continued to redevelop, we've seen a good mix of larger projects and one-off projects, sometimes even on the same block. On the 2100 block of Norris Street alone, we've seen the ten-home Norris Point project and an additional six homes get started a little closer to Frankford

Last week, we directed your attention to the northwest corner of Broad & Jefferson, noting that the Burk Mansion, vacant for about twenty years, was getting a little work done. Just to the north of this beautiful building, we spied some demolition activity that seemed like it could mean more