For as long as we've been blogging about real estate, we've been complaining about the fact that City agencies own thousands of properties, scattered across town. Don't get us wrong- it's well and good for the City to own certain types of properties, like municipal buildings, parks, rec centers, and

The Philadelphia Housing Authority is now a few years into a massive redevelopment effort in the Sharswood neighborhood which will eventually result in the creation of over a thousand new units of affordable housing. This plan stands on two pillars- the demolition of the Blumberg apartment buildings in the heart of

For most of Philadelphia's history, the Delaware River was its central economic engine, serving as the main hub for goods coming into and going out of the city. Piers lined the river, warehouses and other industrial buildings followed, and then residential neighborhoods filled in behind. As the river has become less important to the

We can't claim to remember the state of South Kensington back in the 1970s, but we have to think that the area around 265 W. Berks St. was quite downtrodden, such that a scrapyard appeared on this 3-acre property which had previously been used as a rail depot. While we can't

An address on Broad Street in Center City, aka the Avenue of the Arts, is a trophy location in Philadelphia, and you'd think that these blocks would be lined with cultural institutions and/or tall buildings jammed with offices or apartments. This is generally the case next to City Hall, but within

In Early 20th Century Philadelphia, the lands south of Oregon Avenue were a wilderness, pockmarked with industrial uses, shanty towns, small hotels, and farms, in between snaking freight rail tracks, creeks, canals, and long roads left over from Native American trails. Isolated communities formed in this wilderness- the community known

A clunky building held down the corner of 17th & Wood for many years, functioning as office space and sitting across the street from a couple of giant surface parking lots. Just a half a block from the Vine Street Expressway, the building didn't call much attention to itself and

It wasn't even two weeks ago that we told you about a gorgeous but deteriorating church at the corner of 52nd & Chester, opining that the new owners of the property would likely tear it down. We visited this building thanks to a reader tip, so we zipped out to

As South Kensington has seen more and more construction over the last several years, developers are slowly pushing their way up into the Norris Square neighborhood, seeking additional opportunities. We've covered a smattering of these projects, like the new homes on the 2200 block of N. Howard Street, but aside

Industrial buildings were first built at 2601 Emerald St. only a handful of years after the Civil War, evolving and expanding as different concerns operated within. For many years, a dye works operated out of this location, eventually transitioning to a bottling company and finally Agnew Signs over the last couple decades. As we've thoroughly documented