Photo by Annamarya Scaccia / West Philly Local

When West Philly Local profiled Rebels Closet in May, it seemed as if the excitement around the project was contagious. The street wear—meets—counterculture clothing store that took over True Planet Vintage Boutique’s former home at 4501 Baltimore Ave was going to breathe fresh air into the neighborhood—and tap into the West Philly underground not only through major brands like Mighty Healthy and G.E.E.K (Good Energy = Quals Kreation) Clothing Inc., but through in-store events like spoken word nights and a rolling art gallery.

Over the few months since its soft opening, though, Rebels Closet’s doors were rarely open during its stated operating hours, and—at least twice from what we observed—the store was completely emptied of any product or display, only to return a few days later. There was some hope that maybe it was just growing pains, as all businesses have their ebbs and flows, but that hope was soon dashed. As of about two weeks ago, Rebels Closet has been added to 4501 Baltimore Avenue’s “Previous Tenants” list. Around that time, a large group of people began gutting the corner store, carrying mounds and mounds of trash bags out of its doors. Drapes and brown paper material now cover its windows—a “Coming Soon” sign alerting that Zed’s Last Minute Gift Shop will make 45th Street and Baltimore Avenue its new home.

West Philly Local reached out to Takiya Lipscomb, manager of Rebels Closet, to find out what had happened to the clothing store, but she has yet to return our request for comment. As for Zed’s, we’ll update you with more information once we get in touch with the owners.

–Annamarya Scaccia

When West Philly Local last reported on the Center for Culinary Enterprises in May, two new restaurants options were slated to open late that summer—48th Street Grille and Planet Vegan. But the summer has come and gone, and neither restaurant has opened its doors in their respective spaces at 48th and Spruce Streets.

Photo by Annamarya Scaccia / West Philly Local.

This week, West Philly Local caught up with Bryan Fenstermaker, senior director of programming at The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation (TEC-CDC), to find out the reason for the radio silence. Turns out, financing delays pushed back the grand opening of 48th Street Grille, Fenstermaker told us. According to the TEC-CDC executive, Chef Carl Lewis has signed a 10-year lease for the Culinary Center’s retail space, where he will open his American-Caribbean restaurant this spring.

As for Planet Vegan, it’s no longer opening in the second space. Owner Dorinda Hampton told West Philly Local she wants to instead focus on further expanding her health food line, Really Fresh Vegan, which operates out of the Culinary Center, and grow the list of places that carry her products. “Once things get more stable, I will start looking for another location for Planet Vegan I’m really passionate about opening it up in the near future,” Hampton said.

Real Food Works To Go will, instead, open in Planet Vegan’s place, Fenstermaker said—although there is no word yet on its launch date. Real Food Works To Go is a pilot program developed through a partnership between TEC-CDC and Real Food Works­—a Philadelphia start-up providing subscription-based, home-delivered healthy meal plans—that will function as a health food store, as well as offer on-site food preparation, cooking demos, and nutritional education.

In addition to 48th Street Grille, TEC-CDC will open the Philly Restaurant Residency Incubator in the middle retail space at the Culinary Center. The new program, said Fenstermaker, will serve as a sort of pop-up shop for the food world—aspiring restaurateurs and chefs can test out their sit-down restaurant concepts in the 1,445 sq-ft fully-functioning space without “cashing in their life savings to do so.”

The restaurant incubator model received an economic boost recently from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services through its Economic Development Healthy Food Finance Initiative Award distributed by HHS’ Office of Community Services. The award, according to Fenstermaker, will be put towards construction and operation of incubator. In February, TEC-CDC will also release a business plan competition for the incubator.

“The restaurant incubator will allow new entrepreneurs to hone their craft while we work with them to line up financing,” Fenstermaker told West Philly Local. “The end result would be to place them on corridors in West Philly and other parts of the city with financing ready to go. It is a proof of concept model to assist small entrepreneurs.”

–Annamarya Scaccia

Another holiday season has come to 52nd Street and efforts are continuing to help the teeming commercial strip regain its reputation as “West Philly’s Main Street.”

52nd Street Station after renovation.

Over the past five years, the Enterprise Center’s Community Development Corporation (TEC-CDC) has invested in the renewal of 52nd Street, a once busy commercial corridor hit hard by the 10-year Market-Frankford EL reconstruction project. Providing guidance and support, the neighborhood initiative group has worked to spur economic growth in the area, hoping to bring back its vitality.

As part of those efforts, TEC-CDC recently hired Akeem Dixon as the retail gateway’s first-ever Commercial Corridor Manager, made possible by support from the Philadelphia Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC). In his role, Dixon will primarily oversee a cleaning contract managed by the center, funded in part by the Philadelphia Department of Commerce, aimed to “help make 52nd Street the best it can be,” said Bryan Fenstermaker, TEC-CDC’s senior director of programming.

52nd Street Station before the 2007-2008 reconstruction project / Photos: Wikipedia.

“Our [work] is to make 52nd Street the most attractive and vibrant corridor that it can be,” Fenstermaker told West Philly Local. “52nd Street is really the livelihood of West Philadelphia … A number of people grew up here on the corridor and remember what it used to be like. There’s no reason it can’t come back.”

Hiring a portal manager is a major development not only for the corridor, but for the local organization,  which has a hand in its planning and economic growth. According to Fenstermaker, the new manager will also serve as a soundboard for the “wants and needs” of the area, helping TEC-CDC leverage the requests of 52nd Street’s businesses and residents. Dixon will, in effect, act as a liaison for those partners involved in the corridor—be they local community associations or business owners and street vendors—so there’s full engagement among everyone who has a stake in 52nd Street’s success.

“What we would like to see is the businesses and vendors come together to support somebody that’s full-time on there as a sustainable practice,” said Fenstermaker. “We’re there to support the stakeholders and the corridor, so I see us being there long-term.”

Continue Reading

As always, we here at West Philly Local aim to keep neighbors abreast of community news and inform you of updates to that news. For today’s installment of updates, we’ve rounded up news about three big projects we’ve featured in the last three months that verge from the exciting (tacos!) to the conflicting (another expensive development!). And, of course, if there are other updates you’d love to know, we’d love to hear them in the comments.

Groundbreaking for Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral’s $110 Million Development

Photo by West Philly Local.

Tomorrow, Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral and Radnor Property Group (RPG) will hold a groundbreaking for 38Chestnut—the $110 million mixed-used development at 38^th and Chestnut Streets that will see the razing of two historic brownstones (pictured) formerly used as the Cathedral’s parish house. The demolition will make way for a three-prong 326,000 square-foot project (owned by 3737 Chestnut, LP and developed by RPG) to be completed in 2015, and will include the construction of an allegedly “state-of-the-art” 25-story apartment building targeting professionals and grad students, as well as the Episcopal Cathedral Center that features a three-story office building with ground floor retail, a community center, and an early-learning childcare center. Additionally, as part of a settlement with the Preservation Alliance, the development will also see the renovation and maintenance of the cathedral itself. The groundbreaking starts at 2 p.m. at the Cathedral, located at 13-19 South 38th Street.

As we reported in November, the demolition to the two 19th-century brownstones has been nothing but contentious since it made news last summer. In an 8-2 vote, the Philadelphia Historical Commission approved the Cathedral’s hardship application to bulldoze the two historically-sanctioned houses, which were on the list of Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. The Preservation Alliance appealed this decision almost immediately, but came to an agreement with the Commission in March, in which a 50-year preservation and restoration plan is implemented and maintained by the Cathedral, with project funds set aside for immediate work on the house of worship.  Continue Reading

Art part of “American Queen” series (Photo courtesy of Davis)

“Too many Basquiats. Not enough new artists.”

Black acrylic etches the lines of the first five words atop three stacked yellow crowns that run down the canvas’s vertical. The letters of the last two words—arguably the most prolific—are bold white on top a banner of black at the end, serving as the eyes of a symbolic queen. The background is a sea of baby blue with random strokes of white, red, navy and yellow.

In a way, Tiffany Davis’s anchor of her “American Queen” series—and the series itself, which includes “Never Condense Art,” a spin on Andy Warhol’s infamous soup cans—is both reverence and dismissal. For her series, the 29-year-old West Philadelphia artist (who goes by American Queen TJD (Facebook page)) takes elements from her favorite artists—like Jackson Pollack’s splashes or Jean-Michael Basquiat’s crown—and treats them as foundations for a larger purpose. Davis then washes the distinct trademarks away with her own deeply felt abstract expressionism—each canvas a kaleidoscope of color and words that call to a greater mission.

“Anybody can reproduce anything that Basquiat did, but why would you want to do it?,” Davis said, talking from her hotel room on Sunday as she waited for the Eagles game to begin. “I can probably make a name for myself [if I called] myself the female Basquiat, but why should I have to do that?”

Davis, who works during the day as a program director at Drexel University, hung up the hats of her successful fine art-cum-clothing line Cocky Persona last year in order to concentrate on the canvas-based visual work. It’s art that projects a message, with all canvas infected with the moments taking place in her life or in the world at large. (Her next string of pieces will reflect her recent trial — losing her rented South Philly home this past weekend to a fire. The day of our conversation, she was in the process of moving back to her childhood home at 56^th and Larchwood.) You can read it in the words that brand each canvas, like “Waste no time. Live,” “Breathe. Passion proves itself,” “Love you first,” or “Worth, state of mind”—positive reinforcements from the gut.  Continue Reading

The Woodlands.

An expansive swathe of history, The Woodlands is a majestic estate that is as overawing as it is rousing.

Once home to famous Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton, The Woodlands on 40^th Street and Woodland Avenue has transformed over the centuries from a 250-acre tract to a 53-acre manor featuring neoclassical architecture and lush greenery. And now the famous grounds, which made the National Historic Landmark District registry in 2006, is the inspiration of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new novel, The Signature of All Things (Viking), released last month.

Set in Philadelphia, The Signature of All Things is a tale of botanical history set over 120 years (from 1760 to 1880), with the main character family, the Whittakers, living at White Acre—the fictional manifestation of The Woodlands. According to her blog post on The Woodlands’ website, Gilbert—the novelist behind the wildly successful memoir-cum-movie Eat, Pray, Love—was inspired by the grandeur of The Woodlands, with particular focus on the carriage house and basement, which became a private botanical study and bedroom of the head housekeeper, respectively, in Gilbert’s first novel in 13 years. “So much of The Woodlands ended up in my novel—providing me with marvelous details which, I believe, help the book spring to life,” she writes.

“The Woodlands has now become so intrinsically entwined in my mind with White Acre that I can scarcely tell the two apart. I’ve been so grateful, as well, to the welcome that the curators of this great American treasure have given me — to the grounds, to the rooms, to the history,” she continues. “My hope is that my imagined story will draw very real readers to this very real place, so that The Woodlands will continue to get the appreciation it so richly deserves!”

Originally purchased by Andrew Hamilton in 1735, The Woodlands didn’t become the grand parkland it now is until 1786—20 years after Andrew’s grandson William inherited the grounds. That year, he built The Woodlands mansion with matching carriage house and stable, and “reshaped [it] to reflect contemporary English picturesque landscape and horticultural ideals.” Nestled on the Schuylkill River’s west bank, The Woodlands now features an elaborate Victorian rural cemetery, created in 1840, that is the resting place of over 30,000 people.

The Woodlands is open to the public from dawn to dusk. Pick up Gilbert’s novel, The Signature of All Things, in bookstores or online.

–Annamarya Scaccia