The deadline to appeal property assessments under the new Actual Value Initiative (AVI) is fast approaching. First-Level Review Request forms are due in the Office of Property Assessment (OPA) by Sunday, March 31 (or 30 days after you received your assessment notice).

The OPA recommends submitting other documents that may help the office consider your case. These could include photos or recent third-party appraisals. The First-Level Review Request form should have been included with the new assessment notifications. If you need a new form, they are available to download here. The forms should be mailed here:

Office of Property Assessment
P.O. Box 51498
Philadelphia, PA 19115

They also can be dropped off at:

311 Walk-In Center in Room 167 at City Hall
Municipal Services Building Concourse-level, 1401 JFK Blvd.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your appeal, you can file another appeal with the Board of Revision of Taxes. That appeal is due by Oct. 7, 2013.

Below is a video produced by the City as a guide to the appeal process.

An artist’s rendering of the building project at 43rd and Sansom. This is an early rendering and thanks to some pressure from the Spruce Hill Community Association, the building will include some brick facade, windows on the west-facing wall and more landscaping.

Construction of a 4-story, 31-unit apartment building (artist’s rendering above) on the southeast corner of 43rd and Sansom could begin as early as this spring.

The Zoning Board of Adjustment approved the project earlier this month. The building will occupy 121-133 S. 43rd St., which is now a vacant lot near the Bravo Advanced Care Center on the 4300 block of Walnut Street.  The Spruce Hill Community Association signed off on the project in February.

The project will include 31 off-street parking spots and 11 bicycle “parking spaces.” Two commercial spaces will also be located in the building ground floor. Most of the 31 apartments are between 600 and 750 square feet.

A New York-based property developer is hoping to build a 92-unit residential building on the large vacant lot at the corner of 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue (pictured), across from Clark Park.

The property owner, Clarkmore LP, is associated with Thylan Associates Inc., whose properties include the University of Pennsylvania-run independent housing complex for the elderly, LIFE UPenn, at 4508 Chestnut St., the Bailey Building at 1218 Chestnut St. and the Biddle Building at 1217 Sansom St. The company also owns upscale condos at 1111 Locust St. and the Heid Building, 325 N. 13th St., which houses lofts.

The conditional zoning permit, granted on March 11, confirms that the developer meets some basic requirements for construction, but does not give a green light for construction.

A 17,600 square-foot structure and the plot, which is a little over an acre, was purchased by Thylan in 2008 for $3.5 million. The building was demolished soon after. The building had most recently housed a women’s shelter. In the past it had served as a nursing home and before that a private boarding school.

The proposed project will also include 36 “bicycle spaces” and 6 parking spaces.

Anyone who opposes the permit for the project can file an appeal to the Zoning Board of Adjustment. For instruction, call them at 215-686-2429.

The new Cedar Park Cafe location at 2035 N. 63rd St. (Photo from Yelp)

We have some good news and bad news for those of you who enjoyed a hearty, all-day breakfast at the Cedar Park Cafe on the 4900 block of Baltimore Avenue, which was heavily damaged in the Christmas Eve fire that destroyed Elena’s Soul. The bad news for Cedar Park residents and others nearby is that the cafe has relocated to north 63rd Street near the Overbrook train station. The good news is that it might come back.

The roof collapsed at the cafe’s Baltimore Avenue location when a wall fell on it as crews demolished what was left of the adjacent Elena’s Soul building. The cafe’s owners hope to return to Baltimore Avenue later this year.

Rimedio at 45th and Spruce streets. What kind of place might make it here?

Café Renata (Facebook page) on the 4300 block of Locust opens for brunch this weekend. But the Spruce Hill neighborhood is apparently losing a brunch spot as Rimedio, the Northern Italian brunch and dinner joint, has closed. A notice is posted on the restaurant’s front door at 45th and Spruce claiming that it is several months behind in rent.

Rimedio’s apparent departure (their website is offline too) has sparked some conversation about what kind of business might succeed at the 45th and Spruce location, where two businesses have opened and closed since the original Rx restaurant, which had a lengthy spell of success, changed owners in 2010.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about what kind of place might succeed there.

The Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) yesterday cleared the way for local ice cream producer and retailer Little Baby’s Ice Cream to open shop on the 4900 block of Catharine Street, across the street from Cedar Park. If all goes as planned, the shop should be open by April 1.

Little Baby’s has been wooing Cedar Park residents for a while now and even sent them an “open love letter” on Valentine’s Day. The Cedar Park Neighbors civic association loved them back with a letter of support to the ZBA, which late yesterday provided Little Baby’s with the necessary permit to convert the storefront at 4903 Catharine into the company’s first retail shop west of the Schuylkill.

The company got a massive boost in the form of a 5-year, $50,000 loan from The Enterprise Center to expand into Cedar Park.

Little Baby’s Ice Cream is handmade in their production facility in East Kensington. Their dairy comes from Trickling Springs Creamery in Chambersburg, Penna. Here is a great profile on the three musicians who turned their passion for ice cream into a successful business.

[Editor’s Note: This month’s Philadelphia Magazine story, “Being White in Philly,” has been widely criticized in the city. West Philadelphia native Jocelyn Degroot-Lutzner, 22, grew up on 49th Street. She has her own thoughts about growing up in a multiracial community. This was originally posted on her company’s website IdiomsFashion.com. She gave us permission to re-post it here.]

As a 09’ graduate of Central High School, “Temple’s biggest district feeder,” I can only hope that my shock towards Robert Huber’s recent article for Philadelphia Magazine reciprocated similar feelings from my fellow Central grads (most of whom are probably neighbors of his son). As I sat reading the article on my lunch break at my New York City internship for an online magazine, I couldn’t help but lose my appetite as I felt my face grow red. His sweeping generalizations, seemingly one-sided research and the description of the “dance” he does at Wawa made me clench my fists in pain.

I am a 22-year-old, white, female, Jewish, middle class, West Philadelphia native. I grew up in an area once referred to as West Philadelphia, but may only be known to you now as its re-branded name of Cedar Park or University City. My mother has occupied the same house in West Philly for over 30 years. Both of my parents work from home in their third floor offices.

During an interview I once had with the president of Starr Restaurants for a job as a hostess, I remember telling him that I grew up in West Philadelphia. He questioned whether my parents were hippies, I responded “no.” I never questioned as to why my parents choose to raise my younger brother and I in our neighborhood. Why would I question something that was normal to me?

I attended a few different public schools as well as one private school: Wilson School for Montessori and kindergarten; Powel Elementary School for 1^st-4^th grade; Girard Academic Music Program for 5^th grade; Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School for 6^th-8^th grade; Friends Select School for 9^th; and Central High School for 10^th-graduation.

I grew up with block parties, attended the University City Swim Club in the summer and worked at various jobs in my neighborhood. I taught swimming at the West Philly YMCA, sold movie tickets at the movie theater formerly known as The Bridge, sold overpriced fashions to Penn students at the West Philadelphia Urban Outfitters, and then sold those same Penn students drinks and Ethiopian food at Gojjo’s Ethiopian Restaurant back on Baltimore Ave.

Has race been a part of my life? Yes, without a doubt! Walking around West Philly I’ve been called every moniker for “white girl” that you could (or couldn’t) think of: Snow Bunny, White Chocolate and Britney Spears to name a few. I have also ventured downtown and been inappropriately hit on by white men older than my father. What did I learn from those experiences? Definitely not that one man is more respectful to young women than any other.

I remember leaving my first day of work at Urban Outfitters, we stood at the front door and emptied our pockets and personal bags as the managers checked us for any missing Urban Outfitters merchandise. While checking we were told whom we should be keeping an eye on for stealing. Race was never stated outright, was it inferred? Definitely. What was stated outright was that we should not forget to keep an eye on the well-to-do looking Penn students; they had a long history of being petty thieves at Urban Outfitters, even with daddy and mommy’s money in their wallets.

I grew up on 49^th street and have a long relationship with University of Pennsylvania students. In 4^th grade I had a “Penn Pal”, very literally. We exchanged letters and toured the university at the end of our school year. I attended a University of Pennsylvania Partnership public elementary school, not as big of a relationship with Penn as you might think. I’ve sold them movie ticket after movie ticket, drink after drink and watched them get caught stealing at my prior job.

I would say, overall, we have a somewhat tension fueled relationship and I say this even knowing a handful of friends that currently attend the university. Once I had a discussion with Angela Leonardo, a close childhood friend who will be graduating from Penn this May, she was reminiscing on her freshmen orientation,

I was in the tour group and near the end one of the kids asked if it was true that you shouldn’t ever go past 42nd street, and the tour guide was like, yeah I’m not sure…I haven’t ever been out there, I think it’s probably best not to… people have definitely been confused over the years when I tell them I grew up at 49^th street. It was also impossible to get most of my friends to come over for dinner or hangouts.

My mother remembers twenty years ago when she was getting her masters from The Wharton School, the school’s car service would drop her off a block away from our house, refusing to go past 48^th street. They also sent her a letter, suggesting she should not live past 46^th street.

Has race been a part of my life? Again, I say yes! As an 11^th grader I participated in Operation Understanding, it was a life changing experience for Philadelphian African American and Jewish 11^th graders to learn “each others histories and cultures to effectively lead the communities of Philadelphia and beyond to a greater understanding of diversity and acceptance.”  We traveled to Senegal and Israel and exchanged experiences that challenged each of us to see differently. Race was discussed daily, if not hourly.

I want to quickly discuss drugs, since it seemed to be such an important factor of Huber’s article. As a white person, more often than not I was the minority in my various schools. Drugs did not become an evident part of my classmate’s lives until I attended private school as a high school freshmen. Suddenly, people where being expelled for selling drugs or doing them on school grounds. Besides my current university, the private school I attended as a 9^th grader, had the largest proportion of white students compared to other race and ethnicities and the white students were the ones doing drugs.

If I had one hope for the day I choose to begin to raise a family, it is that my children are blessed to have such a well-rounded experience of their community and our world. Hopefully it can be similar to the one I feel so lucky to have grown up in. I hope they get to experience sledding on trashcan lids in Clark Park, eating chicken patties at Brown Sugar on 52^nd street, samosa’s at International Food & Spices, pretending to be models at the Kingsessing Recreation Center’s free after school programs, teaching 3-year-olds to swim at the West Philly YMCA, fighting for Philadelphia public school students at the Philadelphia Student Union office on 50^th and Baltimore, and making friends that are Black, White, Asian, Hispanic (etc.). I don’t want to raise my children “color-blind” – they would miss so many beautiful things.