Workers at the Fresh Grocer at 40th and Walnut were erecting a new sunscreen display near the checkout lines this morning, getting the store ready for the spring. Nothing strange about that, except that the store was supposed to close today for good to make way for a new supermarket operator.

Fresh Grocer’s property lease expires today, March 31, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Facilities and Real Estate Services office. The office manages Penn’s vast holdings in West Philadelphia and has plans for the space that do not include Fresh Grocer.

“Penn has notified Fresh Grocer that its lease will expire on March 31 and that it must vacate the store by that date,” spokeswoman Jennifer Rizzi wrote in an e-mail on March 30. “However, Fresh Grocer rejects Penn’s position that the lease expires on that date, so we do not know whether they will vacate the store on March 31.”  Continue Reading

             Jasmine Wright was 27.

The maintenance man standing trial for the rape and murder of a woman who lived in the building where he worked was found guilty on Wednesday of first degree murder and other charges and sentenced to life without parole.

James Harris, 56, was found guilty in the July 2015 rape and murder of 27-year-old Jasmine Wright, a Drexel graduate student, at her apartment near 50th and Locust Streets.

Harris had worked in the building where Wright lived, but had been fired a week earlier, according to reports. He still had keys to the building when Wright was murdered. Police said his DNA and fingerprints were found at the scene.  Continue Reading

Longtime West Philly resident Jeff Lutzner pitches “Pentridge Station,” a playground/park/beer garden proposed for a vacant lot on the 5100 block of Pentridge Street (Photo by West Philly Local).

A longtime West Philly resident is gambling that people will want to travel down a troubled street that is lined with abandoned cars, empty buildings and a quasi-legal automotive shop that sometimes hosts raucous outdoor parties during which shots have been fired to visit his kid-friendly, pop-up beer garden.

It sounds risky, but several people who attended last night’s Cedar Park Neighbors zoning committee meeting to discuss the proposed seasonal beer garden in an abandoned lot on the 5100 block of Pentridge Street said they will support it. Jeff Lutzner, a longtime resident and block captain on the 4900 block of Cedar Avenue, owns the lot and hopes that the beer garden/playground might bring some much-needed attention to the block.

“We really want it to be a place where families could convene,” Lutzner told the 30 or so people gathered at the meeting.  Continue Reading

From Detective Joe Murray’s Twitter feed – @PPDJoeMurray.

Detective Joe Murray, the social media savvy cop who entertained and informed followers with pithy tweets about everything from police policy to top-shelf donuts and Wrestlemania, is moving on after 11 years in West and Southwest Philly.

He announced in a March 7 tweet (natch) that he had been transferred to the PPD’s Homicide Division, a much-deserved promotion. Murray won the Richardson Dilworth Award for Innovation and Government in 2015 and didn’t shy away from calling out the highest levels of the PPD. His story made it to NPR in 2012 after the PPD’s top brass figured all his tweeting was a good idea. They did make him professionalize his Twitter handle, though, so he gave up his trademark moniker “The Fuzz” to the more official “@PPDJoeMurray.”

For 11+ years I’ve had the pleasure of working for the people of West/Southwest Philly. Yesterday I was transferred to the Homicide Division

— Joseph Murray (@PPDJoeMurray) March 7, 2017

We recently asked Murray a few questions about his time on the West side.  Continue Reading

SEPTA is proposing price increases on pretty much everything except transfers. Cash fares will go from $2.25 to $2.50 and discounted fares (with a token or Key card) will increase to $2 from $1.80. If approved the new fares would take effect on July 1, 2017.

This increase was supposed to be proposed last year as part of the plan to raise fares every three years, but was postponed for the rollout of the new SEPTA Key program.

Here are the changes in other SEPTA products:

• Weekly TransPass increases $1.50 to $25.50
• Monthly TransPasses increase from $90 to $96
• Disabled fare increases 25 cents to $1.25
• A Convenience Pass goes up a buck to $9 as do Independence Passes, which go from $12 to $13 for an individual and $20 to $30 for a family.

SEPTA will hold public hearings on its proposed 2018 budget (including the proposed fare increases) in April. The one in Philadelphia (others are in Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery and Chester Counties) is scheduled for Monday, April 24 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at SEPTA headquarters, 1234 Market St. Comments can be e-mailed to operatingbudget@septa.org

A former West Philly High School student was found not guilty on Wednesday of the murder of a classmate near the 46th Street El stop in January 2015.

Xavier Beemon, who was 14 at the time, admitted to stabbing Nafis O’Neal, also 14, with a pocketknife during an after-school altercation, but said it was self defense. A jury agreed and after seven hours of deliberation acquitted Beemon on all charges, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Beemon was considerably smaller than O’Neal, who was a popular basketball and football player, according to testimony. Beemon, who moved to West Philly from Alabama in 2011, said he was so fearful of life in Philadelphia that he began hiding a pocketknife near school that he would carry home for protection. O’Neal approached Beemon after school and a scuffle ensued. Beemon said he swung the knife around and stabbed O’Neal once in the chest.

O’Neal was pronounced dead at the scene.

“I didn’t aim at his chest,” The Inquirer reported Beemon saying during testimony. “I just swung and it happened I hit his chest.”