Photo from the Wiota St. Garden’s Facebook page.

Community members are invited to attend a rally in West Powelton on Sunday, Sept. 18 in another attempt to save the Wiota Street Community Garden from development. The garden was established in 1984 on a vacant lot at the corner of Wiota St. and Powelton Ave. and has been providing area residents with fresh produce for eight months of the year since then. Plans were revealed in 2014 to build housing on the site of the garden, but tenuous community consensus to preserve the garden was reached at a December 2014 public meeting with Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. However, the garden has again come under threat as reported recently by Hidden City.

The rally will be held at the garden (4022 Powelton Ave.), beginning at 4 p.m., and the organizers are asking the participants to bring a picnic.  Continue Reading

The Post Brothers, a real estate development firm that has been gobbling up residential properties in West Philly, is shopping around plans for a newly renovated Hamilton Court, the historic apartment building complex at 39th and Chestnut.

The plans include a glassy new two-story structure in the courtyard (see rendering above) that would include ground-floor retail and a second-floor gym for residents. Built in 1901, Hamilton Court was one of West Philadelphia’s grand apartment buildings. Most of its grandeur has worn away as it’s now mostly filled with Penn undergraduates and its once elegant courtyard that once included a large fountain is now fenced off.  Continue Reading

Photo by Mike Lyons/West Philly Local

A panel of city preservation experts offered a standing-room-only crowd some strategies last night on helping to preserve historic neighborhood buildings as waves of development continue to roll across the city.

Several groups have been fighting to save historically important buildings from demolition proposed by developers looking to build housing for the young professionals and students who are largely responsible for the recent upswing in the city’s population.

“We need to stop the demolition derby,” Paul Steinke, head of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, told an audience at the Walnut West Public Library (40th and Walnut).

The goal of Wednesday’s meeting was to provide local residents and community organizations some ways to save historic buildings, including private residences, from future demolition. Steinke and others on the panel hope the fight currently brewing over Jewelers’ Row along the 700 block of Sansom Street might garner enough attention that city officials, including politicians, might become more preservation friendly.  Continue Reading

As demand for housing and commercial development in parts of the city increases, historic buildings have come under threat of demolition. The University City Historical Society is holding an important public meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 24 to provide residents and community organizations with tools and information that will help them rally to preserve historic buildings.

The meeting, titled “The State of Preservation in West Philadelphia,” will include Martine Decamp of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission; Penn Professor Aaron Wunsch; Paul Steinke of the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia; and Greg Pastore, a former member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

Organizers hope the meeting will help people understand:  Continue Reading

The proposed site plan for the Centennial Commons (Courtesy of Studio | Bryan Hanes)

Centennial Commons, the project that will provide a much needed recreation space near The Please Touch Museum in West Parkside, is expected to break ground this Fall, according to a report by PlanPhilly. The first construction phase of the project, initiated by Fairmount Park Conservancy, the Parkside Association of Philadelphia and East Parkside Residents Association, includes park “porches”.

When completed, the project will provide a seating area with landscaping that will give both residents and visitors the opportunity to enjoy the space. It will also include a large playground with a climbing wall and spray park.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the William Penn Foundation are funding the project as part of an $11 million grant to re-imagine public spaces in Philadelphia. The total cost of the Centennial Commons project is approximately $7 million.

Read more about the project here and here.

Looking from Spruce Street, the proposed 9-story building at 49th and Spruce.

Developers presented preliminary plans last night for a nine-story apartment building with ground-floor retail space at 49th and Spruce Streets to a standing-room-only crowd that voiced concerns about property taxes, parking and affordable rents.

Proposed by the developers who refurbished the nearby Croydon building, Hillel Tsarfati and Kfir Binnfeld, the 160-unit building would be built on the parking lot on the southwest corner of 49th and Spruce. The mostly one-bedroom apartments would be marketed toward “young professionals,” with rents 15 to 20 percent below market rate – similar to Croydon, Binnfeld said.

The building would include eight floors of 20 apartments each and retail on the first floor. Floors would include 12 one-bedroom apartments, 6 two-bedrooms and two studios each. Rents would be roughly the same as Croydon – currently a minimum of $975 for a two-bedroom and $850 for a one-bedroom, according to the proposal.  Continue Reading