PHILLY
EVENTSThe Rebirth of North Broad
And indeed, the main new character, Temple president Ann Weaver Hart, set aside a big part of her inaugural address in March to talk of the university’s need to work in its neighborhood. Plans are under way to launch a program of financial incentives to help Temple faculty and staff buy houses near the campus. Even before Hart took over, the university had made large strides away from being a predominantly commuter campus toward a residential place, with more out-of-town and out-of-state students. Recent figures supplied by the university claim that 10,000 students now live on or near the campus.
Within the past year, developer Bart Blatstein opened various phases of a $75 million complex with seven movie theaters (the first built in North Philly in over 50 years) at the foot of the Temple campus. In addition, there’s 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space attached, and an adjacent 800-unit student residence building. For now, that’s the northern outpost of the new gentrification, and for anyone familiar with the recent history of North Broad, the sight of outdoor cafés at Cecil B. Moore Avenue is surprising. Just a few blocks south, ground was broken recently for a new supermarket and parking garage at what was an incredibly homely strip mall called Progress Plaza.
“The commercial portion is what has to come first,” says Blatstein. “People are calling it the New Urbanism, but it’s really the old urbanism — where you can walk to stores.”
Navigating his Porsche down Broad Street, Eric Blumenfeld seems all but certain that the many gaps between Temple and his new building will one day be filled in. “All the real estate between here and Temple could be redeveloped,” he says. “It’s just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, doing the obvious stuff first.”
ONE OF THE least obvious places to build an entire block of townhouses is at 10th and Wallace, but that’s exactly what Sam Sherman is doing — 35 units, with a starting price of $349,000 for three bedrooms, a parking spot and a small yard.
Dixie and I are here with Jeffrey Michaud, the chef at Osteria, and his wife Claudia, whom he met while training in Italy. They’re renting a unit in Lofts 640 and have purchased a three-bedroom home here at Sherman’s Spring Arts Point. Today is their walk-through inspection of the framing and utilities, before the skin of Sheetrock goes up.
Sherman looks north from his development to the area that was once the dysfunctional high-rise Richard Allen Homes. The streets now have an almost bizarrely suburban feel, with small homes dotted on yards with driveways. Though Sherman is a devoted New Urbanist and would rather have seen public housing that more closely copied the original look and density of a real Philadelphia street, he admits that his private project was made possible by those publicly financed homes.
“Okay, they took the suburban model and planted it in the city, but it improved the housing stock, it reduced crime, and it improved the neighborhood so much,” says Sherman. The developer says it’s not such a stretch of logic to think that eventually, the transformation of Northern Liberties will spread west to this neighborhood, which is called West Poplar. “We’re in the 19123 zip code,” he says, “and property values are projected to go up by more than 500 percent over the next five years.”
The area around Spring Arts Point is mostly desolate now. That helped make land relatively cheap and easy to assemble. If the Fairmount and Spring Garden neighborhoods can grow over to Broad Street from the west, this area could fill in from the east. Sherman points to the empty Divine Lorraine as a connecting linchpin.
“Have you ever seen old photographs of North Broad Street?” he asks. “It was beautiful. Then nobody believed in the city for 50 years, and all that garbage was built here. But all those things — the freestanding tire stores and gas stations — they’ll sell eventually. The question is: What replaces them? There’s so much open space that it could be far more beautiful than South Broad, all the way up to Temple. If the Divine Lorraine happens, it’ll be like a match to the fuse. I’m hoping and praying that it happens.”
Within the past year, developer Bart Blatstein opened various phases of a $75 million complex with seven movie theaters (the first built in North Philly in over 50 years) at the foot of the Temple campus. In addition, there’s 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space attached, and an adjacent 800-unit student residence building. For now, that’s the northern outpost of the new gentrification, and for anyone familiar with the recent history of North Broad, the sight of outdoor cafés at Cecil B. Moore Avenue is surprising. Just a few blocks south, ground was broken recently for a new supermarket and parking garage at what was an incredibly homely strip mall called Progress Plaza.
“The commercial portion is what has to come first,” says Blatstein. “People are calling it the New Urbanism, but it’s really the old urbanism — where you can walk to stores.”
Navigating his Porsche down Broad Street, Eric Blumenfeld seems all but certain that the many gaps between Temple and his new building will one day be filled in. “All the real estate between here and Temple could be redeveloped,” he says. “It’s just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, doing the obvious stuff first.”
ONE OF THE least obvious places to build an entire block of townhouses is at 10th and Wallace, but that’s exactly what Sam Sherman is doing — 35 units, with a starting price of $349,000 for three bedrooms, a parking spot and a small yard.
Dixie and I are here with Jeffrey Michaud, the chef at Osteria, and his wife Claudia, whom he met while training in Italy. They’re renting a unit in Lofts 640 and have purchased a three-bedroom home here at Sherman’s Spring Arts Point. Today is their walk-through inspection of the framing and utilities, before the skin of Sheetrock goes up.
Sherman looks north from his development to the area that was once the dysfunctional high-rise Richard Allen Homes. The streets now have an almost bizarrely suburban feel, with small homes dotted on yards with driveways. Though Sherman is a devoted New Urbanist and would rather have seen public housing that more closely copied the original look and density of a real Philadelphia street, he admits that his private project was made possible by those publicly financed homes.
“Okay, they took the suburban model and planted it in the city, but it improved the housing stock, it reduced crime, and it improved the neighborhood so much,” says Sherman. The developer says it’s not such a stretch of logic to think that eventually, the transformation of Northern Liberties will spread west to this neighborhood, which is called West Poplar. “We’re in the 19123 zip code,” he says, “and property values are projected to go up by more than 500 percent over the next five years.”
The area around Spring Arts Point is mostly desolate now. That helped make land relatively cheap and easy to assemble. If the Fairmount and Spring Garden neighborhoods can grow over to Broad Street from the west, this area could fill in from the east. Sherman points to the empty Divine Lorraine as a connecting linchpin.
“Have you ever seen old photographs of North Broad Street?” he asks. “It was beautiful. Then nobody believed in the city for 50 years, and all that garbage was built here. But all those things — the freestanding tire stores and gas stations — they’ll sell eventually. The question is: What replaces them? There’s so much open space that it could be far more beautiful than South Broad, all the way up to Temple. If the Divine Lorraine happens, it’ll be like a match to the fuse. I’m hoping and praying that it happens.”
Posted by Anonymous | Nov. 6, 2007 at 2:12 PM