In West Poplar

With development pressure coming up from Center City and down from Temple, North Broad Street has made some incredible strides in the last decade. Two of the most prominent shifts on this corridor have occurred at the Broad & Spring Garden intersection, with Tower's conversion of the Pennsylvania State Office Building into

Between 2003 and 2013, the Althea Gibson Community Education and Tennis Center at 1000 W. Girard Ave. provided a safe space to neighborhood children at a tennis facility that might have felt more at home in the 'burbs then on this West Poplar corner. The community center ultimately closed due to lack of funding, and developer Michael

If you stand at 8th & Poplar, the first thing you'll notice is the Quaker building, an old warehouse originally built for Strawbridge & Clothier in 1918, just a block to your the west. The building not only catches the eye because of its size, but also because of its poor condition,

Back when the Reading Terminal was still an actual train station and not a Convention Center meeting hall, there was a constant stream of trains rumbling through the West Poplar and Callowhill neighborhoods on an elevated viaduct. That viaduct, of course, is currently in the midst of a transformation into

You might think that a company called Drexel Bindery would be located somewhere in West Philadelphia, perhaps near Drexel's campus. But you'd be incorrect! In fact, Drexel Bindery operated out of a building at 1308-10 W. Girard Ave. for decades, just a few blocks from the Temple campus. But you

With the Philadelphia real estate market on a hot streak that's been going for years, we've seen numerous white elephant buildings finally land in developers' crosshairs. Examples include the former Spring Garden School in West Poplar, converted into an affordable housing building, and the long vacant Poth Brewery, now getting

The Spring Arts Point project was originally conceived by developer Lawrence Rust over a decade ago as a plan to build a few dozen units on several large assemblages on the eastern side of the West Poplar neighborhood. The first eighteen homes came into focus quickly, on the block bounded

The southern section of the West Poplar neighborhood has undergone major changes over the last several years, with a mix of larger projects, like the Spring Arts Point development, and plenty of smaller, one-off infill. New construction has generally dried up in this neighborhood beyond Fairmount Avenue, mostly because the

We were looking through the docket for the ZBA yesterday, as we're wont to do, and noticed five different projects seeking variances within a very small area of West Poplar. This seemed odd on its face, so we started investigating. All of the properties are owned by City agencies, a good

If you're anything like us, you've never been to the 900 block of N. 8th Street. And why would you ever find yourself on this block, which runs between Poplar and Girard Avenue, a few blocks west of the bulk of Northern Liberties development, and a few blocks east of