South Philadelphia : In The News

Hidden City takes an in-depth look at CHOP's expansion to the eastern banks of the Schuylkill.

Doug Carney, CHOP’s senior vice president of facilities, said his hopes were that CHOP would continue to “be attractive to the world-class researchers we compete for.”
Carney’s invocation of “world-class,” however, left an opening for those in the audience unhappy with CHOP’s plan for a 23-story, half-a-million-square-foot tower right next to the low-rise neighborhoods of Graduate Hospital and the Devil’s Pocket, which would bring 1,000 CHOP researchers to the site each day. (Note that this is not going to be a place for patient care, as with CHOP’s complex across the river, but an office building for research.) “Is it world-class,” a follow-up questioner asked the CHOP team, “to drive 76 then take a ramp into a parking garage?”

It doesn’t seem that CHOP’s institutional ambitions and the city’s ideal planning needs will coalesce. But CHOP, which is currently undertaking a remarkable amount of expansion, has goodwill on its side -- it is, after all, devoted to the care of children -- as well as, frankly, considerable leverage to do what it wants. The Graduate Hospital Area project serves as a good insight into CHOP’s role in the city and illustrates the influence it wields.

Original source: Hidden City Philadelphia
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We Feast asked top local chefs about their favorite places to eat when they're not working -- we agree with quite a few of them. Joe Cicala of Le Virtu repped Los Gallos, a killer Mexican spot in South Philly.

“I do a lot of takeout due to my grueling work schedule, and Los Gallos satisfies my Mexican craving. It’s always good—I like the cemitas poblanos and tacos a la plancha—affordable, and it’s right around the corner.” 

Original source: We Feast
Check out the complete list here.

Puentes de Salud, a Penn-funded clinic, provides health care to those outside the system, including undocumented immigrants.

Puentes de Salud, which in English means “bridges of health,” was founded to provide low-cost but quality health care and social services to the growing Latino population in South Philadelphia and began treating patients in 2006. A co-founder, Dr. Steve Larson, said the organization distinguished itself from other community-health groups by addressing the underlying causes of illness, like poor nutrition, illiteracy or urban violence.

"It’s not about me writing prescriptions," said Dr. Larson, 53, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania who said he began to develop his approach to community medicine while working in rural Nicaragua in the early 1990s. "This is an underground health system."

Original source: The New York Times
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People are working hard to save the SS United States; the behemoth has been docked in South Philly since the mid-'90s.


Unfortunately, that future might happen outside of Philadelphia -- perhaps in New York. Time will tell.

Original Source: Philadelphia Daily News
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Developers have let the public in on their plans for the massive, abandoned Mount Sinai campus in Pennsport. 

Jeff DiRomaldo, Project Manager and Architect for Barton Partners out of Norristown, provided some background on the "urban repair project" and went over the early plans and designs. The key theme he wanted to stress -- filling the "voids" in the street scape that plague the area. The hope is to construct the town homes as a border around the property that "re-integrate those edges" of the site back in to the neighborhood.

As usual, parking was a major concern for neighbors:

The plan calls for the site to contain 137 spaces, all but five will be within the interior of the development and that number includes the garages in the town homes. However, as Developer Gagar Lakhmna explained, the existing curb cuts will be reduced from ten to nine in the process as a different curb cut at 5th and Dickinson will be necessary to accommodate a front-loading garage for those units due to space. Basically, the fewer curb cuts means more street parking. He also mentioned that they drew up plans for an interior parking deck but it would have only given them about 10 more spaces. They will look to have "80 bike spaces and two car share spots" as well. 

Original source: Pennsporter
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After shuttering dozens of local schools this fall, the Philadelphia School District has placed many of those buildings up for sale. Quite a few have serious residential development potential -- Passyunk Post reports on the buildings in its purview, including Bok, Vare and Smith.

Bok Technical, an imposing art deco monster, is 338,000 square feet over eight floors on a 2.2-acre site. The information provided notes its proximity to Passyunk Avenue and the Snyder Avenue subway stop (about half a mile each). "Surrounding the Avenue is a surging residential and development market." True.

The New York Times also covered the school properties:

But Drexel University has said it wants to buy University City High School for an undisclosed price, and restore it as a public school. Temple University has expressed an interest in the former William Penn High School, close to its Temple campus on the north side of central Philadelphia. Buyers interested in the eight properties undergoing an expedited sale have until Dec. 17 to respond to a request for qualification, the district said. For the other properties, buyers must submit an expression of interest by that date.

Original source: Passyunk Post
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Passyunk Square's Stogie Joe's Tavern was included on Thrillist's list of the nation's 33 best pizzas. The sauce-on-top square pies have a loyal following. 

"Red-sauced bakery pies are as much a South Philly staple as being ejected from a Phillies game, and, just like Phillies fans, Stogie Joe's takes it to the next level, serving their square pies upside-down with their signature spicy-sweet tomato sauce floating above the cheese blanketing a Sicilian-style crust."

Original source: Thrillist
Read the complete list here.

Food & Wine magazine has named East Passyunk Avenue one of the country's best streets for foodies. Local writer Joy Manning has praise for Fond, Marra's and Will, among others. We'd add Cantina, Le Virtu and Stateside.

Original source: Food & Wine
Read the full list here.

The Atlantic Cities examines the ever-shifting Philadelphia accent. 

We often talk about regional dialects as if they were disappearing in the face of national TV. But, in fact, while classic southern patterns of speech have been receding in large urban centers in the south, northern dialects have continued to grow stronger. And these trends are best observed in large cities, or, more specifically, in neighborhoods like South Philadelphia where densely clustered row houses can mean that language change moves as quickly between neighbors as gossip.

Original source: The Atlantic Cities
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Inspired by the recent news that the rowhome featured in Rocky II is for sale, Yahoo! put together a list of five local properties made famous in film. My personal favorite is the Graduate Hospital house featured in The Sixth Sense.

In the 1999 movie "The Sixth Sense," Haley Joel Osment's character, Cole Sear, saw dead people in his house on the of 2300 block of St. Albans Place in Philadelphia. But this haunted movie house and its surroundings also shined a new light on the City of Brotherly Love. The movie's colorful shots of Logan Circle, Rittenhouse Row, and the St. Albans Place garden block made filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan a hometown hero, who, according to Philly.com, later donated $1.5 million to improve the South Philly area that played such a big role in "The Sixth Sense." Shyamalan recounted his first sight of the red brick block, saying, "It could have been anywhere … It looked like it had been built by immigrant hands. For some reason, I was meant to be here, and we were meant to do this."

The New York Times takes a look at museums dedicated to hometown heros. Some of these folks are now relatively obscure, including South Philly crooner Mario Lanza.

Though millions saw his movies and bought his records (“Be My Love,” “Arrivederci Roma”) in the 1940s and 1950s, Lanza, who died in 1959 at age 38, is virtually unknown to the general public today. On a good day, perhaps 10 or 15 people visit to look at costumes, publicity posters, old photos and other items while his songs play in the background.

The Lanza Institute is one of countless small shrines in the hometowns or the adopted towns of native sons and daughters who went away to become famous, though some of the stars are barely remembered today. These museums are mostly special for their focus and usually reflect an undying care for their subjects by true keepers of the faith.

Original source: The New York Times
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Eater put together a list of the country's most underrated dining spots, and Passyunk Square favorite Fond (fresh of its move to a new corner location) made the cut at number 22.

You hear about Marc Vetri's places, you probably hear about Zahav and about Sbraga, but you should give what Lee Styer has been doing at Fond for the past three years a look. It's "sophisticated French-influenced seasonal cooking" and is less expensive than most places in its category. Just last year, local critic Craig LaBan upgraded the restaurant from two to three bells, ranking it among some of the city's best.

Original source: Eater
Check out the full list here.

The Navy Yard earns some national attention from ABC News for its exciting work fostering business, entrepreneurship and green technology.

"There was a lot of uncertainty early on," said John Grady, president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. "People weren't sure what we were going to do to replace this engine of activity that was there."

Last week, The Navy Yard marked its 10,000-employee milestone and unveiled an update to its 2004 master plan that is forecasting 1,000 apartments, more parks and open space, more new construction and continued adaptive reuse of Navy-era industrial buildings.

Original source: ABC News
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