Small businesses along the 4700 block of Spruce Street are closing to make way for a 12-story apartment building.
The City’s Department of Licenses and Inspections issued a zoning permit on December 30 for a 170-unit building that will include some 37,000 square feet of commercial space on the first and second floors. The building, which will include three roof decks, will occupy nearly the entire south side of Spruce Street between 47th and 48th Streets.
Businesses have already begun closing or relocating to make way for the building. Ezra’s Auto Repair at the corner of 48th and Spruce (see photo below) has already relocated to Baltimore Avenue and businesses in the low rise strip to the east began closing late last year.
Spruce Street Development began buying the parcels several years ago and consolidated them for the project, which is zoned under CMX-3. The project is “by right,” meaning it complied with existing zoning and does not require community input until the Civic Design Review process, where public recommendations to developers are not binding.
A civic design review, which will likely be hosted by a neighborhood organization, has not been scheduled yet.
The developers will use a couple of zoning “bonuses” to build a larger building with fewer parking spaces. First, they received the mixed income housing bonus, which allows for more total floor area and exemptions for height. It is not clear whether the project will actually include mixed income housing or whether developers will simply pay into a fund that supports affordable housing.
The project will include 28 underground parking spaces. The project is permitted to include fewer parking spots than required thanks to promises to provide car share spaces and bicycle parking on its premises.
The project is the second large-scale apartment building along Spruce Street between 47th and 50th. The 150-unit building at 4900 Spruce St is well underway.
The project is only a few hundred feet from a 220-unit addition to Garden Court Plaza apartments on the 4700 block of Pine Street. The permits for that development were issued last year.
We will keep you posted on the next steps of this project.
January 11th, 2022 at 8:03 pm
Good! So happy to see the site be better utilized than 1 story low-quality shops, a place where non-functional cars park, and a billboard. Instead, we’ll have something that actually houses more people (from 0 to 170 units) and bigger commercial space (2 stories) and cleaner site.
I mean look at the pic in the article, who really wants that rather than new development….
January 13th, 2022 at 5:59 am
Yeah- pack ’em in! What is “quality of life” anyway? Urban density is everything! Complaints about cost of living come only from those who can’t afford it! Those who can’t take the heat will get out of the kitchen. It’s natural, or something…
January 14th, 2022 at 3:25 pm
This is great news! The extra density is a perfect fit for this block, with a 13 story building around the corner and large-ish apartment buildings for blocks in either direction on Pine, one block away. The lower number of parking spaces is even better, with a relatively frequent, 24 hour bus line right outside, and the El only 5 blocks away.
Those who don’t want to live in a dense urban environment shouldn’t do so. They have nearly every other place in America to choose from.
January 14th, 2022 at 8:06 pm
In other words Manhattan environment coming to your neighborhood- like it or not. Manhattan style crowding, Manhattan style pricing, Manhattan style living- even Manhattan style developers and gentrification. Don’t want it? Don’t like it? Didn’t choose it? You must be one of those bad NIMBY people…
January 15th, 2022 at 8:26 am
Will: “I mean look at the pic in the article, who really wants that rather than new development”
The mess you see is being created by the new owners and developers, who then conveniently offer to come in a fix it.
The garage in the photo was a thriving local business serving local people (if you actually lived here you would know this). It will be replaced by businesses serving the people in the apartments.
January 15th, 2022 at 8:29 am
The Windmere at 48th and Walnut
The Strands at Sansom and 47th
The Dorset and The Admiral on Locust between 48th and 47th
And the list can be made waaay longer
And you worry about crowding??? We are now 30% less than 50 years ago.
January 15th, 2022 at 9:51 am
JayK: “Those who don’t want to live in a dense urban environment shouldn’t do so. They have nearly every other place in America to choose from.”
lol
Two can play at *that* game.
Those who don’t want to live in a dense urban environment without replacing existing communities shouldn’t do so. There’s plenty of places for you to go, such as the suburbs.
There have been people living here in this dense urban environment for decades. They like it here.
“Urban renewal” has long been dog-whistle for community displacement, since at least the 1960s.
January 15th, 2022 at 12:15 pm
LW, at least you tried, I guess, but nothing in your comment makes sense. AD was arguing against density, period. And this strip containing 0 residents has been a rough shape for a while, unlike the one on the other side of 48th. No “community” is being displaced, and this is not an urban renewal project. And I should move to the suburbs because of a new building which adds more density a few blocks from where I live? Because the suburbs are so famously accepting of apartment buildings, density, reduced parking allotments and change?
January 15th, 2022 at 12:52 pm
I wish planning of the cities take a holistic approach. More single-family houses and affordable housing for families that would support nearby schools and communities. Unfortunately, building more expensive apartments to satisfy student housing demand, is not beneficial for people who live in those communities and the city as a whole. However, it is beneficial for whoever builds a 172 unit apartment building. No wonder crime is up, since students who rent apartments(nothing against students) are not invested in living in the area, but using the area for short-term use. From my observations, those projects bring money to the area, not better quality of life for some reason. Not offering any solutions(obviously), but not sure if replacing even dilapidated businesses with apartments is a good thing(if you are planning to stay and not cashing in on selling houses).
January 15th, 2022 at 1:09 pm
It’s clear that this is a discussion among suburbanites, so I doubt I’ll continue in it, but where is everyone getting this idea that there aren’t enough single family houses in America? That’s 2/3 of the housing stock. Go live in one in the low density suburban environments you prefer, which is most of what our country provides, and let the city be a city.
January 15th, 2022 at 1:32 pm
I’m against Gentrification and that is what’s up, big time. It is a racialized Class War, even when wrapped with liberal trappings. There’s so much money to be made simply by “redoing” a neighborhood, if you treat human beings like pieces on a chessboard. That’s what’s up- and these people are not our friends. They ARE making bank though- or certainly they would like to…
January 17th, 2022 at 11:01 am
The median sale price for a home in Garden Court was almost $500k in 2021, but sure a new apartment building that won’t be renting to new tenants for probably like 3-5 years is causing gentrification; that makes total sense
If you don’t like students in your neighborhood, it seems like you want to “build a big beautiful wall on our eastern border, and Penn will pay for it”.
Also, Ezra (who owned and ran that auto body shop) owned the land on the corner and sold it to the developer- so that was entirely on him, he was not displaced.
January 17th, 2022 at 12:10 pm
As the United States observes a day of remembrance for its murdered Martin Luther King, let’s go from the confusionist spin here in FAVOR of Gentrification, all the way back to the Temptations from 1970 to remember that people have been profiting from injustice such for a long, long time:
People moving out, people moving in
Why, because of the color of their skin
Run, run, run but you sure can’t hide…
Ball Of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iwLvmPUEo4
January 17th, 2022 at 2:27 pm
If you truly think that was an argument in favor of gentrification, then you are truly lost. Maybe you should log off, go for a walk and find a different hobby.
January 17th, 2022 at 3:11 pm
The Ministry of Truth had three slogans: War is Peace,Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
George Orwell, 1984
January 18th, 2022 at 7:13 am
JayK:
You are incorrect. I am making sense. If you do not understand what I am saying, that’s a different question.
“No “community” is being displaced”
The existing community here is gradually losing access to cheap stores that make their lives possible. They will be displaced over time, in the name of what some people claim is ‘improving’ things.
“this is not an urban renewal project”
It’s not the same as the 1960s when Penn seized and bulldozed the homes of thousands of local residents for ‘improvements.’ But it is the same dynamic. One group, which has greater wealth, comes in, blames the existing community for existing conditions, trots out the usual cliches about ‘improvements,’ replaces the local community, and profits.
Truth:
“If you don’t like students in your neighborhood, it seems like you want to “build a big beautiful wall on our eastern border, and Penn will pay for it”. ”
Penn has spent decades doing exactly this. However the purpose though is to keep the local community segregated from the Penn campus. It started with wholescale demolition and replacement of entire neighborhoods from 40th St West. It’s now moved on to gentrification programs.
JayK: This probably does not make sense to you.
January 18th, 2022 at 7:31 am
Whether a Bob, a bug or a building, change and mortality are a sure thing, adaptation is optional.
How to adapt to an empty lot? ignore it or buy it. Anything else is as good as gossip.
The “keep empty blocks empty” collective could buy the lot to insure it continues to be empty. As long as the collective payed the real estate taxes, I would approve.
January 20th, 2022 at 11:55 am
Ezra did well and he deserves it after all those years of hard work. We should be rewarding people for hard work.
In local zoning meetings there is often a reference to ” those people on bikes moving into my neighborhood” or something similar , which I find offensive. I rode my bike to the meeting on that evening.
Maybe these so called ” people on bicycles ” is the problem then?
January 20th, 2022 at 2:14 pm
If the people that lived there mattered,they would be owners. Profit is the American way. Children, old people, poor folks, all gotta learn this lesson: The people that are richer, really are better. If they have a lot of power over our lives, this is the reason why…
January 22nd, 2022 at 4:20 pm
Rumor has it that Lea Elementary now being converted to a Penn Elementary type public-private partnership. The University of Pennsylvania is very much involved and whether a good way or not: well, that’s complicated…
January 23rd, 2022 at 9:55 pm
As West Philly home values climb, Penn’s plan to invest in a second public school elicits displacement fears
Home prices in the catchment area for West Philadelphia’s Henry C. Lea Elementary School remain below the city average despite doubling since the beginning of the millennium.
That’s now poised to change — potentially dramatically — thanks to a pending partnership between the University of Pennsylvania and School District of Philadelphia that would, over the next five years, see Penn send more than $4 million over five years to the public school on the corner of 47th and Locust streets in a fast-changing section of University City.
“It’s right in the path of University City’s larger expansion and revitalization or gentrification. Choose your word there,” said Kevin Gillen, a senior research fellow with the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University.
The catchment area for Lea is a Tetris-shaped set of blocks covering parts of Walnut Hill, and Cedar Park — two historically Black neighborhoods. The area runs roughly between 46th and 50th Streets and between Sansom Street and Baltimore Avenue, roughly a mile from Penn’s campus.
A block away, inside the highly sought after Penn Alexander School catchment in University City, the median home price has skyrocketed from just over $171,000 in September 2000 — a year before the elementary school opened thanks to a partnership with the university and the School District of Philadelphia — to more than $720,000 by the end of 2021. That compares to just under $170,000 for the median home price in the Lea catchment.
Continues: https://whyy.org/articles/as-west-philly-home-values-climb-penns-plan-to-invest-in-a-second-public-school-elicits-displacement-fears/
January 24th, 2022 at 11:39 am
Here is an old map of the Lea Elementary catchment: https://westphillyschools.org/category/lea/
Here is some good analysis of why this all contributes to structural inequality: https://twitter.com/ResearchPhilly/status/1484368720835215360
January 25th, 2022 at 8:33 am
That data from Drexel is incorrect about home prices in the Lea catchment. If you can find a listing for a livable home for $170k that would be amazing. The fact is, single-family homes are not affordable to the median Philadelphia County household income. In fact, if you want to find a house priced at or below $170k, you have to go west of 55th St, or north of Haverford Ave.
The displacement of low income families has been happening over the last 20 years, this isn’t a recent phenomenon. And given that Garden Court hasn’t even finished its first new apartment building in like 80 years, you can’t blame this on new construction.
January 25th, 2022 at 9:48 am
Gentrification is a deep and complicated topic but the invisible hand(s) know no strict borders. Many of the mechanisms at work here are under the control of powerful institutions like the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel, the City of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Federal lending agencies, banks, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, etc.
Ordinary people will have to organize together very strong and hard to push back effectively against these kinds of powers. It’s not impossible- we can do it because we have moral force on our side and our survival may very well depend on it but we will have to break through a lot of learned powerlessness and limited thinking to do so and still there will be a lot of struggle but we can definitely win many victories.
April 12th, 2022 at 9:33 pm
I’m glad to see more density in this area, historically there were several high rises.
September 30th, 2022 at 8:45 am
You all have good points but; I agree with American Dream!
Your making Philly over crowed and even more unaffordable! This kg going to bring even more crime. Yes clean it up! But as Will says the low quality shops that have been here to supply the people in the area with what they need and even the new people that moved in the area too!!!! You look down on them work worked hard to get that low quality shop that is running and have been here. They are call (small businesses ) by the way
There bringing in more and more people again making it more crowed, traffic is a mess, getting worse they cut the drive lanes down and GOD know we don’t even want to start talking about parking!!!! Let NY stay in NY!
September 30th, 2022 at 8:55 am
You all have good points but; I agree with American Dream and those who is for cleaning it up but not pushing little people out.
Your making Philly OVER CROWDED and even more unaffordable! This is going to bring even more crime. Yes clean it up!
But Will says: the (low quality shops)! Yes they may be but they have been here to supply the people in the area with what they need and even the new people that moved in the area too!!!! You look down on them, but they worked hard to get that low quality shop that is running and have been here. They are call (small businesses ) by the way
There bringing in more and more people again making it more crowed, traffic is a mess, getting worse by the day they cut the drive lanes down and GOD know we don’t even want to start talking about parking!!!! Let NY stay in NY!