The company behind P.J. Whelihan’s is officially moving into a shuttered Iron Hill Brewery.
The Haddon Township-based PJW Restaurant Group has signed a lease for Iron Hill’s former location at the Village at Newtown, according to Brian Finnegan, the CEO of Brixmor Property Group, which owns the Bucks County shopping center.
PJW marketing director Kristen Foord confirmed the lease signing, saying in an email that the company was “not in a position to share additional specifics” at this time.
Like more than a dozen other former Iron Hills throughout the region, the nearly 8,000-square-foot space in Newtown has sat empty since the Exton-based brewpub chain closed all locations and filed for liquidation bankruptcy last fall.
As part of the revamp, the developer added new buildings, allowing it to bring in shops and restaurants like Iron Hill, Harvest Seasonal Grill, and Turning Point. The 30-acre complex is anchored by the high-end grocer McCaffrey’s Food Markets.
In Newtown, “we’ve got Free People and Lululemon and Ulta that we added to the shopping center,” Finnegan said Wednesday in an interview. “We’ve got a lot of strong service tenants. We also have Capital Grill and Harvest, so some great food and beverage options.”
And soon, he said, that list will also include P.J. Whelihan’s.
PJW’s most well-known restaurant is P.J. Whelihan’s, which started in the Poconos in 1983 and has expanded to include 25 P.J. locations, the majority of which are in the Philly region.
PJW also owns the Pour House in Exton, North Wales, and Westmont, Haddon Township; the ChopHouse in Gibbsboro; the ChopHouse Grille in Exton; Central Taco & Tequila in Westmont; and Treno, also in Westmont.
Some landlords are actively looking for tenants, with West Chester’s John Barry saying he hopes to have a lease signed by the end of this month.
“We have a number of groups interested in the space and a few [letters of intent] have been submitted,” Barry said in an email last month.
In other places, such as Voorhees, township officials and community members remain in the dark about whether another tenant will move in soon, and landlords can’t be reached.
A few of the closed breweries may be revived under new owners, though details are slim.
After decades in business, the expansive store along City Avenue is expected to close in April, according to a Saks Global spokesperson, who said decisions were based on several factors, including store performance and “lease economics.”
Fifty workers at the Bala Cynwyd Saks Fifth Avenue will lose their jobs effective April 11, according to a WARN Act filing with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. Another 155 workers at a Wilkes Barre fulfillment center will be laid off, according to a separate filing.
As part of the company’s restructuring, it will shutter seven other Saks Fifth Avenue stores, including at the American Dream mall in North Jersey, as well as a Neiman Marcus in Boston.
“Saks Global is refining its store footprint to focus on profitable locations with the highest growth potential,” company executives wrote on its website, adding that the nine closures represented “the first phase of this ongoing review.”
The move will make the company “better positioned to deliver exceptional products, elevated experiences and highly personalized service across all channels,” CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck said in a statement.
Over the years, the Saks Fifth Avenue in Bala Cynwyd has become the brand’s only physical outpost in the region. It is referred to as “Saks Philadelphia” on the company’s website, despite being located across the city line in a freestanding building at Bala Plaza.
City Avenue is shown in April 2024. The Saks Fifth Avenue along the busy thoroughfare is closing in April.
Until recently, the longstanding Saks Fifth Avenue appeared primed to be part of the area’s future: In 2024, City Ave District, the nonprofit business development agency that straddles Lower Merion and Philadelphia, reported that business at the store was so strong that it had resisted offers to move to King of Prussia.
Once the Bala Cynwyd Saks Fifth Avenue closes, the nearest location will be in New York.
Saks Global also operates a Neiman Marcus at the King of Prussia Mall, which is not on the list of stores to close.
The Neiman Marcus at the King of Prussia Mall, pictured in 2020, will remain open.
Elsewhere in the country, Saks Global is closing the majority of its standalone Fifth Avenue Club personal styling suites, the company said Tuesday.
In New York, Bergdorf Goodman, which Saks also owns, will remain open.
What Philly-area Saks customers should know
Shoppers walk through Saks Fifth Avenue in New York in January.
Shoppers at the Bala Cynwyd store will no longer be able to buy gift cards in person, according to Saks, and will have 15 days from the start of the closing sale to use existing gift cards.
Items that were bought before the closing sale can be returned or exchanged as usual, the company said, but purchases made during it will be final. Merchandise bought during the closing sale will also be ineligible for return or exchange at stores that are remaining open.
SaksFirst credit cards will still be accepted, according to the company, and customers with those credit cards will still earn points for purchases made in store. Shoppers will no longer be able to make in-person credit card payments or apply for credit cards at the Bala Cynwyd store.
At other Saks locations, including the King of Prussia Neiman Marcus, the company says the customer experience will remain unchanged.
When Justin Burkhardt heard that his neighborhood grocery store was closing, just months after it had opened, he felt a pang of sadness.
The emotion surprised him, he said, because that store was the Northern Liberties Amazon Fresh.
“Amazon is a big corporation, but [with] the people that worked there [in Northern Liberties] and the fact that it was so affordable, it actually started to feel like a neighborhood grocery store,” said Burkhardt, 40, a public relations professional, who added that he is not a fan of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s billionaire owner.
“I don’t feel bad for Amazon,” said Burkhardt, who spent about $200 a week at Amazon Fresh. “I feel bad for the workers. … I feel bad for the community members.”
Burkhardt said he and his wife have been forced to return to their old grocery routine: Driving 20 minutes to the Cherry Hill Wegmans, where they feel the prices are cheaper than their nearby options in the city.
Last week, signs informed customers that the Northern Liberties Amazon Fresh was permanently closed.
In Philadelphia and its suburbs, many former Amazon Fresh customers are similarly saddened by the closure of neighborhood stores where they had developed connections with helpful workers. Several said they are most upset about the effects on their budgets amid recent years’ rise in grocery prices.
“I wasn’t happy about it closing for the simple fact that it was much cheaper to shop there,” said Brandon Girardi, a 30-year-old truck driver from Levittown (who quit a job delivering packages for Amazon a few years ago). Girardi said his family’s weekly $138 grocery haul from the Langhorne Amazon Fresh would have cost at least $200 at other local stores.
At the Amazon Fresh in Broomall, “they had a lot of organic stuff for a quarter of the price of what Giant or Acme has,” said Nicoletta O’Rangers, a 58-year-old hairstylist who shopped there for the past couple years. “They were like the same things that were in Whole Foods but cheaper than Whole Foods.”
She paused, then added: “Maybe that’s why they didn’t last.”
In response to questions from The Inquirer, an Amazon spokesperson referred to the company’s original announcement. In that statement, executives wrote: “While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion.”
Workers could be seen inside the closed Amazon Fresh in Northern Liberties last week.
What makes a Philly shopper loyal to a grocery store?
Former Amazon Fresh customers say they’re now shopping around for a new grocery store and assessing what makes them loyal to one supermarket over another.
Last week, one of those customers, Andrea “Andy” Furlani, drove from her Newtown Square home to Aldi in King of Prussia. The drive is about an hour round trip, she said, but the prices are lower than at some other stores. Her five-person, three-dog household tries to stick to a $1,200 monthly grocery budget.
As she drove to Aldi, she said, she’d already been alerted that the store was out of several items she had ordered for pickup. That’s an issue Furlani said she seldom encountered at the Amazon Fresh in Broomall, to which she had become “very loyal” in recent years.
“It was small, well-stocked,” said Furlani, 43, who works in legal compliance. “I don’t like to go into like a Giant and have a billion options. Sometimes less is more. And the staff was awesome,” often actively stocking shelves and unafraid to make eye contact with customers.
“Time is valuable to me,” Furlani said. At Amazon Fresh, “you could get in and out of there quickly.”
Shoppers learned how to use the Amazon Dash Cart at an Amazon Fresh in Warrington in 2021.
Girardi, in Levittown, said he is deciding between Giant and Redner’s now that Amazon Fresh is gone. The most cost-effective store would likely win out, he said, but product quality and convenience are important considerations, too.
“We used to do Aldi, but Amazon Fresh had fresher produce,” Girardi said. “I used to have a real good connection with Walmart because my mom used to work there. But I don’t see myself going all the way to Tullytown just to go grocery shopping.”
Susan and Michael Kitt, of Newtown Square, shopped at the Broomall Amazon Fresh for certain items, such as $1.19 gallons of distilled water for their humidifiers and Amy’s frozen dinners that were dollars cheaper than at other stores.
But Giant is the couple’s mainstay. They said they like its wide selection, as well as its coupons and specials that save them money.
“I got suckered by Giant on their marketing with the Giant-points-for-gas discounts. I figured if I’m going to a store I may as well get something out of it,” said Michael Kitt, a 70-year-old business owner who has saved as much as $2-per-gallon with his Giant rewards. “I really at the time didn’t see that much of a difference between the stores.”
How Whole Foods might fare in Amazon Fresh shells
The Whole Foods store on the Exton Square Mall property is shown in 2022.
If any of these local Amazon Fresh stores were to become a Whole Foods, several customers said they’d be unlikely to return, at least not on a regular basis.
Natoya Brown-Baker, 42, of Overbrook, said she found the Northern Liberties Amazon Fresh “soulless,” and she didn’t “want to give Jeff Bezos any more money.” But the prices at Amazon Fresh were so low, she said, that she couldn’t resist shopping there sometimes.
Brown-Baker, who works in health equity,said she came to appreciate that it represented an affordable, walkable option for many in the neighborhood, including her parents, who are on a fixed income.
If a Whole Foods replaces the store at Sixth and Spring Garden Streets, which was under construction for years, Brown-Baker said the area would be “back at square one.”
Burkhardt, who also lives in the neighborhood, noted that Northern Liberties has a mix of fancy new apartment complexes and low-income housing.
“The grocery store should be for everyone,” he said. Whole Foods “doesn’t feel like it’s for the neighborhood. It feels like it’s for a certain class of people.”
A long vacant parking garage at 510-28 S. Eighth St. sits between some of Philadelphia’s most desirable neighborhoods, and Rabbi Yochonon Goldman hopes it could soon be the site of Center City’s only Jewish day school.
It all depends on how the Zoning Board of Adjustment rules.
The four-story, almost 36,000-square-foot plan for the building is the third iteration of the proposed K-8 school. Goldman, who is rabbi of B’nai Abraham Chabad, and developer Masada Custom Builders are seeking neighborhood support for the project.
The proposal has stirred controversy for its height, size, and the inclusion of several apartments. The project needs seven variances from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment, largely because the garage is zoned for multifamily rowhouse development, just like most of the surrounding blocks.
The plan is more likely to succeed at a zoning hearing if it has the support of local neighborhood groups, chiefly the Washington Square West Civic Association.
“I truly believe that this educational institution will enhance our neighborhood,” Goldman said at a neighborhood meeting last week. “It will be a tremendous asset to all residents of the neighborhood, whether you’re Jewish or not.”
Goldman’s synagogue runs a successful nearby pre-kindergarten program at the synagogue on 527 Lombard St., and many parents are frustrated by the lack of a Jewish elementary school in the area.
But the Lombard Mews homeowners association, which borders the site to the west, has organized to negotiate with the development team and hired veteran zoning attorney Paul Boni.
Immediate neighbors say they are most concerned with the proposed building’s size and height, which in early iterations was five stories. They are skeptical of plans to build three apartments on top of the school, saying the apartments would bulk up the structure.
Speakers from Lombard Mews included Aren Platt, who served as one of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s top advisers during her election campaign and the first year of her administration. He reiterated that his neighbors’ chief concern was with height and size, not the idea of a school in this location.
Two of the apartments above the school would be small studios for interns who join the faculty and will need affordable nearby residences. The largest would be for the rabbi’s family: a bi-level condo with a private elevator and roof deck.
A rendering of the Jewish day school planned for the Washington Square West neighborhood.
At the meeting, the design team noted that the current version of the building is 52½ feet,down from over 70 feet originally. The team reduced the ceiling height of each floor and eliminated one story from the plans.
Still, critics argued against the apartments — especially given that the classrooms have shrunk to meet neighbor demands but the living units remained intact.
“We’re puzzled as to why the proposal includes three luxury dwelling units on the top,” Boni said at the meeting. “Eliminating that square footage would seem to go a long way toward meeting our requested building envelope.”
Goldman argues that the apartments atop the school are essential to the project’s success.
“A rabbi’s home is not just a private residence; it’s a communal space which builds strong relationships among community members who become like an extended family, sharing meals with the rabbi’s family,” Goldman said in an email. “It’s all part of the educational model which we envision for the school.”
Goldman also says that having a responsible and active presence on site 24/7 will be a positive for the school building. But most important to him, the close proximity will aid in the religious practice of his community.
“This space is not just a home. It is a vehicle for hospitality and connection,“ he said. ”Beyond the academics offered in the classroom, the school is a place where the values of Judaism come to life.”
Someopponents thought the school should be rejected entirelyfor its attempt to bypass the property’s zoning. The proposal provides only 12 parking spaces, while the zoning requires twice that, and a roof deck is not allowed under current land-use rules.
Regarding parking and potential congestion from the plan — a fear expressed by some nearby small business owners — the development team saidtheir traffic study showed that 50% to 60% of students would walk to school, as they already do to the pre-K program. Supporters noted that many Jewish families who do not drive on Shabbat and certain holidays would prefer to live within walking distance to school.
“Right now, we have 75 kids, and at least 60 from those kids are walking,” said Isaac Ohayon of Masada Custom Builders. “They live in the neighborhood. … They’re all no more than 10 to 15 blocks away.”
The Washington Square West Civic Association will vote Tuesday on whether to support or oppose the project when it goes before the zoning board March 4.
OCEAN CITY, N.J. — Marie Crawford was immediately charmed in 2021 when she and her soon-to-be-surfer husband Rich moved into their historic house in the literal shadow of Gillian’s Wonderland Pier.
They’d come from Blue Bell, Pa., to live year-round by the ocean, and landed with an amusement park right up the street.
“The ball drop, that was what we heard from my house,” she said, referring to the 130-foot-high Drop Tower ride. “It was, ‘Ah, ah, ahhhhhhhh,‘” she said, imitating the screams she would sometimes hear.
Jack Gutenkunst, left, Marie Crawford and her husband Richard with Shiloh, a 9-year-old soft coated wheaten terrier, walk along Plaza Place, in Ocean City, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
“It was so beautiful and romantic. On our porches, we would hear the ocean, not the amusement park. There were families, babies in strollers, coming up the street, flowing up to Wonderland. We were kind of ambassadors.”
Now, more than a year after the closing of Gillian’s, the residents are faced with the possibility of a seven-story hotel they fear will block their sun, bring traffic to their streets, and threaten the small-town charm they found in their little pocket of Ocean City.
“It’s just another example of maximizing, pushing,” said Rich Crawford, Marie’s husband, who programs music for his family’s Christian radio station, WDAC, located in Lancaster, Pa. In his 60s, Rich fell in with Ocean City’s surfing crowd and unexpectedly grew to love his little community.
The Crawfords’ neighborhood of 100-year-old homes and 153 trees is called Plaza Place, which is one block each of Pelham Place, Plaza Place, and the north side of Seventh Street, between Wayne Avenue and Atlantic.
Across Wayne Avenue, toward the ocean, was Wonderland. On a clear day, a red ball of sun creeps up above the boardwalk and peeks into their little neighborhood.
On Pelham Place, residents each also own a two-foot- wide stretch of land across the street from their houses, a quirk of their deeds originally designed to prevent the rooming houses on Plaza Place that backed up against Pelham Place from using Pelham as an alleyway for their trash. There are dedicated gardeners on the streets who turn those strips into showpieces.
The sun sets behind the Ferris wheel on the final day for the beloved Wonderland Pier in Ocean City Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024.
Neighbor Barb Doctorman, whose family owns the Islander store on the boardwalk, said she used to take her children up on the Ferris wheel and peer down at their neighborhood. So lush, it looked like a forest, she said.
“I looked up the impact of a high-rise,” said Doctorman. “We’re going to lose some sun. The airflow is going to be totally changed from what it was. There’s a heat radiant that comes off it.”
Her husband, Doc, said: “We want something up there, but we know there could be more of a draw to that boardwalk than just the hotel.”
Marie Crawford (left) holds the leash of Shiloh, a 9-year-old soft-coated wheaten terrier, while standing with her husband Richard (center) and neighbor Jack Gutenkunst at the end of Pelham Place in Ocean City.
The land is owned by developer Eustace Mita, who has proposed Icona in Wonderland, a 252-room hotel that would preserve the Ferris wheel, carousel, and some kiddie rides.
So far, the city has not declared the site in need of rehabilitation, as Mita has requested, or otherwise moved to rezone the area to allow a hotel.
Merchants have begged the city to allow the hotel, and described how their businesses have suffered since the closure of Wonderland. Some residents have clung to the idea that an amusement park can return, though those numbers are dwindling.
Marie Crawford, her husband Richard, right, along with Shiloh, a 9-year-old soft coated wheaten terrier, and their neighbor Jack Gutenkunst, walk past a sign against the development of a hotel at the site of the old Wonderland Pier on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
In Plaza Place, the opposition is less sentimental, more practical. They fear traffic, and the shadow from a neighboring seven-story hotel. Like residents in other towns who fought dunes, they fear the loss of the ocean breeze, or a shift in wind patterns that will affect surfing at the popular Seventh Street Beach.
“It’s got that old feel to it, and everybody’s house is different,” said Marie Crawford, who bought her Craftsman Colonial on the north side of Pelham for $905,000 in 2021. She estimates it’s worth $2.5 million now. There are about 60 homes in the Plaza Place civic association.
The association is one of several groups that are prepared to go to court if the city tries to change the zoning to allow a hotel, without going through a thorough master plan process, said Jack Gutenkunst, the Plaza Place Association president.
While Wonderland brought thousands of people on a summer night, the pier itself had no parking. So people parked elsewhere and excitedly walked through their neighborhood on their way to the rides. People on their porches called out, “Have a blessed evening,” and chatted the night away, said Crawford. The hotel proposal calls for parking underneath the structure.
A sign stands near the historic neighborhood behind the old site of the Wonderland Pier in Ocean City, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Residents are against the development of a hotel at the boardwalk site.
Crawford stressed that it’s not a case of selfish NIMBY, Not In My Backyard. Despite Ocean City’s decades-old pattern of replacing single-family homes with duplexes, there are nearly 1,400 homes over 100 years old still left in Ocean City, said Bill Merritt, president of Friends of OCNJ History & Culture.
Being a block from the boardwalk, and living in a beach town, does not mean the neighborhood’s purpose is primarily hospitality, said Crawford. Its distinct, increasingly rare Jersey Shore character deserves to be valued, she said.
“It’s height. It’s chaos. It’s the change in culture,” she said, when asked what specifically worries her about the hotel. “It’s a transient population coming through here for three nights at a time. That’s in the hospitality district. We are not the hospitality district.”
The neighborhood behind the old Wonderland Pier site on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Residents are against the development of a hotel at the boardwalk site.
The demolish-and-rebuild mania that took over a lot of the rest of the island has mostly left Plaza Place alone, though residents acknowledge that is also a threat to their way of life. They also fear a hotel will prompt Plaza Placeans to sell.
“It’s a Norman Rockwell painting, it just is,” Councilman Keith Hartzell says in the documentaryPlaza Place: The Enigmatic Street, a locally made short film about the neighborhood. “It’s right here in Ocean City, and you kind of don’t expect it, when there’s two streets away a bunch of duplexes.”
Hartzell, who is running for mayor against incumbent Jay Gillian, the former owner of Wonderland who sold to Mita, says he hopes to negotiate with Mita over height, parking, and other issues before considering any kind of zoning allowance or rehabilitation designation. A city council-appointed subcommittee tasked with assessing the boardwalk’s usage as a whole is holding a public meeting at 10 a.m. on Feb. 7 at the city’s library.
The residents of Plaza Place worry about the survival of the hidden little neighborhood by the beach they fell in love with. “The neighborhood is so beautiful and so old,” said Marie Crawford. “If the hotel goes in, the dramatic change that will be for all of us with the traffic, the tone of the neighborhood — you’re going to see people sell. That threatens the neighborhood. The people won’t want to stay.”
The project was revealed in 2024 and would have been a collaboration between Hines, an international development company, and the King of Prussia-basedPhiladelphia Suburban Development Corp. (PSDC), which owns the land.
It would have constructed six buildings, including an office tower and entertainment complex, to the east of the Live! Casino & Hotel where Parx Casino’s South Philadelphia Race & Sportsbook and Packer Avenue Foods once stood.
Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who represents the area, has movedto repeal several zoning ordinances that he had passed to enable the project, despite protests from PSDC president Mark Nicoletti, who says the move will kill the project.
“Hines withdrew from the project last summer,” Johnson said in a statement. “Since the plans that were presented to me at the outset of the partnership with Hines and PSDC have significantly changed, I feel it is in the best long-term interest of the residents … to introduce new legislation this year that repeals the original 2024 zoning legislation.”
Johnson advanced his repeal legislation at an early February hearing of City Council’s Rules committee. A finalvote could come as soon as next week.
Nicoletti says PSDC could have developed the project without Hines, but only if the zoning legislation had remained in place.
“I’m honestly scratching my head. This makes no sense,” Nicoletti said Tuesday after the City Council hearing. “What happened today was random and inexplicable and unfortunately killed thousands of jobs and a very important economic development project.”
The project proved controversial early on, with representatives of the Phillies, Eagles, and Comcast Spectacor — which owns the Flyers — expressing concerns at a 2024 City Council hearing.
Earlier in 2024 those three organizations shared plans of their own for a mixed-use development of their own at the sports complex.
The release occurred as debate raged around a plan from the 76ers to leave the sports complex and build an arena in Center City — an effort the team ultimately aborted.
But Nicoletti says his company met with local community organizations and the major sports teams about the proposal.
“We presented comprehensive plans from a top architectural firm at a dozen meetings with community groups and the teams,” Nicoletti said. “We worked through any concerns the Planning Commission had to win their support.”
But Nicoletti says the two developers went separate ways last summer because Hines did not exercise an option to buy all or part of the property from the PSDC.
Hines declined to comment.
An overview of what Hines and PSDC are planning for the stadium district.
Johnson’s legislation contained a sunset clause for the zoning overlay he created to aid the project, which would have repealed itself later this year. But he decided to act sooner.
Johnson also repealed a change in the underlying zoning from industrial to land use rules that allow mixed commercial and residential use.
If he had left that mixed-use zoning in place, the land value would have increased even without the project moving forward.
“I look forward to hearing new proposals from anyone, including PSDC, concerning new development plans for the former South Philadelphia Race & Sportsbook location at 700 Packer Ave.,” Johnson’s statement read.
Johnson emphasized that any new proposal would need to be presented to neighborhood groups and get their support before he introduces any new zoning legislation.
The Hines and PSDC collaboration promised to create thousands of construction jobs, but the exit of the international developer is seen by union leadership as the catalyst for the project’s death.
“Hines stepped away from the project, and that caused the Council president to look at it with a new set of eyes,” said Ryan Boyer, who leads the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council and the Laborers District Council.
“The Council president has approved correct development, but he wants the community to have a say — as is his right,” Boyer said. “But I also think that [Johnson] and Mark [Nicoletti] are both reasonable people and reasonable men will come to a resolution for both of them, and for the building trades.”
A plan to revitalize a neglected building at 2043 Frankford Ave. with a ground-floor burger restaurant and second-floor cocktail bar is facing stiff opposition in Fishtown.
Because of an over-25-year-old zoning overlay — which applies to the east side of Frankford Avenue and not the west side — the Slider Co.’s plans have been hung up for months awaiting a hearing from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA).
On Wednesday, the board ruled in the Slider Co.’s favor, but the saga has cost the business owners at least $40,000 and almost six months of waiting for a hearing.
And that’s if opponents of the project don’t appeal the ZBA ruling to the Court of Common Pleas — adding at least another nine months and more legal costs to the project, probably killing it.
“We were expecting to have a straightforward project, and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose,” zoning attorney Alan Nochumson, who represents Slider Co.’s William Johnson and Anesha Garrett, said at a late January ZBA hearing.
The principal opponent of the project is Ashley Gleason, who owns the clothing shop Vestige next door at 2041 Frankford Ave. She hired a zoning attorney to fight the case. At a Fishtown Neighbors Association (FNA) meeting last year, a narrow majority (36-30) voted to recommend that the zoning board deny the application.
“Our block is not like the lower part of Frankford. It doesn’t have the bars and restaurants,” Gleason said at the ZBA hearing. “It is mostly residential and retail. So it [the proposal] is out of character for this block.”
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The property at 2043 Frankford Ave. is a faded two-story building at the end of the row, and it’s been in rough shape for years.
Unusually for a restaurant application, the case has stirred up allies in the community who submitted a petition in support of Johnson and Garrett, who already have a presence in the neighborhood.
The former president of FNA, Ashlei Tracy, spoke in support of their application at the zoning board, noting bars and restaurants on the blocks of Frankford to the north and south of this one.
“A constant complaint that we hear is that Fishtown is becoming very corporate,” Tracy said in an interview after the hearing. “A part of that is that it’s so expensive to even go through this [zoning] process.”
The cases can also stir neighborhood tensions. January’s ZBA hearing on the matter saw lengthy testimony, weeping, and accusations of racial discrimination. Johnson and Garrett are Black, and Fishtown is an overwhelmingly white neighborhood.
An interior rendering of the burger place planned by the Slider Co. The Coke machine is a hidden entrance to the upstairs speakeasy.
The wrong side of the street
The complexities of the Slider Co.’s attempt to open a new restaurant and bar in one of Philadelphia’s hottest culinary neighborhoods is an effect of a 1990s-era zoning law to address rowdy nightclubs along the Delaware River.
The “North Delaware Avenue overlay district,” which covers much of Northern Liberties and Fishtown, bans entertainment businesses from the area it covers while requiring food and beverage businesses to secure approval from the ZBA to open.
The overlay extends from the Delaware River to the east side of Frankford Avenue and from Lehigh Avenue down to Spring Garden Street.
The law was largely successful in its initial aims, stemming the creation of new nightclubs in the area. The Delaware riverfront is now known for its surplus of rental apartments, not for rowdy nightlife.
“Everyone agrees that the original purpose of the overlay no longer needs to be served,” said Matt Ruben, a longtime civic activist in Northern Liberties who has been involved with zoning and planning issues in the area — including negotiations around this overlay — for years.
“Where there is disagreement, and shifting views within some neighborhoods, is on the more subtle question of whether there should be some kind of zoning to help regulate everyday operational nuisances and negative impacts that can come from them,” Ruben said. “Even from operators who are not bad actors at all.”
Many overlays linger on for decades, long after the politicians who created them are retired because they empower neighborhood groups to stave off changes in their community.
An interior rendering of the upstairs speakeasy proposed by Slider Co.
In this case, Councilmember Mark Squilla, who represents the area, says he is open to rewriting or scaling back the overlay, but only if there is unanimity among neighborhood and business groups in Fishtown and Northern Liberties.
Currently, the Fishtown Neighbors Association (FNA) is in favor of the zoning overlay, which it argues gives residents of Frankford Avenue and the surrounding blocks a say in the restaurant boom.
The community group says new restaurants and bars have affected quality of life — such as when eateries implement late-night private trash collection that can wake up people who live nearby.
“I have not seen any interest in our community to get rid of” the zoning overlay, said John Scott, president of FNA. “It’s not seen as a detriment. It’s seen as a way to mitigate some of the impact of the food establishments.”
Johnson and Garrett fear the old zoning law has given opponents of their project a way to wage legal warfare against their proposal.
“We have never previously faced opposition to opening a new restaurant,” said Johnson, who has opened numerous culinary businesses in Delaware and Philadelphia.
“An appeal to the Court of Common Pleas would likely put the project in jeopardy due to the financial strain and delays it would impose on the property owner,” Johnson said.
Gleason’s lawyer declined to comment, and the property owner, Jordan Claffey, did not respond to a request for comment.
Staff writer Michael Klein contributed to this article.
A North Jersey developer has plans to finally transform the long-dead Echelon Mall, saying he’d spend more than $250 million to create a “regional destination” with high-end restaurants, entertainment venues, sports retailers, housing, and perhaps even an “upscale supermarket.”
“We’re going to try to make it Voorhees’ main street” inside the old mall building, said George Vallone, president of the Hoboken Brownstone Co. “Just sort of reinvent the whole thing.”
But Vallone said his plans aren’t set in stone: The revitalization of the former mall, now called the Voorhees Town Center, depends on whether Hoboken Brownstone can get financial help from the state.
The entrance to the food court at the Voorhees Town Center, which has been closed for nearly two years after a fire.
Vallone said his company is applying for a $90 million tax credit for development projects and expects to hear in the coming months whether it is approved. If not, he said, “we walk.”
Vallone made similar statements in a Philadelphia Business Journal report earlier this week.
Voorhees Township Mayor Michael Mignogna said he supports “the thoughtful redevelopment of the former Echelon Mall site” as proposed by Hoboken Brownstone.
“Throughout the process, the township has worked collaboratively with Hoboken Brownstone and Namdar in their private transaction to advocate for the rejuvenation of Town Center, specifically a strong business and retail presence that will restore the site as the center of Voorhees tradition and community,” Mignogna said in a statement.
He noted that a state tax credit would not affect the developer’s local tax responsibilities.
The uncertainty represents the latest hurdle in the long quest to revive the sprawling complex off Somerdale Road. Over the years, the 400-acre property, one of the Philadelphia region’s many lifeless malls, has been redeveloped in fits and starts under multiple owners.
Recently, transformations have begun at nearby malls, including Moorestown and Burlington Center, as the old Echelon Mall languishes.
What $250 million could do for dead Voorhees mall
The Voorhees Township Town Hall would not be included in a potential sale of the closed mall building.
In an attempt to turn the mall around, it was partially demolished, and a Main Street-style mixed-use development was built on part of the property in 2008. After this makeover, which cost an estimated $150 million, the complex was rebranded as the Voorhees Town Center.
A sign on the door of the Voorhees Town Center, which has been closed for nearly two years due to fire damage.
Hoboken Brownstone plans to buy the mall building from Namdar in a pending sale, dependent on the tax break, Vallone said. He declined to disclose how much he would pay for the property, and Namdar executives could not be reached.
The sale would not include the Voorhees Town Hall, which occupies 22,000 square feet of the mall and cost the township $5.5 million.
Nor would it include the property’s existing mixed-use section, Boulevard Shoppes, which had been home to an Iron Hill Brewery until the company filed for bankruptcy and closed all locations this fall. (Township administrator Stephen Steglik said Voorhees hasn’t heard anything from Namdar about what’s next for the Iron Hill space.)
Voorhees Township officials are in the dark about the future of the closed Iron Hill Brewery.
If the sale goes through, Vallone said, construction could begin in early 2027.
The company plans to build more than 200 market-rate townhouses; more than 100 units of affordable housing, including for-sale townhouses and rental apartments; and a parking garage with at least 1,300 spaces.
As for the retail space inside the mall, “we’re going to invest a lot of money because there has been very little maintenance done on that thing for the last 20 years,” Vallone said. The mall building will not be torn down, he said, and may look largely the same from the outside.
Why this developer invests in dead New Jersey malls
The former Echelon Mail, as seen through a window in October 2024, after a fire damaged the building. The mall has not reopened since.
In Voorhees, Hoboken Brownstone’s plan differs from its other major mall redevelopment in New Jersey.
After buying Liberty Village from Namdar, Vallone said he reached back out to the real estate company to inquire about other mall properties for sale. That’s how he became interested in the Voorhees Town Center.
Vallone said he believes dead and dying malls can make good investments.
“Here we have a substantial amount of infrastructure that is feeding the mall,” including plumbing and electric, Vallone said. “That de-risks the project quite a bit.”
And he said he thinks customers will come to malls-turned-town-centers if they are developed thoughtfully.
After all, retailers like Amazon can’t deliver everything same-day, Vallone said, and shopping online doesn’t offer the same experience as browsing at a store.
In-person entertainment, fine dining, and even grocery shopping are also hard to replicate at home, he said: “Certain things, you have to go somewhere to do.”
A large new apartment proposal for 4889 Umbria St. in Roxborough has been altered to appease some neighbor concerns, with more brick incorporated into the facade and design tweaks to ease congestion.
The developers, Philadelphia-based Genesis Properties and Newtown Square-based GMH Communities, also reduced the number of apartments from 384 to 369.
But the actual number of bedrooms increased from 481 to 486, as they shifted to larger, family-size apartments.
“I love the increase of twos and threes [bedrooms] and the availability to families, which I don’t find very common as a developer,” said Maria Sourbeer, vice president at Mosaic Development Partners and a member of the city’s Civic Design Review committee. “The money’s in the studios and ones.”
The design team explained that the developers felt this corner of Northwest Philadelphia would have strong demand for larger units.
Last November, the project’s initial consideration at the Civic Design Review committee saw pushback to its fortress-like design.
Philadelphia-based Oombra Architects sought to soften elements of the project, increasing plantings and street tree coverage.
More brick has been added as a building material, in a bid to echo the older industrial buildings on the project’s southwestern edge.
A bird’s eye rendering of the new development on Umbria Street in Roxborough.
The 123-space bike parking facility has been moved from the third to the first floor.
The developers also relocated the parking garage entrance from busy Parker Avenue to Smick Street, which had not previously been publicly accessible. The project includes 380 spaces.
“[We] want to commend you in taking the process seriously,” said Ximena Valle, an architect who chairs the CDR committee. “We recognize that you could have come here with no changes made. … Overall, there’s a big win here.”
The Civic Design Review process makes recommendations but cannot force developers to accede to its critiques. The last time the Philadelphia City Planning Commission studied its efficacy in 2019, it found that only a third of projects adopted CDR recommendations.
A rendering of the Lemonte Street side of the project, the largest new apartment building in Roxborough in years.
Although the project offers nearly one parking space for every apartment — far more than they are legally required — the local community group still held concerns about the amount of parking included in the project as the bedroom count rose.
Otherwise, they largely embraced the changes.
“There are going to be more cars on the street. I don’t think there’s any question about that,” said Marlene G. Schleifer of the Ridge Park Civic Association. “But we were pleased with the work that the developer has done to comfort us a little bit and make it easier to swallow.”
Philadelphia has many thousands of vacant properties, and historically, some local politicians have sought to encourage razing such structures to prevent fire risks or eliminate drug havens.
But in the last couple of decades, as real estate development heated up in many neighborhoods, concerns emerged that potentially historic olderbuildings were being destroyed to make the vacant land more valuable.
“We know that when these properties are demolished in certain communities, that typically is a sign of gentrification,” Councilmember Jeffery Young, who represents much of North Philadelphia, said at a Tuesday hearing.
“When you demolish that property and you build up, you’re trying to make more money than the property was originally stated as a shell,” said Young, whose district also includes parts of Center City.
Young introduced a bill last year that would ban demolition permits from being issued in his district unless a property owner had secured building permitsfor a new project.
He said he saw the legislation as a means to encourage property owners to repair existing buildings and to ensure that vacant lots would not scar his district.
“When you rehab a property, the price is typically lower than a brand-new house, and so we’re trying to keep homes affordable,” Young said, “and prevent blight from our communities.”
Young’s bill would not apply to buildings deemed imminently dangerous by the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections.
Last year Councilmember Jamie Gauthier passed a law containing a similar provision, but for a more tightly proscribed area that covered properties held by large higher education institutions in University City.
The Building Industry Association (BIA) presented a litany of concerns about Young’s bill at Tuesday’s Rules Committee hearing.
The BIA feared the legislation would delay projects, as many developers demolish structures while they are waiting for their building permits. The additional months in limbo would increase insurance, security, and financing costs, the group argued.
The bill could also encourage bad actors to engage in dangerous behavior, the BIA said.
“To qualify for an exception based on structural danger, certain property owners may be compelled to intentionally incur code violation or enforcement action to demonstrate instability,” said Kenn Penn, a local developer, who spoke on the BIA’s behalf. It “incentivizes the very condition that the city seeks to avoid.”
Penn also warned about the danger of preserving long-vacant properties.
“The bill would prevent demolition of vacant and unsecured structures that are highly susceptible to unlawful occupation,” Penn said. “Philadelphia has already experienced multiple fires this winter, many historically linked to squatters and abandoned buildings.”
Penn asked Young to limit the legislation to properties that do not have a vacant property license.
But the bill passed from the committee with only technical amendments.
“I understand the impacts this will have on the development community,” Young said. “But what I think this bill does is ensures that property owners maintain their properties in a prudent manner.”
