The house: a 1,380-square-foot 1950s twin with three bedrooms and 2½ baths
The price: $255,000
The ask: Kim Sephes didn’t want to live in a house attached to her father’s church anymore. It “felt strange,” she said, living there after he passed away in 2019.
So in 2022, she and her husband, Matthew, began searching for a home for their family of eight. Safety, location, and a driveway were top priorities. They needed four bedrooms and dreamed of a backyard.
The search: At first, the couple searched in Northeast Philadelphia, where they found a lot of nice houses, but were worried about their kids walking around safely without supervision. They expanded their search to Mount Airy, but the competition was stiff. They made offers on four houses only to get outbid every time.
“It was a crazy housing market where people were offering cash offers left and right,” Sephes said.
Soon after, the family “stepped on the gas” with their search and found a house they loved in August 2022.
The appeal: The house was move-in ready. Only the kitchen needed updating.
But they had to make a few compromises.
It was three bedrooms, not four — but it had a finished basement that Sephes says could be converted. It was a twin, not their preferred single, home — but it was attached to the corner house.
“At least we weren’t in the middle of the block,” said Sephes. Most importantly, it was in a great section of Mount Airy, and it had a back patio.
Kim Sephes with children (from left) Darius, 8, and Solomon, 4, on the steps of their home. She is carrying 1-month-old Adam.
The deal: They offered $5,000 over the asking price of $250,000. The house attracted several offers from investors but “the sellers really wanted to sell it to a family,” said Sephes. “Our real estate agent went hard trying to convince them to sell it to us, because they did have a cash offer on the table for more than what we were going to offer.”
In the end, the Sepheses’ offer was accepted and, after a little back and forth about the inspection, they sealed the deal with a $5,000 non-refundable earnest money deposit.
The money: The couple saved $18,000 for a down payment, socking away the previous two years’ tax returns and parts of their paychecks. For three years, they put a little bit away every time they got paid.
“I was so determined,” said Sephes.
They also got a $15,000 forgivable loan through the Neighborhood Lift program, which they do not have to pay back as long as they stay in the house for 10 years.
Through their lender, Fulton Bank, they secured an additional $2,000 grant and a Federal Housing Authority (FHA) mortgage with a 5% interest rate.
The Neighborhood Lift grant “helped get us in the home,” Sephes said. Without it, they “would’ve qualified for something way less.”
The move: The Sepheses closed on Sept. 26 and started moving right away.
To ensure they had enough time to move, they paid October rent. However, they were officially out of the house within the first week, so the church gave them the full month’s rent back. “I really appreciated that because they didn’t have to do that,” Sephes said.
Any reservations? The only issue with the house is that “it’s a little small,” Sephes said. But the garage has extra space for storage.
More than anything, Sephes is grateful they were able to move.
“We were ready to leave the church house,” she said.
Life after close: Sephes says the best thing about their new home is the neighborhood.
“It’s a beautiful block, very quiet, and it’s wide, too, so we don’t have to worry about traffic.”
To hear Michael Blichasz tell it, none of this would have happened if he hadn’t gone asking for a copy of the deed.
City officials never would have come knocking on the door of his nonprofit museum, the Polish American Cultural Center, curious how he came to be the supposed owner of a multimillion-dollar property in the heart of Philadelphia’s historic district.
They never would have begun scrutinizing the decades-long paper trail, the political handshakes, and the forgotten promises made to the once-powerful community leader.
And the quaint Polish history museum that has operated in Society Hill since 1987 would still have its home.
Because for nearly 30 years, City Hall never questioned whether Blichasz’s nonprofit actually owned the building at 308 Walnut St.
“No one mentioned a word about it,” Blichasz, 79, said. “It was totally silent.”
That silence started unraveling seven years ago when, Blichasz said, he requested a copy of the deed in order to get a state grant to make repairs on the five-story property. He had somehow avoided an inquiry for decades, despite securing other grants and contracts to keep alive his nonprofit’s mission: providing Polish immigrants with a one-stop cultural hub that could connect them to city services.
Officials at the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) scratched their heads at the request, according to Blichasz. Records showed the authority owned the museum building, not the Polish group.
PRA eventually took Blichasz to court, accusing him of squatting in the property and failing to pay back millions in loan installments. Blichasz said former Mayor W. Wilson Goode and other elected officials in the late 1980s purchased the property for his group and promised to pay off the debt as a gift to the Polish community.
But apparently those promises were never written down.
“The city has no records [or] evidence anyone in the city ever agreed to pay the balance on behalf of [the Polish museum] to obtain ownership of the property,” Jamila Davis, a PRA spokesperson, said in a statement.
Michael Blichasz, president of the Polish American Cultural Center, stands beside a bust of the former Pope John Paul II.
This much both sides agree on: The Polish American Cultural Center came to occupy the historic building thanks to a rare and generous arrangement in 1987.
Goode approved a $2.1 million bond to buy a permanent home for United Polish American Social Services, a nonprofit run by Blichasz that had been aiding the city’s Polish immigrants since the early 20th century.
The grant led to the birth of the city’s first and only Polish museum, where Blichasz amassed an exhibit hall full of national folk art, portraits of famous Poles such as Pope John Paul II, and historical artifacts dating from the first immigrant settlers to these shores in 1608 to the diaspora that followed the 1939 invasion of the Nazis.
But Goode’s act of benevolence came with a caveat: According to the bond agreement, if the Polish group failed to keep up with payments, the city could kill the deal and take back the building. Blichasz claims Goode and other elected officials at the time, many of whom are now dead, promised he would never have to pay a dime.
“They said, ‘You will pay zero,’” he said.
A copy of a $81,875 check Blichasz provided to The Inquirer represents one of the only payments made by the nonprofit to the city — in August 1988. PRA said Blichasz’snonprofit, all told, paid about $155,000 toward the bond taken out by the city, which grew to $4.6 million with interest.
The Goode administration later applied for a federal grant through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to pay off the property, according to records provided to The Inquirer.
Blichasz said he was under the impression the deal was done. But those federal funds never materialized — and the city didn’t seek to settle the debt for decades.
Bicentennial cash and ethnic tensions
The museum’s origins lie in the summer of 1987, when City Hall faced accusations of racial and ethnic favoritism.
The city had just unlocked $2 million left from the 1976 Bicentennial, and Council members had sent half that money to nine Black community groups. Anger simmered among white ethnic leaders like Blichasz.
“Reverse discrimination,” Councilmember Joan Krajewski said at the time.
Critics asserted also that regardless of race, the fund was supporting activities with few ties to America’s birthday celebration — from a Trinidadian steelpan orchestra to a Polish-American festival at Penn’s Landing led by Blichasz.
At the time, however, Blichasz’s nonprofit was also trying to move its headquarters from Fairmountto Philadelphia’s historic district.
And the city had already agreed to pay for the new building.
After the city inked the bond purchase on behalf of the Polish group, Blichasz vowed to increase the nonprofit’s annual budget by 50% to keep up with repayment. Goode promised the group leniency, but newspaper articles from the time show no offer to fully wipe the debt.
Blichasz was confident. Donors in the Polish community, he said, would “respond with joy” to bring this first-of-its-kind museum to life in Philadelphia.
But the joy proved less than hoped.
Months later, Blichasz was back at City Hall asking for a bailout. His group had raised only a fraction of its $1 million goal and needed an additional $350,000 to pay the mortgage and museum build-out costs.
He pointed out that the city had financed capital projects for other ethnic groups, including the Mummers Museum, the African American history museum, and the Jewish museum.
“This is going to tell us just how appreciated the good, taxpaying Poles are by this country,” Blichasz said at the time.
The museum, he promised, would be “an attraction” that would more than repay its debt.
Then Vice President George H.W. Bush visits the Polish American Cultural Center for the opening published on Aug. 10, 1988, in The Inquirer.
Teaching self-sufficiency
The Polish American Cultural Center opened its doors in August 1988 to a flag-waving crowd of 300 people. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, where visitors admired hand-cut Polish crystal and other curios from the homeland.
Alongside the museum, the nonprofit continued to provide the community with services that ranged from English language courses to help with rent and fuel rebates — work Blichasz said was “teaching Polish immigrants to be self-sufficient.”
Much of that work was also financed by the city.
Auditors later raised concern over a six-figure contract the Goode administration dealt to the nonprofit. At the time, the arrangement led former city finance director David Brenner to speculate about Blichasz’s political clout: “Where his influence comes from beats the hell out of me, but no question he’s got it.”
At some point, however, concerns over the debt for 308 Walnut St. disappeared.
As far as Blichasz was concerned, it was absolved after Goode applied for the HUD grant.
Blichasz said officials like Krajewski and Goode insisted his group not cut any more checks to the city, saying “we will take care of it.”
Why PRA did not inquire about the outstanding mortgage agreement remains uncertain. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question about the matter, and city records show only one inspection of the property, in 2011.
By the time PRA took a renewed interest, Blichasz had a problem: Many of the people who helped facilitate the initial deal were no longer around to help explain.
The outside of the Polish American Cultural Center.
A historic takeback
The museum fell under the radar until Mayor Jim Kenney’s first term. Soon after Kenney took office in 2016, Blichasz recalled, there was a heated meeting after the nascent administration ended his nonprofit’s six-figure social services contract.
He described the city as more interested in “giving out condoms” than providing help to an increasingly elderly Polish population.
Years later, during an insurance audit of large buildings owned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, Kenney administration officials were baffled by 308 Walnut St. It’s not clear if the PRA even knew who owned it.
PRA officials toured the building in 2019 and found the museum on the first floor much as it had ever been. But the floors above were in shambles, according to a city employee who toured the property.
The second through fourth floors looked as if their occupants had been raptured, with calendars from the 1980s frozen on the walls and moldy cups of coffee that appeared to date to the same decade.
On the fifth floor, officials said, they found evidence that someone had been sleeping in the building along with boxes of old documents and recording equipment where Blichasz broadcast his Polish American radio hour.
PRA quickly moved to intervene.
“Based on concerning conditions observed during the tour,” PRA said in a statement this week, it hired an engineering firm to document the state of the building. The contractors reported it needed at least $1.8 million to be brought back to code. The lack of maintenance resulted “in potentially dangerous structural issues,” PRA said in a statement.
Blichasz acknowledged water damage from leaks, which he had hoped to repair with state grants. But he called the PRA’s overall assessment of the property a fiction. He said his nonprofit spent “millions” in repairs over the years out of its operating budget.
“It’s very fishy,” Blichasz said of PRA’s inspection.
The agency said in a statement that officials “attempted to negotiate” but that Blichasz “refused to cooperate and repeatedly requested outright ownership” of the property, despite not having complied with the terms of the original deal.
With no legal title, the PRA took the nonprofit to court in 2023. The agency ultimately won, wresting back control of the building. A judge ordered the nonprofit to pay $3.5 million dollars in debt and damages.
This April, the Polish American Cultural Center was evicted.
Michael Blichasz, director of the Polish American Cultural Center museum poses with a bust of astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. Published in the Philadelphia Daily News on Oct. 14, 1988.
Last chance to cut a deal
As the city clawed back the property, Blichasz accused officials of negotiating in bad faith. He also suggested it was a racially motivated attack against his organization to divert funding to nonwhite community groups.
Those who could attest to the original deal are dead or not talking. Krajewski, the former Council member, died in 2013. Blichasz said he hadn’t reached out to Goode in years. Phone calls to the former mayor were not returned.
“When those people were alive, we could have had a nice get-together, a hearing,” Blichasz said. “Now they want to take me to court. I said, ‘Why? You never sat down with us to discuss this.’ All I want to do is keep the original mission and goals alive.”
The ordeal has interested at least one current elected official.
Councilmember Mark Squilla, who represents the area, has acted as a liaison between Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Blichasz this year. Emails shared with The Inquirer showed that Blichasz turned down three compromise options from Parker that would have either allowed the Polish group to remain in the building under a new lease or helped pay for the group’s relocation.
Squilla acknowledged that the paperwork didn’t support Blichasz’s case. But he argued that his decades of contributions to the city should be considered, too.
“After we did some background research, I figured there’s no way we could find out what really happened,” Squilla said. “So I figured, ‘Why don’t we just work out a deal?’ And unfortunately, the deals that the PRA made were not accepted by the Polish museum folks.”
Squilla introduced a resolution in City Council on Oct. 9 to hold hearings on the PRA’s treatment of Blichasz.
“After 30 years, I believe that they had the right to stay in and use the building,” the Council member said.
On Wednesday, a woman approached the doorway of the museum, asking if it was open.
Inside, standing in the wood-paneled hallway that harkened back to another era, a maintenance worker shooed her away.
When cookbook author Pamela Anderson and her husband, David, were looking for a bucolic escape in Bucks County, they found a forested stretch of land sandwiched between a high ridge and a stream to put down roots.
The couple, who previously lived in New Hope, toured the 11-acre parcel in Riegelsville with an architect back in 2003, learning how their new home could flow with the land. Today, the focal point of Copper House might be the living room, with 180-degree views from floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s like forest bathing, from a comfortable couch.
“We wanted a place to get away,” Anderson said on a recent October afternoon.
Outside, they’ve woven gravel trails into countless grottos, fire pits, and other quiet gathering places for the numerous visitors who’ve descended upon their home for sound baths, yoga, and meditations. On this Friday afternoon, about a dozen architects and interior designers gathered at their home for a corporate retreat to learn about sustainable flooring.
“Some people just want to come here to have a meeting in a lovely place,” Anderson said.
Pamela and David Anderson sit on their couch in their home, Copper House, where they host events and retreats.
The Andersons didn’t just want to live at Copper House, so they went beyond having friends over for dinner. They started hosting corporate events and retreats at their home during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, stopped for a bit, and got things back up again afterward.
“We’ve done most of the work ourselves. We built all the walls ourselves from rocks we had here. It’s expensive to maintain this place, and these events help with that,” Anderson said. “It made sense for us.”
“This was just a natural transition for me from that career to this one,” she said.
David Anderson, a longtime Episcopal priest, said the landscape was wild when they first toured it, filled with brambles and invasive species. The couple has methodically rid the invasive species from various patches of their property, but that work never ends.
Copper House in Upper Bucks County.
Their latest retreat was hosted by Interface, an indoor flooring company that specializes in sustainable projects. Monica Blair-Smith, an account executive with Interface, said they’ve had meetings by a bonfire and in the labyrinth, so far, at Copper House. The team also took a sound bath.
“We toured several places from here to southern New Jersey, but we really loved how much this space was integrated with nature. Hosting in such a beautiful space is important to us,” Blair-Smith said. “Once we toured it, we didn’t go anywhere else. It was a no-brainer.”
Retreat packages at Copper House begin at $1,500.
While events and retreats have become a lucrative business, the Andersons said Copper House is still a home they cherish.
“You’re always seeing something new and different, and our senses are so heightened living here,” Pamela Anderson said. “In winter, it’s like living in a snow globe.”
Megan Heiken recently bought a home near the former Pennhurst State School and Hospital, once a center for people with developmental disabilities that now operates as a popular haunted Halloween attraction.
A new plan to convert Pennhurst into a massive data center has outraged and mobilized local residents, as well as people in neighboring communities in an area known for rolling hills, farms, and an overall rural character.
Heiken launched an online petition urgingher Chester County neighbors and East Vincent Township officials to “work together toward a solution that preserves the Pennhurst property, honors its history, and protects the environment and quality of life for all who live, work and visit here.”
The petition had 1,825 signatures as of Friday.
“I made this move to be out in an area with more space, more nature,” Heiken said. “The fact that the owner just wants to plow it over and swap in a data center is kind of alarming.”
Her sentiments are widely shared. The board of supervisors and planning commission in East Vincent have hosted public meetings on the issue that stretched for hours as residents from Spring City to Pottstown voiced objections.
Data centers require a large-scale way of cooling computing equipment and are often dependent on water to do that. The amount of water they use can be about the same as an average large office building, although a few require substantially more, according to a recent report from Virginia, which has become a data center hub.
Steve Hacker, of East Vincent, told the board that his well had already gone dry, as has his neighbor’s, even before a data center has been built. He’s concerned about where the data center would get its water.
State legislators and local governments are scrambling to rewrite local laws as most have no local zoning to accommodate data centers or regulate them.
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1.3 million square feet
Pennhurst‘s owner has not yet filed a formal application to develop the site, but an engineering firm has submitted a sketch of a preliminary plan to East Vincent Township to develop 125 acres for use as a data center.
The land is owned by Pennhurst Holdings LLC, whose principal is Derek Strine.
Strine deferred comment to a spokesperson, Kevin Feeley.
“Pennhurst AI is aware of the concerns expressed by the residents of East Vincent Township, and we are committed to working through the Township to address them,” Feeley wrote in an email. “What we propose is a facility that would be among the first of its kind in the United States: a state-of-the-art data center project that would address environmental concerns while also providing significant economic investment, jobs, and tax rateables as well as other benefits that would directly address the needs of the community.”
Feeley said Pennhurst AI plans to continue “working cooperatively with the Township.”
The sketch calls for five, two-story data center buildings, a sixth building, an electrical substation, and a solar field. Together, the buildings to house data operations would total more than 1.3 million square feet.
The plan states that a data center is an allowable use within the Pennhurst property because the land is zoned forindustrial, mixed-usedevelopment. Township officials have agreed a data center would be allowed under that zoning.
The grounds are bordered by Pennhurst Road to the west. The Schuylkill lies down a steep gorge to the east and north. The property is near the border of Spring City, which is just to the south.
A view of the entrance to the Halloween attraction at the former Pennhurst State School and Hospital grounds in East Vincent Township, Chester County.
What’s Pennhurst?
Pennhurst State School and Hospital, known today as Pennhurst Asylum for its Halloween attraction, has had a long and troubled history. It opened in 1908 to house individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It became severely overcrowded by the time it closed in 1987.
A 1968 documentary Suffer the Little Children highlighted abusive and neglectfulpractices, and resulted in legal actions and a landmark disability rights ruling in 1978 that declared conditions as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The last patient left Pennhurst in 1987, and the facility sat abandoned until it was purchased in 2008 and converted into a Halloween attraction despite protests from various advocacy groups.
The Halloween attraction has continued and operators say it shows sensitivity toward those once housed at Pennhurst. Separately, visitors can take historical tours of the exteriors of 16 buildings and learn about people who lived and worked there. The site also has a small Pennhurst history museum.
A view of the vacant buildings on the former Pennhurst State School and Hospital grounds in East Vincent Township, Chester County.
Contentious meetings
In recent months, East Vincent officials have raced to draft an ordinance that would govern data centers by limiting building heights, mandating buffers, requiring lighting, noting the amount of trees that can be cut down, and other restrictions.
At two contentious meetings in September, residents and the board of supervisors argued about the draft ordinance’s specifics. Residents said the ordinance did not incorporate some community-suggested safeguards aimed at preserving the township’s rural character.
Residents asked how much water the data center would consume, how much power it would need, and how much noise it would generate.
Pennhurst’s zoning was changed in 2012 from allowing onlyresidential development to permitting industrial and mixed-use buildings. Township Solicitor Joe Clement told residents that it is difficult for the municipality to argue that a data center would not fit within that zone.
“If there’s a use that is covered by the zoning ordinance, we can’t stop that use,” board vice chairMark Brancato explained at a Sept. 18 meeting.
Officials said the draft ordinance was not specifically aimed at the Pennhurst site but was meant to broadly govern any data centers proposed in the township.
“What we’re trying to do is to come up with a set of reasonable guidelines, guardrails, and conditions in the new zoning ordinance that will … provide as much protection as we possibly can for the residents,” Brancato said. ”We are committed to protecting and preserving the rural character of the township.”
Township meetings, some of which have lasted hours, have been marked by raised voices and emotional appeals.
“Our whole community is kind of anxious about the thought of this new data center,” Gabrielle Gehron, of Spring City, said during one meeting. “I’m confused about whether we are or not doing something to prevent that from happening.”
Pa. State Rep. Paul Friel, and State Sen. Katie Muth, both Democrats from East Vincent, have spoken at meetings. Muth noted that Strine received a $10 million grant and loan package from the state in 2017 to prepare the site for “a large distribution facility” and other industrial structures, new office development, and the renovation of six existing buildings for additional commercial use, amid ample open space, according to a funding request provided by the governor’s office.
Muth fears Strine is paving a path to clear the data center for development and sell the property — after benefiting from tax dollars.
“These are not good things to live next to,” Muth said of data centers.
The board tabled the draft ordinance on Sept. 22 after receiving legal advice that they still had time to incorporate more residents’ concerns.
Beyond Pennhurst
Other municipalities in Pennsylvania face a similar issue: Most don’thave existing zoning for data centers. However, state law mandates that municipalities must provide zoning for all uses of land — just as state and federal officials are ramping up plans to embrace the centers.
Plymouth Township is dealing with pressure as Brian J. O’Neill, a Main Line developer, wants to turn the Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill into a 2 million-square-foot data center that would span 10 existing buildings. The Plymouth Township Planning Commission voted against the project given resident backlash. The plan goes to the zoning board later this month.
And Covington and Clifton Townships in Lackawanna County in the Poconos are also dealing with zoning issues and widespread opposition regarding a plan to build a data center on 1,000 acres.
A building boom is unfolding on Front Street in Fishtown along the Market-Frankford elevated train line.
Walking north beneath this towering transit edifice, pedestrians are forced to zig-zag across the street to avoid construction sites spilling onto the sidewalks. The total number of apartments on Front Street between Girard and the York-Dauphin stations is set to almost double in the next year.
“It’s pretty surreal to see it all happening at the same time,” said Henry Siebert, cofounder of Archive Development, which plans to build at 1440 N. Front St. “The amount of construction that’s ongoing, I don’t see that anywhere else in Fishtown.”
According to the CoStar Group, a commercial real estate analytics firm, there are 441 apartment units actively under construction along this 1.1-mile stretch of the Market-Frankford Line, another 174 are proposed, and 231 have been completed since 2019. (There were 215 apartment units along the stretch prior to that year.) And that’s probably a slight undercount because it only includes projects with five units or more.
There are new apartments popping up in the storefronts of renovated older buildings along the train line, such as the building that housed Mighty Mick’s boxing gym in the Rocky movies. When construction there is complete, it will include a commercial space of 2,600 square feet along with four apartments in the revitalized historic brick building.
All this is happening as SEPTA ridership is dramatically lower than it was before the pandemic. In November, ridership on the Market-Frankford Line was only at 58% of February 2020 levels. Ridership at the stops in this part of Fishtown is even lower, according to data provided by SEPTA, with the York-Dauphin station only seeing 46% of 2019 ridership levels in 2023, the Berks station 52%, and the Girard station 48%.
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And yet, the transit infrastructure is attracting a level of investment unprecedented in modern memory.
“SEPTA is experiencing a rough patch,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Urban Institute, a policy think tank. “But for all the problems with drug abuse and lack of investment from the public sector, the fact that private investors want to spend huge amounts of money bringing hundreds of apartments to the neighborhood seems incredibly bullish for the future.”
Henry Siebert, cofounder of Archive Development, at the company’s apartment project on 1440 N. Front St.
A ‘critical mass’ of demand
Few neighborhoods in Philadelphia have been as transformed as Fishtown since the Great Recession.
In 2012, political scientist Charles Murray used the neighborhood as the embodiment of all that had gone wrong for a downwardly mobile, white, working-class America. The commercial corridors on Frankford Avenue and Front Street were run-down, with many shuttered storefronts. The headquarters of the Warlocks Motorcycle Club could be found, but not a wine bar.
Now, Fishtown is the neighborhood in Philadelphia outsiders are most likely to be able to name, partly due to a spate of national media attention. The Warlocks vacated in 2011, and Frankford Avenue is now a thriving commercial corridor home to many of the city’s finest restaurants (including a James Beard Award winner), cocktail bars, and a La Colombe that looks largeenough to house a harrier jet. According to Census data, the Northern Liberties and Fishtown area now has the highest median income in the city.
“As Northern Liberties got all the hype [in the 2000s] prices went up and people started moving into Fishtown because it was more affordable,” said Brenda Nguyen, associate director at CoStar’s Philadelphia office. Now “the Fishtown area has enough dense housing, retail, restaurants, and neighborhood amenities that there’s a critical mass of demand.”
Throughout Fishtown’s redevelopment, many of the large vacant lots on Frankford Avenue, and elsewhere east of the Market-Frankford Line, filled in. Within a 10-minute walk of the heavy rail line there are 4,585 existing apartment rentals and 1,646 under construction. (A further 922 are proposed, although their status is unclear given the development industry’s current deep freeze.)
“When we originally started developing in the city in 2018, I told [my partner]that we would likely never develop a property along the El,” said Siebert. But “as large-scale development opportunities became more and more scarce, developers eventually turned their attention to Front [Street].”
Many developers had avoided the thoroughfare, partly because the looming edifice creates challenges with noise from passing trains and limits natural light. But the area became more appealing as other developable land vanished.
It helps that the land along this stretch of the Market-Frankford Line is zoned to allow taller and denser buildings than much of the rest of Fishtown. Archive Development addressed the challenges of building next to the train line by designing a first floor with 17-foot ceilings, ensuring the residential units on the second floor were elevated above transit. They plan to install windows with special glazing to reduce noise from passing trains.
Developers who have seen how Frankford Avenue has thrived to the east hope that they can build enough housing to create the demand for a second strong retail corridor. But they also hope to help establish attractive retail businesses that will, in turn attract more tenants. It’s the virtuous cycle that helped early developers in Fishtown such as Roland Kassis — who is also building next to the El — successfully launch businesses such as Frankford Hall and the La Colombe flagship.
“I was talking to a broker the other day and he said that what people want is an activated street front,” said Rafi Licht, a developer with Norris Square Development, the company behind the renovated Mighty Mick’s gym building.
“That’s what we’re aiming for here,” said Licht. “Putting in coffee shops, bars, restaurants, whatever is going to activate the street that makes it easier for people to imagine living upstairs.”
Rowhome Coffee at 2152 N. Front St., in a recently renovated historic building.
Norris Square Development is also working on other properties around the York-Dauphin stop. In 2022, Rowhome Coffee opened in its building at 2152 N. Front St. It drew a crowd then, and it still does.
“When Rowhome Coffee opened during the pandemic, people were queued up for the takeout window,” said Jonathan Auerbach, a partner in Norris Square Development. “I saw young women with prams lined up and realized, wow, people have been waiting for this.”
Will the redevelopment of Front Street aid mass transit?
Few of the developments along the El are subsidized, meaning rents will be relatively high in comparison with housing costs in nearby working-class and lower-income neighborhoods. (The rents in the Mighty Mick’s building will be close to $2,000 for a two-bedroom or $1,600 for a one-bedroom.) Many workers who have jobs that require in-person attendance — such as retail, hospitality, or restaurant work — are less likely to be able to afford newly constructed, transit-oriented apartments.
Even before the pandemic, most studies showed that lower-income and working-class people are far more likely to use transit, partly due to the high cost of car ownership and partly because they were more likely to live in cities with extensive transit systems.
A 2016 Pew study and a Census study of 2019 commuter behavior also revealed that higher-income Americans were more likely to use transit than their middle-income peers, perhaps because wealthier people had started moving back to the transit-rich big cities of the Northeast.
But post-pandemic, transit may be less of an important amenity than it once was.
“[These] renters might not see public transit as a primary factor when they’re choosing where they want to live,” said Nguyen of CoStar. “It’s more of an added bonus.”
Still, developers in Fishtown argue that even if white-collar workers are less likely to be going into the office five days a week, the Market-Frankford Line still offers unparalleled access to Center City and University City.
“If you’re going to the office [at all], you still need a way to get to Center City,” said Ryan Kalili, cofounder of Archive Development. “Two days or three days a week is still enough that you’re not going to Uber. “I think [ridership] hopefully will change as the northern part of Front Street [attracts more residents].”
When it gets colder, it’s not only important to be mindful of your pets and your plants but also your home’s pipes and water heater.
Yes, those inanimate objects need extra care, too.
As temperatures drop across the region, the risk of your home’s pipes freezing increases. There are steps, however, that homeowners can take to help stop that from happening and help you avoid a hefty plumbing bill this winter.
Here’s a list of plumber-approved tips on how to keep a pipe from freezing, spotting a frozen one, and what to do if it bursts.
How to prevent your pipes from freezing
“It comes down to three main things: draining outside faucets, keeping pipes warm, and checking for leaks,” said Vincent Thompson, owner of Thompson Plumbing and Heating. Thompson is a master plumber of more than 50 years and for two decades taught plumbing at Dobbins Vocational School in North Philadelphia.
💧 Draining outside faucets
Over the summer, we use outside faucets and hoses to water the plants, rinse of sidewalks, or simply cool down. When the temperature dips, water can freeze and build pressure, ultimately causing a burst pipe, a situation far too common, according to Thompson.
He recommends disconnecting your hose (and storing it for the winter), shutting off the valve that feeds the faucet or spigot (usually found near the hot water heater), and letting the remaining water in the pipe drain out. You can leave the faucet or spigot slightly open, according to Thompson. Letting the faucet drip is also a good suggestion for inside fixtures.
“If it’s empty, it’ll never freeze,” Thompson said. “But if there’s water, it can expand and explode. Then you’ll come out in the spring to use your hose and the water will be shooting out of the wall.”
🌡️ Keep your pipes warm
When the freezing weather descends upon us, we bundle up to stay warm. Pipes need that treatment too. Ideally, the lowest you want to keep your thermostat set at is 50 degrees, but heating is expensive. According to Thompson, the absolute lowest you can go is 40 degrees, because your pipes will start freezing at 39 degrees.
Opening the cabinets underneath your bathroom sink can be a good way to keep pipes from getting too cold. And for the ones in extra-cold spots, using electrical heating tape or fitting them with foam and rubber sleeves is a good idea. Be sure to check for any leaks beforehand, because if water is accumulating, they won’t prevent a pipe from bursting and it will become an added step.
🚽 Check for leaks
“Every drop that goes down the drain will turn into an icicle and eventually can clog up the entire soil stack,” explained Thompson. Not addressing it can result in frozen pipes, flooding, and even water backing up through your toilet.
After 50 years of handling these cases, he advises looking at your water meter because sometimes the leak might not be obvious. Make sure no water sources are open, and look at the blue or red triangle (depending on your meter). If it’s turning that can be a sign of a leak.
If you suspect the culprit is your toilet, he recommends adding a couple of food dye drops into the tank. If the water in the bowl changes color, your suspicions are correct.
Andrew Gadaleta, contractor, works on getting the heat fixed at Visitation BVM School in Philadelphia in December 2021 so that students could return to school. Thieves broke into the school Tuesday morning, ripping copper pipes from the walls that caused flooding. The water rendered the school unusable for a week.
How to spot a frozen pipe
Your house is filled with water pipes, and while it’s not hard to figure out when you’re dealing with a frozen pipe, it can be tricky to figure out where the frozen section is. If you turn on a faucet and nothing comes out, you’re going to have to do a little detective work.
The first step should be to try all the other faucets in your house. If all the faucets in a room aren’t working, the freeze is likely in a split from the main pipe. If all the faucets on a floor aren’t working, the freeze is likely between where the first- and second-floor pipes separate. If all the faucets in your house aren’t working, then the freeze is probably near where the main pipe enters the house.
The frozen section of the pipe, if exposed, will sometimes have condensation over it. You’ll also be able to tell that it’s colder just by touching it.
How to thaw a frozen pipe
Before thawing a frozen section of pipe, you should open the faucet to relieve the water pressure and allow the water to escape once it thaws. You should also begin the thawing process close to the faucet and work your way to the blockage. If melted water and ice get caught behind the blockage, the chance that the pipe will burst increases.
One of the easiest ways to thaw a frozen pipe is with a hair dryer. You can also use hot towels or a heat lamp to warm up the pipe. Never use an open flame.
What to do if a pipe bursts
Don’t panic. The first thing you should do is shut off the main water line into your property. This will prevent your house from flooding. The main water valve is usually near your water meter. After you’ve done that, call your plumber. Locating and tagging the valve to your main water line ahead of time can help make the moment less stressful.
