Tomorrow, the Graduate Hospital neighborhood will be abuzz with all sorts of activity, with volunteering opportunities in the morning, the dedication of a green space in the afternoon, and arts, food, drink, and entertainment into the evening. We’ll certainly be there, and you should too.

At 9am, early birds can go to Catharine Park at 22nd & Catharine to participate in Neighborhood Cleanup Day and help tidy up 22nd Street. By 10am, you’ll be able to enjoy coffee and snacks and meet your local police and firefighters at the park as SOSNA throws an Officer Appreciation Event. At noon, the SOSNA Arts Crawl will begin, with neighborhood businesses featuring works from community artists, and several businesses offering SOSNA-sponsored drinks. Participating businesses include Beauty Shop Cafe, Ultimo Coffee, SoWe, Sidecar,…

For years, we’ve been ringing the bell for Washington Avenue, hoping for development west of Broad Street, where residential construction has crested to the north and is booming to the south. And we’ve seen some progress, of late. NextFab Studios opened their new location on the 2000 block, with a lovely cafe on the first floor. Kermit’s Bakeshop, from the folks at the Sidecar, is coming soon to the 2200 block. And while both of those commercial locations will increase foot traffic on Washington Avenue and shrink the perceived moat between Graduate Hospital and Point Breeze to some effect, we contend that only residential development on Washington Avenue will truly be able to bridge that gap.

And we finally might be getting just that.

Development site?

We heard a rumor yesterday that a developer (and we don’t know who)…

In the last year plus, the teeny and easy to miss 2500 block of Montrose has seen two significant construction projects progress from start to finish. Back in October, we told you about a couple of homes under construction on the eastern end of this Devil’s Pocket block, from builder John McHugh. Those homes now appear to be finished, with one next door still incomplete. Earlier last year, we told you about three condo units that we going up on the western end of the block, pretty much touching the adjacent Veolia Plant and a series of what appear to be transformers. That project is also all done, from the looks of it.

In October

Looking finished, with a third home still being completed

Turn the corner on this little block, however, and you’ll notice…

Months ago, in a post-Bloktoberfest haze, we brought you the good news that 1506 South St. would soon be home to the newest restaurant on the block, So Crepe. The space was formerly San Andres Salon and Day Spa, and for a few years sat mostly vacant or perhaps was used as a storage space for some other business on the block. We checked out So Crepe the other day, and found it to be a delightful addition to the neighborhood.

In the past

Current shot. So French indeed.

A peek inside

The restaurant, which seems to have seating for sixty or so, has a nice look, combining exposed brick, hardwood floors, and some reused wood from who knows where. We tried a couple of their offerings (one sweet, one…

It’s amazing to consider that the Graduate Hospital neighborhood had over five-hundred vacant and/or blighted properties within its borders just fifteen years ago. Walking around the neighborhood today, you can go several blocks before stumbling upon such a structure, with the vast majority having been demolished and redeveloped or rehabbed in the last decade. We’d guess that only a couple dozen remain, and that number continues to shrink as the days roll by.

Two blighted homes that have bugged us for years can be found on the southwest corner of 17th & Montrose, immediately adjacent to the proposed Carpenter Green park that we told you about just a few days ago. And today we have some good news-

Last night at the Philadelphia School, representatives from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Cooper Robertson and Partners held a community meeting to discuss plans for CHOP’s significant project coming soon to Schuylkill Avenue. This presentation represented the fourth large community meeting regarding this development, and included some details that came to light for the very first time.

The site

To review from the last time we covered this project almost a year ago, CHOP intends to construct a huge new facility just below the South Street Bridge on nine acres of land currently occupied by Springfield Beer Distributor and the former JFK Vocational High School. Built over four phases, the facility will mostly house clinical research and operations for the hospital, in a gross development area that will exceed two million square feet. Phase one, a…