Another opportunity to put some nice mixed commercial / residential in down the drain….while at the same time continuing the trend of over-saturation of residential unimaginative homes.  Getting around in that neighborhood at rush hour has become a royal pain already.  There should be a moratorium of converting non-residential to residential in SWCC until we can figure out how to serve it.   Add in laying down to Toll Bros at 2400 South, the Check cashing place being sold to thugs and the 20th and Fitz complex in, this neighborhood is failing at every turn to properly develop the right mix of residential and commercial.

Does G-Ho even have a master plan? Does it know what it wants to be? From the looks of things, I suspect G-Ho just wants to be a suburb of Rittenhouse Square, no?

Although it would be my hope that this is not true, nearly every bit of news or construction points clearly in that direction.

South Street is a commercial corridor with vacant storefronts.  Christian Street is also an underutilized commercial corridor.  If there was a demand for commercial space developers might just build it, but the supply presently is well in excess of demand.  

There’s nothing about 19th and Fitzwater that suggests it should be commercial space.  Furthermore, commercial space would require parking while these houses have off street parking.  

Population density is to be expected in an urban environment, and G-ho is a victim of its own success in that respect.  If it was still littered with vacant houses, traffic wouldn’t be a problem, but most people moved there with the expectation that development would continue and now many complain about it…

I’ll agree with you on the unimaginative nature of most of the construction though.  It’s a shame but that’s going to be G-ho’s legacy: A home for people with too much money and too little taste.

To be fair, you need to create a vision for what the future holds at this point. The major thoroughfares in G-Ho are South, Broad, Christian, and Gray Ferry (all are on the perimeter). All are also under-performing. I suspect that has less to do with area demographics (which have substantially improved in recent years) than it does to lack of a cohesive, broad vision for what those places should be. Unlike most developing neighborhoods in this city, G-Ho has just taken the attitude that it will sit back and see what developers propose. That’s a failing recipe. Virtually every other close-in neighborhood has been more proactive about creating a vision for its future.  Even if G-Ho had a plan that offered basic guidelines like, “minimal curb cuts, masonry materials, eyes and ears on the street, street trees with large, landscaped swales”, and then worked for grant money to get upgrades to street lighting and parks, it would be further along than it already is…I suspect that lack of that cohesive vision has more to do with the type of people who live there (they just want to be a part of Rittenhouse Square) than it does anything else. If it were a more urbanized, forward thinking populace, it would be pushing to create a separate identify for the neighborhood. By the looks of things, even Newbold is further along in this respect.

If Charles Borromeo or Shiloh Baptist ever go on sale and these neanderthals get their hands on them, the neighborhood transition to soulless moneyed wasteland will be complete.

(Ssh…don’t give them any ideas.)

Who bought the “Check Cashing” place?  That and the chinese food place next to it need to be wiped off the map, it is painfully obvious that there are drug deals that happen there all the time.  I would argue that there is more need for money to fix up the some of the parks within the area like the laughable basketball courts at Chester A. Arthur school and the fields further east on Fitzwater.

[...] Philly documents the demolition of Mt. Olive AME Church at 19th & Fitzwater Streets in Graduate Hospital. After the last brick of the century old church is removed, Michael and Mario Carosella of C&R [...]

From what I heard, it was a ‘friend’ of the former owner.  And we all see how that place ended up under that ownership.  Also, the week before it was sold, the place had a planned break-in where apparently a significant amount of money and merchandise was stolen.  I’ve been hoping for someone to tell me a different story to refute it, but it hasn’t happened.  There was a lot of interest in the property too.

More like “sit back and see what developers propose, then NIMBY it to death if they had an ounce of imagination.”

[...] month, we told you about the early stages of the demolition of the Mount Olive AME church at 19th and Fitzwater Sts., in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood. In the last few days, the demolition has wrapped up, and [...]

[...] in May, we told you about the ongoing demolition of the former Mount Olive AME Church, located at the corner of 19th & Fitzwater. The developer, Michael Carosella, is the same guy [...]