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Fri
Jul 27
2012

Who Can Explain This Demolition on 17th Street?

A reader checked in, wondering about the ongoing demolition of two buildings at 138-140 N. 17th St., just off the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. We swung by the location, and discovered that one building was already down and the other wasn’t much longer for this world. A cursory inquiry with the demo crew revealed no information whatsoever.

Demolition

Subway next door

The two buildings being demolished, the still-standing two-story building housing a Subway, and a small parking lot just to the north of the church pictured above are all owned by 17 Parkway Associates LP, and were purchased back in the late 1980s. Though the two demoed buildings look like they could have been homes or apartments, we suspect they were instead small offices. Looking at a Google Street View photo, however, it looks like they may have been unoccupied in recent years.

From a couple of years ago. The windows openings look like they're covered by trashbags.

Looking at the Gelcor Realty sign posted in the photo above, it seems that some or all of these buildings were on the market in some capacity at some point in the last few years. Could this demolition be the work of a new owner, whose purchase hasn’t shown up on public record yet? Could it be the group who’s owned the buildings for years, making a change? Does anyone in the neighborhood or involved with LSNA have any insight into what’s going on here?

16
COMMENTS
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Posted in Logan Square | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments
  • http://profile.yahoo.com/KS5GHC5MHU6WKSVOQ5FDEJ2VVA asddfgaf

    It’s going to be a gastropub whiskey bar craft microbrewery that will feature an updated spin on American classics. Bring money.

  • Mike Jakubowski

    The house was in really rough shape, I’ve walked by it recently and the building doesn’t appear to have been occupied in decades: so I am assuming some sort of condemn by neglect situation.

  • http://philaphilia.blogspot.com/ GroJLart

    What a shame. That makes the Mace’s Crossing Pub and that little church the only original buildings still standing after construction of the Parkway.

    http://hiddencityphila.org/2012/07/sole-survivor/

  • Eastcoast

    These properties have been vacant for years…with Friends Select across the street I wouldn’t hope for a pub.

  • veggie

     what’s wrong with any of those? so what should go there, a chilli’s to better cater to tourists? *eyeroll*

  • Eldondre

    hopefully they knock down subway too

  • aljaso

    Sometimes I wonder if Philadelphians really value their own history.Since no plans have been released for this site, I’ve got a bad feeling that we’ll have a brand new barking lot in a few months.

  • aljaso

    Edit: *parking lot…

  • http://twitter.com/F1rstCitizen First Citizen

    Barking Lot would be a good dog park name.

  • Anonymous

    Some of you are going to have to face the fact that a lot of tourists are from places like the midwest.  A number of these people have aversions to restaurants they’re unfamiliar with.

  • Clank

    Nice use, but couldn’t it have gone in the existing building?  Really, now?  There are several great examples of rownhouse pubs/restaurants around town.

  • veggie

     then why do they bother to travel anywhere?

  • Tartan69

    These two buildings looked ready to fall down 5 years ago.  I highly doubt they were restorable.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ken-Nemeth/641953126 Ken Nemeth

    I used to walk by that building all the time – long story short, not restorable.  Let’s hope for a nice new facade.

  • Dahmel

    I called Gelcor about 12 years ago about these properties. It took several calls to get them to answer and they were not very nice on the phone. I think they wanted somewhere between 1-3 million for the three properties. It seemed they were waiting for a large project to come along and build something big here. It was not for me.

  • Tom Kearney

    Having grown up a few blocks north of these buildings, I remember that the offices of the old classical music station WFLN (now Ben 95.7) were housed in a portion of the buildings. From ‘The History Of WFLN Radio’…….WFLN, which stood for “Franklin Broadcasting” was the first stand-alone
    (not co-owned with a local AM) station in Philadelphia. For nearly 50
    years, the station’s studios, transmitter and self-supporting tower were
    located at 8200 Ridge Pike, at the western edge of Roxborough, a few
    miles apart from the cluster of other antennas in Roxborough. For a
    period of time in the 1970s and 1980s, WFLN also maintained a small
    satellite sales office in center city Philadelphia on the Benjamin
    Franklin Parkway near 17th Street. Until about 2004, remnants of white
    plastic letters spelling “WFLN” could be observed on a low brick wall at
    the abandoned location, but they have since disintegrated.

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