Cliché be damned, in Cedar Park, neighbors are showing how seriously they take being members of a community. When Elena’s Soul (4912 Baltimore) caught fire on Christmas Eve, its subsequent demolition toppled more than one business. Its neighbors on each side caught wind of falling debris to such an extent, owners were forced to close as well.

Three closed businesses

At the Cedar Park Café (also 4912 Baltimore), which opened last year, the felled forces crashed through the roof. Gary’s Nail’s (4910 Baltimore) was bordered up around the turn of the New Year.

This evening from 7-10pm, a fundraiser will be hosted to benefit the employees who were put out of work due to the turn of circumstances, at the recently incarnated Cedar Works artisan studio space in Cedar Park, located just behind Elena’s at 4919 Pentridge Ave. The event is sponsored by…

Just around the corner from the artisans space The Cedar Works project we informed you about a few weeks ago, an abandoned home takes up half of a duplex on the corner of 50th and Pentridge Streets. The same owner owns an abutting vacant lot.

Blighted building

An available sign has been posted at this unkempt, yet not overgrown next lot over to the north since at least September, 2009, according to GoogleEarth. Two lots actually makeup the vacant lot. The northern lot is owned by Mid-Autumn Realty LLC, according to public record. Its southern neighbor, the also vacant 723 S. 50th St., last sold for $7,800 in 2005, and as we said has the same owner as the blighted property next door.

The vacant lots

When we called the number posted on the ‘Available’ sign, a…

While West Philly has been home to various urban innovations, from co-ops to urban farms to the Dirt Factory, one thing developers in other areas of the city, specifically in Port Richmond and Fishtown, have been more active in revitalizing is repurposed old buildings. Not to mention the Loft District.

In the river wards there exist various warehouses readapted for artists/artisans space, like the Viking Mill, 2424 Studios, or the Berks Warehouse. In West Philly, Dock St. Brewery and Firehouse Bicycles are housed in an old firehouse at 50th & Baltimore.

The Cedar Works, a project from Mill Creek Design partners Andy Peifer and Linford Martin, is their vision of a repurposed 15K sqft warehouse, located at 4919 Pentridge St. in Cedar Park, around the corner from Dock Street Pub. The reclaimed warehouse will feature 15 studios, ranging from 300 sqft to 1600 sqft, available at a…

As we predicted just the other day, there’s more commercial love planned for the western end of Baltimore Avenue in West Philly. This time, in the form of art.

Seeds Gallery will open the weekend of July 27 at 5011 Baltimore Ave., the former location of a Rock School known for blasting its amplifiers every weekend at 9am, exposing the locals to the licks of 12-year-old guitarists playing Crazy Train.

The space

Since October, Seeds has existed in mobile form, showcasing artists’ work at restaurants, cafes and law firms.

“Our perspective is the art has to go where the people are,” said owner Saba Tedla, who also owns Askum, the Mediterranean kitchen located at 47th and Baltimore (which opened last July 27, hence the correlation in dates).

Tedla said they’ll focus on seeding artists into the community. She said Seeds…