Over the winter, we noticed two huge holes in the ground on the 1400 block of Bainbridge St., and explained that they would eventually turn into two 61′ tall homes, each with nine parking spaces, a garage rooftop swimming pool, half-court basketball, and a couple of bowling alley lanes in the basement.

In December

We passed by this site the other day and discovered that framing was underway. As you may or may not be aware, such large buildings can’t be framed out of wood like most of the residential projects we see, but instead require the strength of steel. Check it out.

Steel is rising

Steel yourselves folks, these homes are gonna be mammoth.

We’ve probably written about the southwest corner of 10th & Carpenter half a dozen times in the last couple of years, often bearing the bad news that the latest business to call this little space home had closed its doors. From InFusion to Mazag Cafe to Filter Cafe to Bookz-n-Beans and then finally Brown Sugar Cafe, this space has surely borne the mark of the devil himself.

Last week, Down Dog Healing Cafe became the latest business to attempt to break the curse.

The corner

New signs

With recipes and a philosophy inspired by Ayurveda, this cafe will attempt to fill stomachs and spirits with natural and healing food and drink. And hopefully, they’ll have much more luck than those who came before them.

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,…

We were in Pennsport the other day on our way to get the old jalopy inspected and happened upon Karen Donnelly Park, a public green space we never knew existed. According to the South Philly Review, this little patch of public space at 230 Dickinson St. was originally established as a quiet resting place for area residents back in 1978. For years, it contained a few tables and chairs and several trees, but upkeep fell off and the area was leveled by the City in the 1990s.

In 2009

Around 2005, the City decided to sell the lot for redevelopment, but after a few years of pushback from neighbors the plan changed to refashion the space into a new and improved pocket park. The space, as you can see, has been totally rebuilt from the ground up with permanent tables…

Greening the Grid, the winning team in the residential element of the Soak It Up! challenge, envisioned retrofits in Queen Village that would plant more trees along residential streets, connect those streets with corner parks, and connect those parks with larger community greenspaces in the neighborhood and across the city. Their submission can serve as model for just about every neighborhood in town.

Greener map of Queen Village

“It won’t be successful at the end of the day if you take a vacant lot in Queen Village and turn it into a rain garden,” said Kristen Knese, senior marketing coordinator at The Olin Studio, and one of the members of the winning residential team, about how to retrofit a residential area with stormwater management infrastructure. While it seems simple enough to improve stormwater management in a residential setting, say by fabricating…

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)…