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-

Go to most of the neighborhoods surrounding Center City, and you’ll find a healthy number of green spaces that are open to the public. Graduate Hospital, until very recently, has been more or less bereft of public green space, with the nearly complete Julian Abele Park representing a very new addition to the neighborhood. And with the rapid development of almost every vacant lot in the neighborhood, opportunities for additional green space are rapidly dwindling. With that in mind, SOSNA is attempting to preserve the corner of 17th & Carpenter, one of the few remaining large vacant parcels in the neighborhood, as Carpenter Green.

The lot

Looking north of 17th St.

Owned for years by the Redevelopment Authority, this lot has sat vacant for as…

Last week, we checked in on several ongoing new construction projects in the Brewerytown neighborhood. Some of these houses were replacing vacant land, while in other cases blighted homes were demolished to make room for the new construction. In either case, these projects represent important progress for an area that still has a stunning number of vacant properties.

Two new homes on 31st Street

But it seems that Steph-Sin, the developers for the homes pictured above at 31st & Baltz, are not just in the new construction business. Just around the corner from these homes, this developer is in the middle of a renovation job on the 3000 block of W. Stiles Street, a block with a ton of vacant homes.

In the past

Current view

According to…

Over the past couple of years, we’ve written several times about Triangle Park, a green space that sprung up at the intersection of E. Passyunk Avenue and Christian and S. 6th Streets a few years ago. This triangular lot was a gas station for decades, then it sat vacant, then it became a park, and now it sadly sits mostly vacant again.

A year ago

Current view

At the end of 2011, it looked as though the Redevelopment Authority would be acquiring the privately owned lot with the intention of maintaining it as a green space moving forward. Then, it seems the PRA changed their tune, insisting that they couldn’t purchase the property without it undergoing environmental testing and remediation, which would cost at least tens of thousands of dollars. This despite…

In recent weeks, we’ve mentioned several new projects coming to South Kensington, both of the large and small variety. We told you about Soko Lofts, an over-three-hundred-unit mixed-use development coming to 2nd & Thompson. We gave you the heads up about five new homes coming to 7th & Thompson. And we even mentioned a one-off project at Orianna & Thompson, on a block with some homes that will hopefully be rehabbed in the near future.

7th and Thompson

Today we look just a little to the north, the the 1400 block of N. 4th St., where three homes are expected to break ground in the next thirty days. The developer for 1415-19 N 4th St. is BMK Properties, a developer we’ve covered several times in the past. They purchased the middle lot from a…

It seems that every few weeks, we have a new development to tell you about in the neighborhood surrounding Temple University. Today, we have the opposite, a stark reminder of what several of these blocks looked like just a few years ago. The 1300 block of Carlisle St. is entirely vacant and blighted, despite the presence of new construction immediately to the west on 15th Street.

Only two structures on the block

But how does this block remain locked in the past while development thrives around the corner? Take 1314-1318 N Carlisle St., for example. All three properties were purchased by someone named April Hall back in 2002 from the Redevelopment Authority. The minutes from the meeting that granted her these properties are unavailable online, but we would have to assume that she made some promise…