For years, 2026 Fairmount Ave. was a source of blight, slowly collapsing next door to the Fairmount Pet Shoppe. Over a number of years, the owners slowly fixed up the building, with the property apparently changing hands in 2010, midway through the lengthy renovation. We last checked in on this place almost two years ago, when it was still a construction site.

In 2009

Current view

At that time, the property owner’s father indicated that a Chinese restaurant or a bakery might be taking over the space, which the owner was hoping to rent out for $3,600/mo. In the nearly two years since, construction has been completed and

A reader checked in the other day, and told us that the former Advance Auto Supplies at Girard & Marlborough was finally sold. The building has been on and off the market a few times over the years, originally listed at $1.5M back in 2007 when the store first closed. From what we can tell, the final sale price was around $725K.

The building

The sale includes the large building with eighty-five feet of frontage on Girard along with the adjacent home, which is in need of renovation. With no ideas about the identity of the buyer and no permits pulled (we’ll give them a break, as they only closed a few days ago), we can only speculate on what will come to this location. Will the new owners renovate the existing structure and seek a new retail tenant for the first…

A couple of weeks ago, we gave you the good news that Lorenzo and Sons Pizza would soon be making its glorious and greasy return to the late-night South Street scene. You may recall, the business near 3rd & South was lost in a fire last summer, leaving after-hours revelers scurrying for other ways to sop up the excessive amounts of alcohol in their stomachs. But no more!

In November

Lorenzo's today

According to Michael Klein, Lorenzo’s had its soft opening today, and will be celebrating a grand reopening on Friday, May 3rd. Half of the proceeds from that night will go to Philabundance, which is a very generous move from a business owner that’s been out of work for nearly a year.

We wish much success to owner Giuseppe Pulizzi on the rebirth of Lorenzo’s. Can’t wait to bite into a giant slice sometime very soon.

Last November, we wrote about a blighted building at 50th & Pentridge, just around the corner from the recently opened Little Baby’s Ice Cream at 49th & Catharine. A couple of weeks ago, we noticed that a full-scale renovation job is happening at that location. When we wrote about the site last fall, the woman who answered the telephone at the number posted on a sign at the lot told us she didn’t have time for our conversation unless we were interested in buying. Turns out someone was interested. The property sold December 28 for $35,000, according to public record. If we were a gamblin’ blog we’d wager the new owner is responsible for the renovations.

In the past

Current view

It seems these renovations are coming at an apt time. In University City, undergrads, grad students,…

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…

We got an enthusiastic email the other day from a reader who noticed two homes getting rehabbed on her block. We made our way over to 1407-09 S. 21st St. and found that this is indeed the case.

In the past

View today

Looking at public record, we see that the two homes were purchased by Raza Enterprises just a few weeks ago, each for $26.5K. According to their Facebook page, these guys have done several projects in the neighborhood in the last few years, all as rentals. For this particular project, the long-blighted properties were listed for sale, with the listing stating that the “buyer is on notice that this is an as-is sale, no guarantee that the property will be “broomswept” or cleaned out, no improvements or seller repairs will be made.”…