Monthly Archives: March 2014

We are finishing up our discussion of the dispute simmering between the East Kensington Neighbors Association, Kensington Hospital and the Philadelphia Zoning Board of Adjustment. The hospital is planning to move its methadone clinic down the road to an abandoned building. Before the project could move forward, the hospital needed to run a couple of things past the board.

The East Kensington Neighbors Association strongly objects to Kensington Hospital’s plan to open a methadone clinic in an abandoned building at the corner of Front and Diamond streets. The neighborhood group has taken its argument to Philadelphia’s Zoning Board of Adjustment; the board had granted the project a variance, and EKNA says the board should not have granted the hospital’s request.

In our last post, we talked about a neighborhood group’s objections to a group home opening in their area. Today, we have a similar story about a neighborhood that is wary of a hospital’s plans for an abandoned building.

It looks as if Lumberton Township in Burlington County — across the river from Philadelphia — has a “not in my back yard” issue to sort out over the next few months. A faith-based nonprofit group, Citizens Serving the Homeless Inc., recently announced its intention to open a 300-bed facility for the homeless on a site that was most recently home to a private school.

For a borough with a mere 7,800 residents, Conshohocken could be flattered or insulted that Wawa is still trying to build a store in the middle of town. It would be the third Wawa in the area: There is a Wawa at either end of town as well. The town covers just about one square mile of Montgomery County, and a lot of that is water.

Philadelphia may have two new editions to its skyline if the City Planning Commission grants their rezoning requests. The two projects would create the tallest residential and the tallest commercial towers in the city, so it is likely that the commission will pay special attention to the requests.

When a business is looking for a location for its business, it is often looking for a place to lease. Unlike individuals looking for a house, many businesses don’t want to purchase land and build a building, as it restricts mobility if the location turns out to be unprofitable. So, when business are looking for locations, they are often restricted by how much they can afford to lease.

When the Franklin Mint closed a decade ago, it left a hole in Middletown Township. A visibly vacant, 170-acre business park, right along Route 1, with the round museum building a lingering memento of the collectibles company. The site immediately attracted developers, but the economy tanked, residents protested, and the development partnership ran into trouble.

The School Reform Commission of the Philadelphia Public Schools is reportedly making headway in its effort to sell school properties. The district closed 23 school sites last summer (we wrote about this in our May 27, 2013, post). The current proposal involves the sale of just six schools.

Since the wall collapsed on the Salvation Army Thrift Store in June, many people in Philadelphia have had visceral reactions to the news of any kind of demolition accident. Today’s news of another demolition gone wrong — at the Shirt Corner site we discussed in an early February post — has underscored that fear, the concern that human error may have resulted in the loss of life.