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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: North Chinatown Lotstravaganza
This is one of those surface lots that can kill a neighborhood. This empty hole is ELEVEN separate lots put together.
PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: North Chinatown Lotstravaganza
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
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This is not even all of it. Parking is $00? |
Bounded by 10th, 11th, Vine, and Wood Streets with a few extra sticking out -- This is one of those surface lots that can kill a neighborhood. Though I've talked about other lots that are conglomerations of separate surface lots, this one really takes the fucking cake. This empty hole is ELEVEN separate lots put together. That's rigoddamndiculous!
Where to begin? In the olden days, these blocks were a mix of residential and industrial buildings. A pretty boring spot, history-wise. The most exciting thing to hit this block was a box factory.
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View from the Reading Viaduct's then-new bridge over a newly-widened Vine Street. The buildings on the left, across 11th, is the site of the Lotstravaganza. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Philadelphia Department of Records. |
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Nowadays, we call this spot North Chinatown ... though others would call this the east side of the Loft District/Eraserhood. This combined super-mega-surface lot is a HUGE area of empty space, especially when you factor in the empty space created by the buried 676 across the street. It's a wonder that 11 separate properties would become surface lots, all next to each other.
The largest single lot among the 11 is the northeast corner of 11th and Vine. You can see it in the picture at the top of the page. This beast has been completely empty for at least 20 years, the western half of it, 50 years. It's been the site of numerous Dead-Ass Proposals ... it was even one of the sites along Vine Street considered for Citizens Bank Park! The current owners bought the space on January 3, 2005 for $3.7 million. It's been for sale for the last few years; right now it's at $8 million. Pan Am Realty, the same folks who turned another empty lot into the Pearl, are handling the sale.
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Yay, a pile of dirt. |
Directly to the east of the largest lot is a big pile of dirt and debris that isn't even being used as a parking lot. It is the remains of the longest-lived Vine Street-facing buildings on the block. The eastern portion of the dirtpile is the ruin of an industrial building that went down in the 1990s; the western half was an old boardinghouse that was just demolished a few months ago. The property is owned by the Redevelopment Authority and is NOT for sale.
To the east of the dirtpile, there's the Red Lot, located at the northwest corner of 10th and Vine. I call it the Red Lot because the pavement of the surface lot has a red tint to it. This lot has been owned by PennDOT since January of 1979. This is the ONLY lot among the 11 that might actually get a building on it sometime soon. The Chinatown Community Development Corporation plans to build a 23-story mixed-use Community Center/Residence/Office Building here.
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NOT a Dead-Ass Proposal. |
This'll be great if it ever actually gets built. It actually looks pretty cool. Maybe the old boardinghouse that was on the dirtpile was demolished to make way for something related to this? Don't get your hopes up.
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From this one you can see how much empty space there really is around here. |
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In the picture above, there are three separate surface lots. This is the southwest corner of 10th and Wood streets, just north of the Red Lot. One of the lots is behind the gated one in this picture. It's a small sliver of land that is owned by PennDOT and is basically just an extension of the Red Lot. The gated lot with the billboards is 316-322 N. 10th St. It's had the same owner, since May 27, 1982, when it sold for $15,000. The third lot in this view is all the way to the right, behind that pile of garbage. It's owned by the same folks who run the auto repair garage next door. Though tiny, it was purchased for $475,000 in July of 1999.
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Here's another one (actually, two)!! |
Just north of the set of three lots is a set of two surface lots at the northwest corner of 10th and Wood streets, 324 and 326 N. 10th St. The owner purchased both lots in April of 1997, one for $90,000, one for $3. The lot closest to the corner has been empty for at least 50 years.
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That truck trailer has been there at least 2 years. |
This particular lot is a REAL pile of shit, the Dirty Truck Trailer Lot. It even has a porta-potty! It has some bus parking spaces marked out but is just an extension of the gigantic lot to its south. This one, at the southeast corner of 11th and Wood, has the same owners, and was purchased the same day for the same price. It's unclear whether this lot is part of the sale of the larger lot.
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Don't forget the Viaduct! |
Finally, here are the last two lots. 318-324 N. 11th St. and 326-330 N. 11th St. Next to the Reading Viaduct and catercorner from the Dirty Truck Trailer Lot, these have been owned by the Philadelphia Reading Terminal Company (which for some reason runs out of a little office in Los Angeles), since Jan. 1, 1943. If you want to count the Viaduct itself as am empty lot, that would bring us up to 12, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. When the Reading Viaduct is turned into the coolest elevated park in the world (and it will be), these lots will be valuable as fuck.
Isn't this pathetic? How can all these empty lots exist right next to each other? Some rich developers with gonads of titanium need to get on these lots and get a-buildin'. I mean really, this is insane. With all the infill and midrise/highrise construction that's been going on lately (have you seem all the cranes in the air?), you would think that this set of lots would get a little bit of love. Besides the Community Center, not a stitch of development is planned for this area! What the fuck are you all waiting for?!?!
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Here's a guide of the lots in the order you see them in this article. Original image from Google |
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
