I've always wondered about the first few blocks North of Market on Front. From 95, you can see several 4 story houses that look abandoned. Now, I know they don't have much of a view with 95 right there and if it wasn't for that, they'd be get locations, but they still seem like get spots. Does anyone know if they are in fact abandoned?

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Jason
Lynn Swann 06'

"Individualism is absent when other peoples' standards, not reality and reason, are ones primary guide."

Well, a few years ago, yes, they were all actually abandoned.

That's because the owners were making a fortune on the buildings.

You can leave a building vacant, pay nothing in real estate tax,
then rent the exterior for advertiising space at a quarter million to a half million per year.

126 North Front Street
David Rappaport
Annual tax $95

I'll be there's some form of billboard or "wall wrap" on the building that is generating advertising income.


The are several other properties along the I-95 and I-76 corridor that were purchased for demolition but not demolished. Which leads to an interesting aspect of Philadelphia's checkered enforcement of laws.

Philadelphia has laws against billboard clutter along the interstates.
However, under the Rendell Administration, the City of Philadelphia began leasing out city owned space to people who wanted to erect illegal billboards- since the billboards were illegal, they had no competition, and became very lucrative.

This is separate from the finding that 90% of the billboards in the city didn't have a permit or pay the licensing fee.
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/...al/2754073.htm

Some residents questioned why the Mayor was funding the city with rentals on illegal activity that another branch of the City - Licenses and Inspection- was supposed to shut down. After several back and forth lawsuits, the organization "Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight" SCRUB won at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the city was reluctantly forced to enforce the law equally against everyone.
www.urbanblight.org


Hal

You said up until a few years ago. Does that mean they are no longer vacant?

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Jason
Lynn Swann 06'

"Individualism is absent when other peoples' standards, not reality and reason, are ones primary guide."

The ones between Arch and Market on Front are mostly for sale or sold; there are real estate signs all along there. The side closest to Arch is an apartment building. I wonder what will be done with them ... they'd be great offices or apartments.

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Funny, I thought the same thing yesterday as I drove by there. There is some major construction going on right in that area currently. They are tearing down some building off of front 1st street north of market?

I'm pretty sure no one will be getting a good deal on them. I could smell contractors everywhere...

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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken

http://www.bartonpartners.com/BA_Lin.../BAMU_NPS.html
New development for this area is in the works.
This general area is going to go under a nice transformation.

Hal I don't doubt you but why are the owners of these abandoned properties given tax breaks? Just seems out of the norm. I would think the city should be taxing the hell out of them and then fining them on top of that. Force them to give the property so that the property can eventually become an asset.

Take it from these freeloaders and give the property away free of charge to someone who will renovate it into a source of taxable generating revenue.

wow, seems pretty ambitious. looks like it will be good for the area. no need for all that vacant land. any time line?

Because Phildelphia taxes on the value of the building + propety and it's weighted to the value of the building. That means if you want to assemble a large amount of property for a new development, the best thing you can do is run the area into the ground and blight then entire neighborhood.

THEN it's blighted and you pay essentially no taxes, AND it's blighted and now the zoning rules that apply to everyone else can be waived-

That's one of the important things we were fighting about in Mayayunk regarding the new construction along the canal-
Nobody should be alowed to break the zoning ordinances simply because a building is blighted- not you're the person who caused the blight!

Pennsylvania allows a zoning board to loosen the zoning regulations to fight blight- The problem is that gives the Philly Zoning Hearing Board very wide discretion to let people who broke the rules benefit from breaking teh rules. To do things like approve buildings where the zoning code says "no building"- because you need to "fight blight in Main Street Manayunk" hey, lets start with north Philly first, THEN give tax breaks in the big commercial corridors

The problem is this creates a real temptation that, if you know you can't get a permit to do what you want, you let the building deteriorate-

Either it burns down - Toll Brothers & the Naval Home
or it falls apart - Boyd and Goldenberg
or it becomes blighted and the zoning board just rewrites the rules for you.

There's a huge amount of literature about that, some very good law review articles and documents about how blight and taxation are tied together.

Check the Temple University site- they should have some good articles on blight.


Yes, but realistially, only certain people get fines. And certain others get free passes on really basic things- like fire protection in highrises-

3 years ago-
"City Paper subsequently discovered that L&I officials had similarly dismissed as many as 100 fire code violations at 15 high rises and apartment buildings owned or managed by Philadelphia Management, and that the president of the company, Ronald Caplan, had a personal relationship with L&I Commissioner Edward McLaughlin."
http://citypaper.net/articles/122100/cs.whn.landi.shtml

So, if you risk a few hundred lives by converting old buildings into apartments and leave out the required safety items - big things like stand pipes to run the sprinklers- who's at L&I going to actually cite a big contributor for letting a vacant building go?

Besides, L&I had more important things to do- those aren't the assetts they're used to looking at-

5 years ago
"That's why the United States v. Frank Antico, currently being heard in Philadelphia's Federal Courthouse and predicted to last until the end of May, is already shaping into a historical event—one of the most revealing and embarrassing views we've had into the greasy inner gears of Philadelphia politics. The more the prosecution builds its case against Antico, the more it builds a case against City Hall's nudge-and-wink Boys Club: How could Antico possibly have gotten away with such stunts for so long without anyone—the Mayor, the L&I Commissioners, the City Council overseers, the District Attorney—doing anything about it?

Antico, the South Philly paisan with the silver hair and tongue to match, was for years second-in-command at Licenses & Inspections, the department that regulates all the city's businesses. Truth is, Antico was L&I—he'd been at the agency almost since it was created in 1952, and after surviving one previous indictment and the enmity of various mayors and L&I chiefs, he rose to become one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes players in the city, the guy who could close any business on the spot.

But according to federal prosecutors, Antico also spent the last 13 years as if he were constantly on-camera in a non-stop stag film, partying at whorehouses and strip bars, sexing it up with strippers in the Municipal Services Building and exchanging L&I privileges with a successful downtown madam for sex and cash."
http://citypaper.net/articles/050699...ammaries.shtml




Hal

And they said Philly wasn't "hip".

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Jason
Lynn Swann 06'

"Individualism is absent when other peoples' standards, not reality and reason, are ones primary guide."

Um be careful when you're talking to L&I and mention "hip",
they may still be be measuring, hip . . . waist . . .

• When Crystal Storm came to Philadelphia to earn a living as a nude dancer, she advertised her measurements as 121-24-36. Officials from the weights and measures division of the Department of Licenses and Inspection came calling to make sure her license was in order, for which they had legal authority ever since nude dancing became a licensed profession. They measured Ms. Storm's bustline and determined that her claims were not true: her bust measured a mere 50 inches. Ms. Storm claimed the quoted measurement was in centimeters, to which Department official Frank Antico said, ``That's deceptive advertising.''

So, isn't it aggrevating to find out your tax dollars go to inspecting vacuous bimbos rather than inspecting vacant buildings?

Hal