34th st - Page 2 - PhillyBlog

JustinP · #11 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 12:47 PM

I recently heard that they are going to be blowing up the projects in mantua and filling in some of the empty lots with new two level homes. I am guessing that is what they are doing at 34th and haverford but i am not sure.

lewblum · #12 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 03:05 PM

my friend in Mantua told me it was rumored to be a supermarket.
But from the glimpse of the foundations I got when I drove by it didn't really look like a supermarket.

But who knows...maybe this is the Trader Joe's being discussed in the other thread.

lewblum · #13 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustinP

I recently heard that they are going to be blowing up the projects in mantua and filling in some of the empty lots with new two level homes. I am guessing that is what they are doing at 34th and haverford but i am not sure.

what projects? the tower on 35th st?

cicero · #14 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 06:43 PM

I am fairly certain that it will be housing for senior citizens. The supermarket idea died a while back; the lot is just too small.

Dave · #15 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lewblum

what projects? the tower on 35th st?

Mantua Hall @ 35th & Fairmount. PHA has it scheduled to get the Mill Creek treatment (next year, I think), but I think there are doubts about that since PHA's funding got cut a year or two ago.

seand · #16 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave

Mantua Hall @ 35th & Fairmount. PHA has it scheduled to get the Mill Creek treatment (next year, I think), but I think there are doubts about that since PHA's funding got cut a year or two ago.

Let me guess. Instead of the Lucien Blackwell Homes, these will be the Villas at Lucien Blackwell Place.

Dave · #17 (**permalink**) 12-03-2007, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seand

Let me guess. Instead of the Lucien Blackwell Homes, these will be the Villas at Lucien Blackwell Place.

Not sure, but they definitely won't be Villas, apparently.

http://www.pha.phila.gov/press/index.asp?id=135

Quote:

PHA plans to build approximately 100 low-rise walk-up style apartments on the site, with construction beginning in the end of 2008. Final designs are still being completed, but most of the townhouse structures will be three stories, with the units built around a secure central parking lot. All homes will have clear views of the parking area and open green space.

It also looks like the current apartment units at the site went from looking fairly nice to being only a step or two above the Regency apartments near Temple.

lewblum · #18 (**permalink**) 12-04-2007, 09:09 AM

Quote:

All homes will have clear views of the parking area and open green space.

By "open green space" i'm sure they mean ugly ass lawn.
And those parking area views are to die for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave

Not sure, but they definitely won't be Villas, apparently.

http://www.pha.phila.gov/press/index.asp?id=135

It also looks like the current apartment units at the site went from looking fairly nice to being only a step or two above the Regency apartments near Temple.

Wow! That's like th same exact shot. I guess PHA assumed that the poor could afford hi-end furnishings.
My mom used to do home care nursing there...she said it was quite the shlthole

Dave · #19 (**permalink**) 02-19-2008, 09:06 PM

Sounds like the Mantua Hall demolition's a go.

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news...her_hopes.html

Quote:

Meanwhile, PHA is scheduled to demolish the Mantua Hall Apartments, an 18-floor concrete high-rise in West Philadelphia on March 30. It plans to build low-rise contemporary townhouses there, Dorn said.

In preparation for the demolition, residents have recently been relocated to other PHA housing. During a reporter's visit last summer, when the high-rise was still bustling with residents, Patricia Jenkins, 35, complained about the tower as she prepared to get into her car, parked in front of the building's two doors, where young men were hanging out.
Her left arm was in a sling. "I slipped on some piss in the stairway," she said, explaining her injury. "We might as well be living out in the streets with conditions in here. I've been trying to get out."
There are shootings right in front of the building and drugs are prevalent, she said. "The same guys you were talking to," she said, pointing to the young men in the front of the building, "smoke marijuana in the lobby. The people in here, they sell. They rob you."
The number of major crimes at Mantua increased slightly from 13 in 1999 to 16 last year. Francine Jacobs, 54, lived in the same apartment in Mantua Hall for 33 years before she was recently relocated in preparation for the demolition. During a brief interview last summer, she, too, was ready to complain: about roaches infesting her two-bedroom apartment and how no one from PHA came to fix cracks in her walls.
She was relocated in November to the Bartram Village development in Southwest Philadelphia off Lindbergh Boulevard. She doesn't like her new, supposedly temporary, home.
"I jumped out of the frying pan and into the fryer," she said in a phone interview last month. When she moved in, the apartment wasn't ready, she said.
"Oh God, there are so many roaches in the kitchen," she said. "I just went through hell. I cried, I cried. . . . The bathroom wasn't cleaned at all."
Though she had complaints about Mantua Hall, if she could move into a new attractive townhouses PHA plans for the site, would she want to move back?
"Yes, I would," she said. *