NORTH PHILADELPHIA has experienced an explosion of building activity that is changing the face of a section of the city once considered blighted and unsafe.

Just last month, the Temple University School of Medicine welcomed its Class of 2013 into a striking new 13-story high-rise on Broad Street, between Tioga and Venango.

And, soon, the city is expected to announce plans for a major transit, housing and community-revitalization project for Broad Street and Erie Avenue, just north of the new medical school building.

Temple, which has grown rapidly in the last decade, has driven much of the development - but not all of it.

Long before the medical school and other dazzling buildings opened at Temple, several housing developments began springing up all over North Philadelphia, in sections as far east as Norris Square and Kensington and as far west as Strawberry Mansion and Francisville.

"In tough economic times, people with any money at all move toward value with whatever spending they do," said Mark Alan Hughes, an expert in urban policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

With Temple as an "anchor institution" and with Center City close to its southern boundary, "North Philadelphia remains a great value location for people moving from renting to owning . . . while staying close to city jobs or city life," Hughes said.

Consider these projects:

* The city has approved plans by Bart Blatstein, owner of Tower Investments, to renovate the State Office Building, at Broad and Spring Garden streets, into a mix of residential and commercial space.

* A development at 9th and Berks streets, close to the Temple station of the SEPTA regional rail line, will provide housing for Temple students and for the nearby community to the east. The Association of Puerto Ricans on the March is a partner in the development.

* Progress Plaza, on Broad between Jefferson and Oxford, is undergoing a $16 million renovation that will include a 46,000-square-foot Fresh Grocer supermarket expected to be completed by the end of the year.

* Blatstein built the Piazza at Schmidts, a $100 million complex of five apartment buildings, five restaurants and more than 40 shops that opened earlier this year at 2nd Street at Germantown Avenue, in Northern Liberties.

A trip to Rome 30 years ago inspired the developer.

"I thought the European flair for public space was great," he said.

Before the Piazza went up, the area "was all abandoned, a run-down factory and short-dumping land," Blatstein said. "It was nothing there."

A push to build homes

 

John Kromer, former director of the city's Office of Housing and Community Development (OHCD), said that the city's decision to make "lower North Philadelphia a priority" for new-home-ownership programs in the early 1990s spurred private development now going on near Temple.

Kromer, author of Fixing Broken Cities: The Implementation of Urban Development Strategies, said the city's efforts and the Philadelphia Housing Authority's push to build new houses in a long-ignored section of North Philadelphia have helped to save the area.

"A priority was given to build in the area between Spring Garden to Montgomery Avenue, both east and west of Broad Street," Kromer said.