On N. 9th St., empty lots, vacant homes, and, nearby, hope

The 2100 block of North Ninth Street - between Diamond and Susquehanna, just northeast of Temple University - looks as though it's being eaten alive. Between the dilapidated three-story brick houses, conspicuous patches of empty and overgrown land poke holes in the Philadelphia grid.

Property-tax delinquency is rampant here. There are 32 delinquent properties on this one block of Ninth Street, half of which have been delinquent for more than 20 years. The total tax debt owed the city from this single block exceeds $200,000.

Many of the houses that are still standing have been abandoned and boarded up.

So far, the Temple-area development boom has been confined mostly to the neighborhood west of Broad Street.

"The critical mass for student housing is moving more south and west of campus," says developer Jonathan Weiss, of Equinox Management & Construction.

But projects are popping up north and east of campus as well, and student housing is not the only use:

Mosaic Development Partners opened the student-oriented, 92-unit Diamond Green apartment building at 10th and Diamond Streets last summer.

Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM), the registered community organization and development corporation for the area, is building a massive transit-oriented project next to the SEPTA Regional Rail station, a few blocks south of Ninth and Diamond.

The Paseo Verde project, a mixed-use, mixed-income development, is intended to accommodate residents of the surrounding communities.

Rose Gray, vice president of APM, said her group has been successful because it has been able to identify and line up parcels for redevelopment. She said the creation of a land bank - a single city agency under consideration by City Council that would hold city-owned vacant property and market it for reuse - would help.

Gray didn't want to discuss other strategies that the city might use, saying her group and others have "spent so many years rehashing what works and what doesn't."

"The land bank is the answer to all of this," Gray said.

Michelle Moody, a resident of the 2100 block of North Ninth Street, said she had not heard of anyone interested in building on her block, but would welcome the idea.

"It'd bring some more people around here," Moody said.