Grisly event puts development on the map

In working to recraft Philadelphia's most challenging neighborhoods, Bart Blatstein has learned this: Life can upstage your best efforts.

"In real estate development . . . something is always going wrong," said the usually unflappable urban pioneer.

But not even in his wildest imaginings did Blatstein foresee the double slayings, believed to be drug hits, that have thrust his new $100 million live/work/shop/eat/play Northern Liberties creation, the Piazza at Schmidts, into the headlines.

"No one expects something like that," a still-shaken Blatstein said last week. "Of course, it hurt me and upset me."

Yet he had to admit the killings accomplished what Blatstein and his public-relations efforts couldn't: front-page, top-of-the-broadcast news coverage of his upscale development.

"All of a sudden, everyone knew about the Piazza at Schmidts," said Blatstein, 54, a Northeast Philadelphia native.

Two months ago, he celebrated the grand opening of the Piazza, which has helped turn a long-forsaken industrial area north of Old City into an alluring address, especially among young professionals.

A commercial and residential developer for more than 30 years, Blatstein said he had always focused on "difficult areas," often being the first one in. Besides Northern Liberties, they have included the Delaware waterfront and a place that, thanks to Blatstein and others, is now far from no-man's-land: Manayunk.

But the cutting edge can be too sharp sometimes. On June 27, the Piazza became a murder scene.

A few hours before sunset and the start of the bustling nightlife that characterizes the complex's open-air entertainment plaza, three gunmen entered the Navona building and shot 34-year-old party planner Rian Thal and an acquaintance execution-style in a hall outside Thal's apartment. Police found 4 kilograms of cocaine and more than $100,000 in Thal's seventh-floor unit.

Opened in May, the 156-unit Navona was the last of five apartment buildings completed at the Piazza, off Second Street at the old Schmidt's brewery site.

On July 2, another Navona tenant, Katoya Jones, was arrested. Aided by footage from lobby surveillance cameras, police accused Jones, 25, of letting at least one of the shooters into the building.

Blatstein called the killings "shocking" and "unsettling" and complained about their prominent play in newspapers and on television and radio. Yet, he added, the media attention appears to have been a boon for the Piazza, "as bizarre as it sounds."

While providing no specific figures, he said the leasing office and the development's five restaurants and 40 shops had "gotten more activity and traffic" since the killings.

"Business has been wonderful," Blatstein said.

In an interview that the typically outgoing developer agreed to reluctantly - one his public-relations consultant spent three days discouraging - Blatstein wound up talking for more than an hour about the murders, though he never used that word, opting for incident instead.

He insisted the killings were no reflection on the safety of the Piazza or the neighborhood he has spent nine years revitalizing. In fact, he said, it was the development's sophisticated security system that led to a swift arrest.

"It was an isolated incident," he said of the shootings of Thal and Timothy Gilmore, 40, of Ohio. "This could have happened in Society Hill or Rittenhouse Square."

For Blatstein, it was a bit like lightning striking twice.

On Dec. 6, 2006, a shooting outside his new Pearl Theatre - in a North Philadelphia community that had not had a movie house for decades - seriously injured a teenager.

Just two nights earlier, Blatstein was among a jubilant crowd at the debut of the seven-screen theater, part of the $100 million Avenue North retail, restaurant, and entertainment complex developed by his Tower Investments Inc. at the edge of Temple University's campus on Broad Street. Last week, Blatstein downplayed that one-two punch as merely "ironic." He said he was "moving on."

So are other developers with projects in Northern Liberties.

"I hope people don't start thinking of Northern Liberties as this frightening place, because it isn't," said Tim McDonald, a principal in Onion Flats, a develop/design/build company that has built nine homes there and has approvals for 103 more.

McDonald described the area as one "filled with families and young people and older people."

"When you load a neighborhood up like that with so many diverse people, there's bound to be complications," he added.

That's especially true in urban areas, where crime is "certainly a large part of the risk" in development, said Ben Ryan.

In November, Ryan put the finishing touches on a gated community of seven four-bedroom townhouses known as 333 Green in Northern Liberties. The complex, built without sales commitments, still has two unsold properties.

Ryan said he didn't anticipate that the events at the Piazza would hurt sales, and he credited Blatstein with making all of Northern Liberties "a much better place than it was, a healthier place to invest in."

It's only going to get better, Blatstein said.

In all, he has assembled 28 acres in Northern Liberties and has enough plans, he said, to keep him busy there the rest of his career.

Next up: a two-story, 100,000-square-foot shopping center at Second Street and Girard Avenue to be anchored by a Pathmark supermarket.

That, Blatstein said, will be ready in a year.