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Northeast Times Sold

The Northeast Times has been sold to a new group, Broad Street Media LLC effective December 15th.  The Times for the last few years has been in the Inquirer/Daily News company.  It is too early to say what this will mean to the coverage of the Northeast and especially Frankford.

Broad Street Media, LLC today announced that it has signed an agreement to purchase the non-daily community publishing assets of the Broad Street Publishing division of Philadelphia Media Network Inc., which recently acquired the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and philly.com. The purchaser is a newly-formed LLC whose principals include brothers Clifford and Stuart Richner, and Darwin Oordt.

We have been very fortunate to have this great sources of local coverage in this area. It has made my job much easier knowing that I can coast when the Times in the form of John Loftus at the the Frankford Civic or Tom Waring at Northwood is on the job.

Let’s hope these new folks don’t mess with a good thing and have the sense to keep the good people they have on the job.

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4403 Frankford Avenue

A stop work order on 4403 Frankford Avenue (L+I sticker is up) has been issued, but a crew of guys continues to work on the property.  It is a large property that starts on Frankford Ave and wraps around Unity Street.

From Jorge Santana to Sharon Krause, community relations officer, 15th district:

The neighbors are very concerned that the property will be a large recovery home or a beer distribution facility.  L+I instructed me to contact the 15th to have the men stopped.   I called the district and got a busy signal, so I am sending this email instead.  We need these guys to stop the work until it is fairly vetted by the community and approved by L+I.

Can you place a daily roll call on the property to ensure that work is not happening on the place.  I have been told that work was being done at odd hours, including at 10pm last night (probably to avoid an arrest or work stoppage).

Thanks in advance for addressing this issue.  A 3-1-1 complaint has also been filed.  The ticket numbers are1333382 and 1324831.

This property is buttoned up so tight, you can’t see what is going on inside.

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Economic Development Meeting Proposed for Frankford Northwood

The Northwood Civic Meeting on November 16th was my first outing after a few weeks off for personal business.  NEastPhilly did a fine job of reporting the details and I won’t duplicate anything they offered.  You can get their report here.

At that meeting, Jorge Santana, Chief of Staff for State Rep Tony Payton made mention of a proposed meeting of the various groups in Frankford and Northwood for the purpose of working on an economic development plan.  The big news is that all of these groups will work together on something.  Nothing is going to happen here until we all get on the same page and start pushing in the same direction so this is the big news.

We need economic development here.  We need investment.  We need singles who work to buy homes or rent those new condos along Deal Street that will be going into those old buildings in 2010.  We need families to buy those new town homes that will be going up over in East Frankford.  None of that will happen until we all start pushing in the same direction.

This is how it starts.  We’ll let you know when that meeting happens.

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Frankford Y Slated to Go to Sheriff Sale

Lorraine gave us this tip over on the message board.  The Y building is listed for mortgage foreclosure Sheriff Sale on December 7th:

276-894 4704 Leiper St.     23rd Ward 33,125 sq. ft. BRT# 882938230 Improvements: Misc. YMCA Type Masonry
THE NEW FRANKFORD COMMUNITY Y C.P. August Term, 2010 No. 000911     $178,464.93     plus interest through the date of the sheriff’s sale, plus costs William J. Levant, Esq.