Michael, the only 311 ticket says that the city couldn't find the problem.

Do you want to give a more specific description, or would you like to "close" the ticket? To "close", just click the button above.

The boxes were removed although the property, owned by fresh grocer, remains a hazard.

A child was severely injured by glass playing in this structure. The rear is open to drug users. This property is in a school zone directly across from mastery charter school. The state of the lot makes it a favorite spot for short dumpers.

Also, the location on the map is incorrect. Correct location is at the southeast corner of rittenhouse and pulaski aves, down the road from the fresh grocer.

view from street

dangerous collapsing wall

more collapsing wall

short dumpers love this spot. there is a contractor in particular who uses this as his private dump.

walk right in kids.

drive right behind the building with your prostitute. the rear side is wide open and hidden from the street.

I have been trying for over a year to get this property cleaned up and/or torn down. It has been an on-going problem for several years......and the only time anything has been done is when the owner's hand is forced. For quite some time there was not the temporary (movable) fence that is up there now, so dumping became a major issue and authorities were contacted. They made the owner put up a fence, and eventually made him clean up the site. He has done nothing since that time to make this area safer or cleaner. There were two Planet Aid boxes at this site for quite some time......but they only added to the problem because people did not always put their bags of clothes in the boxes and then someone would tear them open and scatter the contents all over the sidewalk. This only added to and encouraged more dumping. After much contact with Planet Aid, the boxes were finally removed and I cleaned up the area and hauled away 3 trash bags of debris. The area looked much better, but it did not take long for the regular illegal dumpers to add their trash to the clean area. Mastery Charter does not seem very involved with the neighborhood or surrounding properties that border the school, despite all their talk about "community". If it were not for the efforts of a few dedicated neighbors, this site would look like something in the worst areas of N. Philly. Shame on the owner of Fresh Grocer for not keeping the property safe, clean, and something other than an eyesore. Maybe it is time for the neighbors to consider picketing Fresh Grocer to get the owner's attention.

I've contacted mastery charter and asked them to contribute to this thread. It seems to me that this property should be snatched up by the city under their nuisance property programs. I'm not sure how this could happen in a school zone (which is completely unenforced anyways) .

Part of the problem seems to be that this property is on the border of two police districts and neither seem to take control, although i've seen at least one patrol car hiding behind the building, probably asleep.

hundreds of festering tires

more tires full of water and insects

The icing on the cake; dumped wood, concrete and trash, full of flies . Great for the kids across the street.

JEESH....this is so disgusting. Someone must be getting a bribe if this hasn't been dealt with. I will make a call on Monday

Those photos are incredible.

Please post here if you find out anything from your call.

Submitted sanitation violation complaint this afternoon, directed to 39th district .

I suspect this is why the city agencies have been ignoring us:

http://www.lasalle.edu/univcomm/2007/groundbreaking_shoppes.html

It's terrible, no doubt on that. I walked by this corner daily, multiple times, for years. It has been deteriorating steadily for years and is worse now than ever. The dumping situation is absurd and has been going on for YEARS. It is as bad as it looks on those pictures, maybe worse. That pile of tires is disgraceful. What a waste of a corner.
I thought the owner was someone other than the Fresh Grocer, however. It is theirs now? Even more of a reason that it should have been cleaned up years ago. I guess since it looks like a neighboring property the FG treats it as such and allows people to believe it is not their responsibility.

Too bad Fresh Grocer is so uninterested in the neighborhood. I'd stop shopping there in protest if I could, but I did that not long after they opened.

The 311 ticket still says problem not found.

Will a new number be issued by Philadelphia 311 on this?

Rcv'd a reply from Mastery Charter, waiting to hear back from John Buttil who is head of Operations at Pickett.

Ha! "Problem not found."
How do you miss an abandoned building on a T in the road?
Seriously?!?
There are two things on the whole block on that side of pulaski.
The Fresh Grocer on one end and the empty service station/dump on the other end.
It's not a needle in the haystack situation.

Granted, there are blighted properties scattered around the neighborhood, things happen and things wear out eventually. However, there doesn't seem much of an excuse for this property to be so abused as a collection ground for garbage. It is surrounded by several really nice blocks of well kept homes and great people who do not deserve to have to look at this every day. I've picked up trash here myself. If I have, and others who posted above have, why the heck can't the owners do the same?!?

Where are they?

Good work, Private Eye. Good to know they responded.

"Problem not found" is a BS Excuse!

I'd wager that the L&I employee responsible for looking into this does the following:
-Drives by the property and makes note of the fence and considers this to "meet code".
-Does not bother to stop the vehicle and attempt any further investigation.
-Procedes to the next order of business.......coffee break and/or lunch.

If this isn't happening, I would guess that Fresh Grocer and the city are at odds over something concerning this particular property. Such things could include enviromental remediation of buried fuel/oil tanks or denial of building permits.

Whatever the problem, the neighborhood gets the short end of the stick.

Well, as you can see from the link i posted DRM and the *owner* are in cahoots. All of these issues eventually make their way back to a city council member who will squash any grievance for a contribution to their slush fund.

FWIW this blue econoline van is parked outside of the building on a regular basis.

The fence 'securing' the upper lot is missing pieces, also note the fresh tire tracks. Could this be our van? Who knows or cares?

The address you used for the 311 call is not correct, this is the 5800 block of Pulaski. I'm on the phone with 311 now, correcting this. The guy is adding a new ticket onto the old one.....the new number is 631014. Now maybe they will do something about this issue. I mentioned that you cannot see the tires from the street, that they need to go into the FG parking lot to see them. I also mentioned that the gas station is on the corner of the 5800 block of Pulaski and the 400 block of W. Rittenhouse, and that there are only two businesses on that side of the street, the FG and the defunct gas station. And I said that the same person owns both properties. If they can't find it now, then they really do not intend to find it!

The guy from 311 just called me back, and together we got the correct address for the building. It is 5834 Pulaski Avenue. Any future complaints should contain this address.

Artzarina, so right! If they can't find it now, they don't care to. Great job getting that worked out. Thank you!

No problem Merl........I don't know why I didn't notice the mistake in the address earlier, I've contacted L&I about this place for the last couple of years. But I couldn't find the scrap of paper with that address on it, and the BRT website was not loading. Together the 311 guy (Tracy?) and I worked it out......he was on the ball. Shout out to 311......thank you! I also contacted someone else in City gov and he is passing it onto L&I, and he will make sure that something is done. Hopefully we will see some positive results in the (near?) future.

Hey Guys,

Who's the City Councilman for this area?

Donna Reed Miller: (215) 686-3424

Hey Dan,
You have an email for her and ward boundaries by chance?

The main boundaries are Wissahickon Ave, Wissahickon Creek, Northwestern Ave, Stenton Ave, Broad St, and Hunting Park Ave. You can use this for the exact ones: http://www.phila.gov/citycouncil/

Here's the form to email her: http://www.phila.gov/citycouncil/miller/feedback.html

BTW, we're discussing this at http://www.philadelphiaspeaks.com/forum/mt-airy-chestnut-hill-germantown/8104-just-another-reason-hate-fresh-grocer.html

As of today there are 8-10 contractor bags which were short-dumped right out front. Last week someone left several boxes of household chemicals/paints in the same place, i'd imagine those are underneath .

(The shady blue econoline van was parked on the sidewalk today)

Household chemicals..

Contractor debris

Why is it taking so long for the city to do something about this? We have followed all the procedures we needed to, jumped through all the hoops, and have gone beyond what most people would do. And yet nothing seems to be moving on getting this cleaned up, it is getting worse! Thanks for keeping up with currents pics Michael.....at least we have documentation to back us up. Too bad we didn't have pics when the Planet Aid boxes were an eyesore, or when the landlord let the weeds all along that block get 5' high. What next folks? I'm going to start calling people instead of just emailing and asking for help......I'll become a squeaky wheel.

04-DEC-09 SENT NOTICE OF VIOLATION
04-DEC-09 INITIAL INSPECTION COMPLETED :VIOLATIONS UNCOMPLIED

This is the most current status available from L & I. The usual process is that owner is given time to comply. If he/she does not, court action may be initiated at L & I's discretion. 311 will provide further updates as we receive them. (spt).

Wow.......so this just got looked at recently? How long is the "time to comply"? A week, a month, a year??? The problem is not going away!! There is now furniture of some sort dumped up where the tires are, and black bags of some sort of debris on the sidewalk......along with boxes of chemicals & paints. It is obvious that someone knows that this is an easy area to dump in and not be seen.......so I doubt it will stop any time soon. It shocks me that this process is so freakin' slow.......how much more trash/debris has to pile up before someone takes more proactive measures? And will they hold the owner responsible to make sure that this will not happen again?

About a week and a half ago when I went to drop off a Redbox DVD (the only thing FG is good for) I noticed two cop cars in the middle of the lot behind the store. They were leaving when I was walking in. At first I thought it would be related, but eh probably not.

The bags of trash are still there. I've noticed police cars hiding out in the parking lots from time to time but not much has changed. I turned the corner at about 9am a couple weeks ago and there was a man urinating on the school wall exposing himself to me, thank god the sun was in my eyes;) More debris has been dumped behind the building. These problems are going to continue indefinately unless: a) the building is razed b) a tenant is obtained.

Maybe Michelle Obama will help us solve this problem? :)

A woman driving a car with pa plate 'peace08' was spotted attempting to short dump at this location.

Updated 6/10/09 7:01am: The Streets Dept has received the request
Updated 6/12/09 7:01am: The Streets Dept has reported that this request has been dispatched to a work crew.
Updated 6/16/09 11:02am: The Streets Dept inspected the location and did not
see the item or issue