"It's right across the South Street Bridge from our main campus," Children's spokesman George V. Bochanski Jr. told me. "It offers us an opportunity to allow for growth, to maybe bring in some research areas we currently have in other places, closer to the main campus."
The location "has been vacant for years. It's been underutilized and unsightly," Gus Scheerbaum, an engineer who heads the South of South Neighborhood Association, told me. "The neighborhood is really interested and excited about CHOP moving onto the property."
A hospital official first called Scheerbaum's group two years ago to gauge neighbors' reaction to moving some operations there from its crowded University City home. "They are still early in the process," he told me. "Our concerns are related to traffic, pedestrian safety, street lighting," and a design that doesn't have an unfriendly brick wall facing residents.
Children's would fill a vacant area that adjoins rowhouse blocks that have lately attracted expensive redevelopment.
"It's a clean use," says developer Carl Dranoff, whose projects include the nearby Locust on the Park apartments. "It brings a lot of employment. It will have a positive ripple effect on the neighborhood."
Dranoff expects Children's will seek a hotel for patient families at the site.
Nobody's mentioned a hotel to the neighbors, Scheerbaum said. "We haven't had a community meeting about this development," he said. "But there will be."
Calling in
Aramark Corp., the Philadelphia cafeteria operator, says it is selling a $50 million minority stake in SeamlessWeb, a mobile-phone-based restaurant-takeout and delivery-ordering service it bought in 2006. Spectrum Equity Investors, a $5 billion-asset Boston investment firm, is the buyer.
