the struggling economy to acquire neighborhood businesses and institutional locations from troubled landlords.
They're recruiting office, store, restaurant, and nonprofit tenants, in hopes of reviving what was once a busy shopping district for the adjoining diverse middle-income neighborhoods. Weinstein is acquiring properties like the former Catholic parish complex that used to house a charter school operated by Germantown Settlement, which amassed a taxpayer-funded portfolio of scores of neighborhood properties before it was dissolved in bankruptcy court.
Weinstein and his partners have redeveloped more than 30 properties, from the end of Chestnut Hill to the north end of Nicetown, since he left his City Hall job (as chief of staff to then-Councilwoman Happy Fernandez) 15 years ago to open the Trolley Car Diner and go into real estate.
To ease the way for new business, he's helped to organize the Mount Airy Business Improvement District, which unites Acme Markets and more than 200 other landlords to fund street cleaners and other projects, and Valley Green Bank, which has expanded from its avenue headquarters to four branches. City-government ties help insiders like Weinstein navigate Philadelphia's inspections, zoning, back taxes, and real estate rules.
Elsewhere on the avenue, Cira Center-based Iron Stone Strategic Capital Partners has foreclosed the former Asher's chocolate factory, the old Germantown Farmers Market, and other Germantown Avenue properties formerly held by neighborhood landlord Joel Harden, who filed for bankruptcy reorganization last year.
