Center City

Despite multiple complaints, shoddy demolition work at 22d and Market Streets went uninspected for more than three weeks before the deadly collapse of a building Wednesday, raising basic questions about the city's competence regulating demolition projects. Six people were killed and 14 injured when a four-story brick wall fell onto an adjoining single-story Salvation Army thrift shop. Mayor Nutter and Licenses and Inspections Commissioner Carlton Williams acknowledged Thursday that the city had granted a demolition permit for that project without any inquiry into the contractor's qualifications for demolition work.

As regular readers of this column know, I consider parking garages the lowest form of downtown development. The uninhabited structures suck the life out of their surroundings and encourage people to choose cars over transit for trips into Center City. But if there is one thing worse than a free-standing downtown garage, it is a blighted free-standing downtown garage. Center City, unfortunately, is riddled with such eyesores, especially in the retail corridor east of City Hall, between Arch and Walnut Streets.

A BUILDING TOPPLES onto another in broad daylight in Center City, killing at least six people and injuring 13 more, and you wonder: Just how the hell could this happen? Griffin T. Campbell will likely be the person who hears that question the most in the investigations - and probable lawsuits - that will unfold in the wake of the horrific collapse yesterday of 2136-38 Market St., a skeleton of a property that crumbled and then flattened a small, neighboring Salvation Army thrift shop.

A Center City building that was undergoing demolition toppled onto a busy Salvation Army thrift shop Wednesday morning, killing at least six people and injuring 14, with one survivor pulled from the debris more than 13 hours later. Amid pandemonium and choking dust, bystanders and emergency responders rescued victims from the collapsed store at 22d and Market Streets, which had been crowded with morning shoppers who turned out for its weekly "Half-Off Wednesday" sale. Mayor Nutter, giving an update at the scene just after 11 p.m., said five women and one man had died.

THE DRUG ENFORCEMENT Administration had Griffin T. Campbell dead-to-rights. It was the middle of the summer in 2000, and a confidential informant bought 56 grams of crack cocaine from Griffin for $1,800 at the Happy Hollow Playground on Wayne Avenue in Germantown - all while DEA agents watched, according to court documents. Six months later, the same informant returned to Germantown - again under DEA surveillance - and allegedly purchased 54 grams of crack from Campbell, whose construction company was in charge of demolishing a four-story Center City property that collapsed Wednesday, killing six people and injuring 13 others.

IT WAS THE afternoon of May 25 when Bob Coleman tucked the sparkling marquise diamond ring behind the TV in his Roxborough home. His palms were sweaty. Kimberly "Kim" Jean Finnegan, his live-in girlfriend of a year, stood before him in a purple dress, her eyes dramatically rimmed with liner she rarely wore, knowing they were headed to the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City to see the rapper Pitbull. But first, Coleman had something important to do. The 27-year-old son of Common Pleas Judge Robert P. Coleman, dropped to one knee.

AFTER THE Center City building collapse that claimed six lives Wednesday, City Council raised questions yesterday about demolition regulations and sought to renew efforts to crack down on longtime vacant-property owners. Council President Darrell Clarke also called for additional resources for the Department of Licenses and Inspections. "I am heartened that the city is poised to increase funding to the Department of Licenses and Inspections, some of which will be used for more inspectors," Clarke said yesterday.

A NARROW ALLEY sits between Sandra Hansen's door and a gutted, three-story brick shell that's missing its facade. The interior demolition project on tiny Butler Avenue in Center City made Hansen, 26, a medical student at Temple, a little nervous over the past couple months. But the contractor, Griffin Campbell, assured her everything was safe. On Wednesday, when a building being demolished by Campbell collapsed onto a Salvation Army thrift shop, killing six people, Hansen became weary because she knew he had a job on Market Street he was rushing to get done.

I EXPECTED gal pal Ronnie Polaneczky's Wednesday column on "Topless Moira," the seminaked stroller, to be titillating. I expected snark. So did Ronnie, she confessed, but steered away from pointing and giggling after 30-year-old Moira Johnston explained why she walked around staid Rittenhouse Square with her breasts exposed. Sort of Skin in the City. What I got was "if men can do it [go topless] women should be allowed to do it, too. " Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah. For me, men shouldn't go around Rittenhouse Square shirtless either.

For days, Nadine White had noticed huge cracks in the walls of the Salvation Army thrift store in Center City where she worked as assistant manager. "Everything was falling over," said White's husband, Kenneth Bond. "Everybody knew about it but nobody said anything. They just kept working. " But Bond, 56, of South Philadelphia, became alarmed Wednesday when he passed the store about 8 a.m. on his way to the VA Medical Center in University City. He called his wife. "The building was being demolished for a while, and I had told her, 'Baby, this really doesn't look good,' " he said.