Market Street

A knife-wielding man slashed wildly at police officers who chased him through five Market Street blocks crowded with rush-hour pedestrians yesterday before subduing him after a struggle, police said. The man kept threatening, "I'm going to kill you," and "I'm going to kill the mayor," police said. Police arrested him at 7th and Market streets, after flogging him with nightsticks. Four police officers suffered minor injuries in the struggle. The suspect, James Wood, 43, of Keim Street near Westmoreland, Juniata Park, was cut on the head, but refused hospital treatment.

The XXX-rated films are gone, along with the customers who trolled the Forum Theater on Market Street seeking public arousal. As videos and the Internet killed porn theaters, the Forum was among the last to die, but it finally closed Nov. 30, giving Philadelphia the opportunity - for the first time in decades - to develop this key link between the city's east and west sides. Richard Basciano, the man behind the proposal to revive the area with new apartments and street-level commercial space, is best known as the king of Times Square porn.

The new home of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com at 801 Market Street opened for business today. Newsroom employees for the Inquirer and philly.com started unpacking this morning and will be followed later this week by their colleagues from the Daily News. Operations of the three news organizations are being consolidated on the third floor at the former Strawbridge and Clothier Department Store Building. The move was necessitated by the sale of their previous home, the iconic white tower at 400 N. Broad Street, to developer Bart Blatstein by the news organizations' previous owners, Philadelphia Media Network.

A $60 million deal to sell a large piece of Center City real estate to the owner of the Gallery at Market East is nearly complete, helping pave the way for a planned redevelopment of the long-struggling urban shopping mall, officials said Monday. Vornado Realty Trust of Paramus, N.J., in an announcement made on a stormy day that idled markets and major businesses along the East Coast, said it had entered into an agreement to sell 907 Market St. to Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, a shopping mall company headquartered in Center City.

With a Marshalls store set to open next month on East Market Street, the area around the Gallery in Center City is cementing its position as a discount district. "It's about the thrill of the hunt," said Wharton School retailing professor Erin Armendinger, describing the allure of such stores as Marshalls, Ross Dress for Less, and Burlington Coat Factory. What the new store will do for the luster of Market Street, or the lack of it, remains to be seen. "You have to remember that Market Street East was in pretty bad shape," said Michael Katz, senior vice president of the firm that owns Marshalls' building.

You can get a spanking-new, 1995 wardrobe at John Wanamaker on Sunday, but you won't be able to sidle over to Little Sicily on West Passyunk Avenue and munch a slice of Charles Campo's pizza. Or you can warm up in the 2 Street Cafe in the food court at the Gallery, but you won't be able to watch the Mummers from a suite in the Hotel Atop the Bellevue. As economic and social realignments go, it is not nation-shaking (just ask the Mexicans), but moving the Mummers from Broad Street to Market Street, because Broad is under construction, does have its repercussions on Philadelphia businesses.

Following the catastrophic building collapse at 22d and Market Streets, Philadelphia City Council President Darrell L. Clarke resurrected a bill Thursday to punish speculators for holding on to vacant, often dilapidated, properties. Clarke said he had planned to introduce the bill eventually, but Wednesday's tragedy, which killed six people and injured 14, spurred him to act. The bill would create a "non-utilization tax," which would charge an owner 10 percent of a property's assessed value after it had been vacant for more than a year.

Richard Basciano and the late Samuel A. Rappaport were friends, business partners, and slumlords. Both rose from humble beginnings to become real estate speculators extraordinaire. They scooped up blighted properties in Philadelphia and sat on them for years while the structures crumbled, eventually selling them at huge markups to be developed by others. Now they have something else in common. Both owned buildings that killed. While the circumstances of the two fatal accidents are very different, the cases are linked by more than just the two men's complex relationship; the tragedies reveal the city's inability to enforce basic building safety.

The search for answers in last week's fatal building collapse expanded Monday, with Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announcing a grand jury investigation and City Council President Darrell L. Clarke calling for hearings and a sweeping probe. Both promised to examine more than just individual failures at the demolition site at 22d and Market Streets, where an unsupported wall came crashing down Wednesday, burying shoppers and employees in a Salvation Army thrift store next door.