Market Street

A man threatening to blow up the Liberty Bell was detained Saturday, police said, after leaving two backpacks nearby that he said contained explosives. Police investigated and found no explosives. The man was expected to be charged, Officer Christine O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Police Department, said Saturday evening. He had not been identified as of late Saturday night. A police source said the man was not from the Philadelphia area and did not appear to have a criminal record.

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 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.

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.

A 12-inch water main broke in University City this morning, forcing the Philadelphia Water Department to shut off nearby service, and causing traffic to slow. John DiGiulio, a spokesman for the department, said crews were at the scene of the break around Market street between 42nd and 43 Streets. DiGiulio said he did not have an estimate on when repairs would be complete and water service turned on for the block. The break is not on the scale of Saturday's 36-inch transmission pipe break in Old City that rushed five million to six million gallons of water through that area.

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.

POLICE in the Southwest Detective Division are on the hunt for a pint-size punk in connection with a series of brazen attempted gunpoint robberies in West Philadelphia. The boy targeted five people, including this Daily News reporter, near 46th Street between Market and Chestnut from Monday night to Tuesday afternoon, police said. One incident was reported Monday night, and four others unfolded between 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Tuesday. The victims told police that the would-be robber looked to be about 12 or 13. In some instances, he asked victims for the time, then pulled out a silver handgun and demanded their belongings.

Even at this late stage in the evolution of the business we now call media, I still think of myself as a newspaper reporter, the ink-on-the-fingertips kind, whose heart rhythms are synced to the arrival of the latest tidbit of information. But I am not the least bit sorry to have left the big white tower on North Broad Street for the grit and bustle of East Market Street.   After saying our long, sentimental goodbyes to that classic newspaper aerie, the entire population of The Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com — about 600 reporters, editors, page designers, tech workers, advertising sales people, and circulation managers — began moving this week to the third floor of the former Strawbridge & Clothier department store, a case of one surviving mass-market institution burrowing into the shell of another, departed one. Where we were previously stacked vertically in our cloistered compounds, separated by fields of vacant cubicles, we are now pressed together in one sprawling horizontal space spanning three buildings between Eighth and Ninth Streets, from Simon & Simon's art deco wedding cake to Bower & Fradley's '70s-era Gallery . Yes, the quarters are a bit tighter than we're used to. But it also feels as if we've left the sleepy suburbs for the hyped-up density of the big city, and that can only do all of us — the company and the city — some good.

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.