Meridian

Meridian yesterday became the first bank in Southeastern Pennsylvania to offer automatic-teller machines that "speak" both English and Spanish. The system, called Amigo, is designed to encourage Spanish-speaking people who are not fluent in English to use ATMs. Two ATMs are in Reading. Others are in Center City, Bristol, Kennett Square and Northampton County.

Philadelphians who think a vacant lot would be better than the burned-out One Meridian Plaza office tower may finally get their wish, at least for a while. Despite the high hopes voiced by Mayor Rendell and the Meridian's owner yesterday for a major development to replace the 38-story eyesore, prospects for quick development of the site are less than rosy. "We want to see a major, significant building," Rendell said at a press conference yesterday to announce the planned $25-million removal of the gutted high-rise.

What will a post-Meridian era mean for Center City? For six years, the ugly hulk across from City Hall has stood as a symbol of civic impotence, "a dead hand that sat over the city," as one official called it. Even the mayor seemed a powerless bystander. Now that has changed. Yesterday's announcement of an agreement between the building's owners and insurers - and the owners' pledge to decide the building's fate by the summer - do more than promise closure to the legal wrangling.

For six long years, the owners of scorched One Meridian Plaza have talked the talk - how they were eager to resolve the skyscraper's fate, if only they could settle up with their insurance company. Well, now they have the bucks to walk the walk. With an out-of-court settlement rumored at $200 million announced Thursday, the recovery can begin, finally. For the families of the three Engine 11 firefighters who died in the Feburary 1991 blaze, six years may not be enough time to heal.

If the city suffers actively from abuses committed against its property and public spaces, it suffers a more passive aggression, too: The assault by untended property itself. It suffers when buildings are neglected or boarded up, as are prime Center City properties held by speculator Sam Rappaport. And it suffers daily from its towering eyesore - One Meridian Plaza, the still-closed skyscraper next to City Hall. As we've said before, the fire that ravaged One Meridian's upper stories was put out the day they launched the ground war in Operation Desert Storm, which provides something of a contrast in the Overcoming Obstacles Dept.

When we gave the charred hulk of One Meridian Plaza our "Eyesore of the Year" Award at the beginning of this year, little did we know that the burned-out skyscraper next to City Hall was about to go national. But there it is in the movie Philadelphia, mugging in the background of what would otherwise have been a handsome, gritty aerial shot of Center City. The camera catches the truth: Right in the city's heart is a 20-story vertical slum, its windows pasted over with plywood, its facade dull, lifeless and downright embarrassing.

Philadelphia's most visible eyesore apparently is on its way out. William Hankowsky, president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., yesterday said demolition on the 38-story One Meridian Plaza office tower would begin next year. The Meridian building - located in the shadow of City Hall - has been a nasty blight on Center City's skyline since February 1991, when a 12-alarm fire raged for 19 hours, killing three firefighters and destroying much of the building.

Almost four years to the day that Philadelphia woke up to see Center City's 38-story One Meridian Plaza shrouded in soot and black smoke, lawyers announced yesterday that a $15 million agreement had been reached to reimburse workers and small businesses that suffered losses caused by the blaze. But the burned-out, boarded-up hulk across from City Hall remains in a legal limbo, and another year could pass before a trial determines how much the building's insurer, Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., must pay to repair the tower.

Six years after One Meridian Plaza was destroyed by the worst skyscraper fire in American history, the building's owners and insurers have settled their final dispute out of court. They won't say for how much, but the owners said it was enough to either demolish the 38-story building or fix it up. Which option is taken won't be decided until summer, after engineering studies are completed and a search has been conducted for potential tenants to occupy the tower, whose charred remains stand across from City Hall.

Players so far include a barber, a stockbroker, a newspaper stand operator, a hosiery shop named Legxpress - and lots of lawyers. They're up against the city's biggest office landlord, two national insurance giants, Dutch pensioners, a standpipe installer - and lots of lawyers. And before it's over, lawyers for three firemen's widows most likely will join the fray. With most details about the fatal One Meridian Plaza fire still unknown - the cause chief among them - there is no doubt about this: the legal fires are just beginning to blaze.

When Jack Bloomer and the other firefighters arrived at One Meridian Plaza that cold February night in 1991, flames were encompassing the building more than 20 stories above, leaping from floor to floor. Smoke poured into the air, and broken glass rained down. "It was obvious when we pulled up it was an ugly-looking job," Bloomer, 61, remembered yesterday. He had no idea how bad it would get. By the time the 12-alarm fire was declared under control 19 hours later, three firefighters were dead, 12 others were injured and a Center City high-rise was lost.

A year ago, Harry Prime thought his singing career had come to an unhappy end with the sale of the Roasted Pepper restaurant in Chalfont, where he had performed for seven years of Thursdays. "Like a body blow," he describes it. The former big-band singer lived over the restaurant, which made the commute to his gig possible. At 90, macular degeneration has left him unable to drive or read. "All I can do is sing," he says, but as of last November, finding an audience had become a challenge.

The parking lot at 1441 Chestnut St., south of City Hall where the Meridian Bancorp tower once stood, will be auctioned at the Union League club on Oct. 5 by real estate investment firm CB Richard Ellis' new property-auction unit. The sale of part of the Meridian's former site follows an agreement to settle a Common Pleas Court lawsuit against Brook Lenfest, who had invested $16 million in developer Timothy J. Mahoney's proposal for a Waldorf-Astoria hotel and condominium tower in the space, by his former minority partners in the project, after the plan was canceled last year amid the real estate recession.

SOME memories are painful. Like the frigid night of Feb. 23, 1991, when the 38-story One Meridian office tower in Center City caught fire and became a nightmarish scene of acrid smoke, searing heat and falling glass, leading to tragic loss and heroic rescue. The sacrifice of three Philadelphia firefighters who perished that night - David Holcombe, Phyllis McAllister and James Chappell - will be honored today with the unveiling of a memorial at the site, now occupied by the Residences at the Ritz Carlton.

This movie must be a family affair because there's no way Ben Stiller or Jason Schwartzman would get involved in a project this dreadful unless they were doing a favor for a relative. The awkwardly named (and awkwardly everything else) Marc Pease Experience joins Hamlet 2 and TV's Glee as recent explorations of teenage losers straining to be performers. (Gee, do you think some Hollywood writers are trying to expiate painful periods from their own youth?) The titular protagonist (Schwartzman)

Traveling to Mississippi to help those hurt by Hurricane Katrina was not a difficult decision for the father of a man who died in the World Trade Center. "I was a fireman for 25, 30 years in Yardley, a volunteer fireman," said William Kelly. "That also contributed. " On Sept. 11, 2001, William Kelly Jr. was at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the North Tower, for a 9 a.m. meeting of executives of the media firm of current New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Doubt that Center City is hot? Look at the latest plans to put huge condominium high-rises cheek-by-jowl within strides of City Hall. People don't invest millions in towers like that unless they're sure there's a market for what they're building. So a lot of high-income people must be eager to live within the shadow of William Penn, on the former site of the burned One Meridian Plaza. Certainly, there's a lot to like in any proposals to bring more high-income taxpayers to the city.

There's a lot more at stake in the feud between rival developers for the former Meridian Plaza site than who gets to go first. Yes, it would appear that once again our city government is so desperate for something - anything - to go forward that it has given its support to another development proposal that requires multiple variances from the spirit and letter of the zoning code. The message sent by the Zoning Board of Adjustment's recent approval of this project is crystal clear: There are no rules.

Part of a prime Center City block on the south side of City Hall appears destined to remain a pair of parking lots for some time. The owners of adjacent sites can't agree on a price - so one can buy the other's land and build a major project. And they are now at war over how to develop the sites separately. One side says the other's proposed building is so tall that it would hurt his site. According to the other, this assertion is just a delaying tactic to gain a competitive advantage.

A long-simmering feud between the two owners of a key block across from City Hall, where the Meridian Plaza tower burned in 1991, flared into the open yesterday. Craig Spencer, a lead investor in the Meridian Plaza site and the adjacent Ritz-Carlton hotel, is trying to block a 50-story building on the only part of the block he does not own. Timothy Mahoney, an Ardmore-based developer and real estate broker, has been working for more than a year to get approval for the residential condominium building.