Warehouse

HARRISBURG — Every four months, the detritus of post-9/11 America arrives by the tractor-trailer load at a warehouse here, to be sorted, priced, and sold to the highest bidder. On this particular day, the delivery from LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark airports landed rather indelicately, the back of the trailer cracked open like a piñata to reveal broken boxes and heaps of stuff scattered over the truck bed. One worker admired a Pete Rose model Louisville Slugger baseball bat before putting it in the bin on the skid loader.

9 tonight SYFY When an artifact meant for the Warehouse turns up in a small town, the team finds itself in a B-movie meltdown with cowboys, gladiators, sci-fi robots and beach-storming Marines. Eddie McClintock (right) and Joanne Kelly (left) star.

A five-alarm fire engulfed a warehouse and four condominium apartments in Margate just before dawn yesterday, destroying the homes of four families and slightly injuring a police officer. The Atlantic County prosecutor was investigating the cause of the fire, which broke out about 5:35 a.m. in a construction warehouse at 108 N. Decatur Ave. A man from the warehouse ran up to Police Sgt. Edwin McMeekin and asked for help in evacuating two other men, who were sleeping in a small room in the warehouse.

About 60 elderly tenants of the Cooper Valley Village Condominiums complained to the Edgewater Park Township Committee last night of being awakened in the early morning hours by noise from a nearby warehouse operation. Barbara Horowitz, president of the condominium association, said she had received complaints from residents over the last seven months about Safety Kleen Inc. of Mount Holly, which leases an adjacent Bridgeboro Road warehouse and uses the building as a distribution center for industrial cleaning supplies.

A development plan for a 40,000-square-foot warehouse on Hansen Access Road won unanimous approval from the Upper Merion supervisors Monday night. The warehouse is part of a larger proposed development that includes a 192- unit apartment complex in the Abrams Run section of the township. The apartments proposal was on the agenda of last night's Planning Commission meeting. The warehouse property, on 5.2 acres, and the residential parcel are owned by the Gambone Bros. Development Co. of Fairview Village.

Citing concerns for health and safety, two area congressmen want to put $9.7 million in the next federal budget to build a warehouse for flammable materials at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Reps. Thomas M. Foglietta (D., Pa.) and Curt Weldon (R., Pa.) this week asked the subcommittee on military installations and facilities of the House Armed Services Committee to authorize $9.7 million in fiscal 1990 to replace a 50-year-old storage building. They said the warehouse, which holds flammable materials such as paints, solvents and metal cleaners, poses a threat to the environment because it is next to a basin that flows into the Schuylkill and, ultimately, the Delaware River.

Groundbreaking is scheduled for next month on a 721,000-square-foot distribution warehouse for IKEA Wholesale Inc., part of the Swedish furniture chain that has chosen Westampton as the new hub of its East Coast operations. The project was embraced without issue by the Township Planning Board last week after three months of loose negotiations that were initiated by a private contractor familiar with the company after a deal to expand IKEA's Philadelphia facility went sour. According to company officials, IKEA needed 300,000 additional square feet of warehouse space.

More horns honked on the road leading to the Strawbridge and Clothier furniture warehouse yesterday. That's the only change since eight workers from the Teamsters local took over the plant Saturday to protest the loss of 95 union jobs when S&C is sold to May Department Stores Co. Officials at May couldn't be reached for comment, but with the official completion of the sale yesterday, the peaceful tone of the conflict might change as May's...

The Philadelphia firefighters union said Tuesday that Commissioner Lloyd Ayers and his two top deputies should resign, blaming them for a lack of leadership and tactical errors that led to the deaths of two firefighters last month in Kensington. The leaders of Local 22 said the incident commander failed to establish a "collapse zone" around the vacant, century-old mill that sparked into a spectacular five-alarm blaze April 9. The two firefighters — Lt. Robert P. Neary, 59, and Firefighter Daniel Sweeney, 25 — were killed when one of the mill's five-story walls fell on an adjacent furniture store, where they and two others were doing a routine check.

HARRISBURG — Every four months, the detritus of post-9/11 America arrives by the tractor-trailer load at a warehouse here, to be sorted, priced, and sold to the highest bidder. On this particular day, the delivery from LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark airports landed rather indelicately, the back of the trailer cracked open like a piñata to reveal broken boxes and heaps of stuff scattered over the truck bed. One worker admired a Pete Rose model Louisville Slugger baseball bat before putting it in the bin on the skid loader.

  SO MAYBE they're not complete and total deadbeats, after all. In the aftermath of the April 9 fire that destroyed the Thomas W. Buck Hosiery building and killed two firefighters, Nutter administration officials released a stream of financial information about Michael, Yechiel and Nahman Lichtenstein, the owners of the Kensington warehouse. The Brooklyn-based relatives owned 31 properties in Philly, the administration said, and owed the city $385,665 in unpaid real-estate taxes.

The old Thomas W. Buck Hosiery building, dominating nearly a full block in Kensington, was supposed to be converted into 81 apartments several years ago, but instead it sat vacant. Neighbors lamented its deteriorating and dangerous conditions, fearing the building would burn some day, while its New York owners racked up unpaid tax bills and ignored code violations. The city moved in February to put the property up for sheriff's sale, which can take months. In the end, it was all too late to prevent a tragedy that took the lives of two firefighters.

TRENTON - Amazon.com, the world's biggest online retailer, is in talks to open two warehouses in New Jersey in a deal that could bring 1,500 full-time jobs to a state where unemployment has hovered around 9 percent. State Assembly Democratic Leader Louis D. Greenwald, who has been involved in the talks, said Amazon was seeking a 22-month sales-tax holiday - opposed by some retailers and at least one lawmaker. The Seattle-based online retailer is not required, as brick-and-mortar retailers are, to collect the 7 percent state sales tax for purchases.

A three-alarm fire severely damaged a warehouse at B St. and Indiana Ave. overnight in the city's Kensington section. Fire crews were dispatched shortly after 1 a.m. today for what was then an already heavy fire, according to scanner reports. It quickly became a three alarm fire in the one-story, 1,000 square-foot brick building which bore a sign: Hua Feng Beverage Company. At least part of the warehouse collapsed as firefighters battled the blaze. The fire was placed under control about 2 a.m. without reports of any injuries.

From the outside, it is an unfriendly, unremarkable warehouse that hardly merits a second glance. But behind the white, unmarked door of the Powelton Village building, a freezing room that is home to the Atomic Robotics 4-H Club buzzed on a recent school night with the sounds of motors whirring, a heater sputtering to life, and table saws interrupting discussions on whether the computer coding would work this time. Every inch of giant whiteboard adorning the concrete walls was covered in equations.

Samuel F. Sorbello, 78, of Mullica Hill, a leading innovator in refrigerating and freezing food for farmers, supermarkets, and food distributors, died Wednesday, Dec. 7, of kidney and congestive heart failure. Mr. Sorbello built his first cold-storage building in 1964, allowing him to hold on to thousands of bushels of peaches and get higher prices for them after other farms had sold their fruit. Nine years later, he branched out, building a refrigerated warehouse for frozen food, including seafood and blueberries.

Philadelphia's industrial future: High-rise, robot-driven warehouses, with lots of trucks zooming in and out. Teva Pharmaceuticals this summer chose Northeast Philadelphia over suburban sites for its 125-foot-tall, $300 million drug-warehouse complex, in large part because the city's zoning for the site allowed high-rise buildings, unlike suburban townships. Now the city Planning Commission is supporting Councilman Jim Kenney's bill to more than double height limits in parts of South Philadelphia - to 140 feet - to accommodate higher warehouses.