Italian Market

Plans Afoot to Bring New Restaurants, Retail and Life to the Italian Market

Italian Market
Italian Market

Plans to develop Italian Marketplace in the large vacant lot behind Anastasi Seafood near Ninth Street and Washington Avenue could breath new life into the Italian Market neighborhood. Philadelphia Business Journal’s Peter Van Allen reports that NY-based Midwood Investment & Development has plans to turn the sprawling corner property into a humungous retail center with 31,000 square feet of underground parking, and at least one restaurant. The lot, which up until a few years ago was home to a giant and very vacant American Coal and Ice Company Ice House, was owned by P&F; Giordano’s Fruit and Produce, before it was sold to Midwood.

Provided the company can get the go-ahead it needs to begin the project, and line up retailers and restaurateurs to rent the spaces it plans to build, the development could be ready for business as soon as early 2014. That Lower Italian Market stretch of Ninth Street has been identified as a vastly underutilized area with many retail vacancies that’s ripe for renewal going back as far as Mayor John F. Street’s administration. Midwood hopes to spur further development and growth along the strip with stores that appeal to the neighborhood’s growing diversity of ethnicity and socioeconomics. The addition of restaurants, they hope, will bring life to the area at night.

Plan would give face-lift to section of Italian Market [PBJ]

Plans Afoot to Bring New Restaurants, Retail and Life to the Italian Market