Butt-Fugly Building of the Week-- 3rd and 4th District Police Station, Municipal Building

1100 Wharton Street/1300 South 11th Street

                Ass. What a dump. Police stations used to look good. The surviving old-time po-po stations around town are pretty fucking good-looking. You have the Applebee's on 15th and Chancellor, the old 26th District station in Kensington, and what is now the Station House condos at 313 Race, just to name a few. So how the fuck did that all change? How did we start ending up with ugly shit like this?
                 In the mid-20th Century, when those old stations were no longer able to keep up with changing times, the city went about the business of replacing them with new and more modern facilities. When it came to South Philadelphia, the plan was to combine the 3rd and 4th police districts into one headquarters onto land that has been owned by the city since the construction of Moyamensing Prison across the street. At the time, the City Architect was George I. Lovatt, Jr, a suburban resident with a Philadelphia city government position.
               Lovatt's suburan residency was controversial at the time, and with this building, we find out why. Lovatt commissioned the short-lived firm of Ehrlich & Levinson for this project, shitty architects who mostly did suburban public schools and a few city playgrounds. They were the ultimate in mid-century suburban designers who were in love with boxy stucco-covered buildings. Obviously, Lovatt thought that the kind of suburban mid-century Californey-looking shit Ehrlick & Levinson did was cutting-edge. What a joke.
            The building was planned and designed in 1958 but, in classic Philly style, didn't start construction until 1960 and was completed by 1961, well after Lovatt got kicked out of the position.

Under confucktion, 1960. PhillyHistory.org

Completed, January 1961. Phillyhistory.org

                    At the time, the building was considered pretty badass because it isn't just a police station. It also holds L & I and Water Department offices. Big whoop-- the place looks like shit and it seems like the city also knew this because as soon as it was completed, they went about demolishing all the old-timey police stations around South Philly, even the ones that weren't in use.

Bad-ass looking old 33rd District station at 7th/Carpenter/Passyunk being demolished in 1962. PhillyHistory.org

               53 years later, the butt-fugly 3rd/4th station continues to stay in use (with a whole buttloads of additons/alterations over the years) but still manages to look like butt. In 2010, the building had a photo mural installed on it created by the Cops & Kids program at South Philadelphia High School with the hopes that maybe these colorful photos could get the building to look less like absolute donkey dick. Good effort, but its not enough.
                  Now that this and other police buildings like it are getting to be about the same age as the cool-looking ones they replaced, its time to destroy the fuck out of these things and replace them with some proper-looking police stations with designs that'll be able to hold up for more than a year.

South side of the building. Blecchh!

99 Years Ago in Philadelphia: Second Week of July, 1915

Troubled Youth? Let Them Beat the Shit Out of Each Other!!

Ad for boxing gloves from 1915.

              In the neighborhood surrounding Front & Fairmount, in what is now considered the lower part of Northern Liberties (but what was back then considered the middle of it), there was a fucked up neighborhood where homes, factories, lumber/coal yards, warehouses, and freight lines were all interspersed together in one location. The kids growing up in this little hood were what we call "troubled" or "disadvantaged" or "underprivileged" or "at risk" today, but back then they were just known as "pains in the asses".
         The biggest problem with them was, in the minds of the adults in the neighborhood, that these kids were dangerous. Not because they formed gangs and robbed people (which they did), but because they were always running around and playing in the streets between the factory buildings, warehouses, and freight lines, causing delays in work because they would give you shit when you asked them to get out of the way of your horse carriage that was piled 10 feet high with steel springs. Teens were an especially painful pain the balls, because at the time, those aged 14-16 were only required 8 hours of schooling per week and those over 16 didn't have to go to school at all!
        In order to get these motherfuckers off the streets, a James Welsh organized the Delaware A.C. Boxing Club, knowing that one thing these kids liked to do was pummel the shit out of each other. Welsh dealt with these miscreants often in his job as nightwatchman for the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company, where he had to guard the company's many properties in the neighborhood overnight.
        Welsh got permission to use one of the large warehouses on their double-wide pier (Piers 33 and 34 North) as a boxing arena. PRT was suspicious at first, thinking Welsh was trying to set up some kind of event venue where people would pay to watch street kids beat the fuck out of each other, but Welsh proved that it was going to be legit. On the second week of July, 1915, Welsh put out the call to the neighborhood boys between 16-19 years old, offering them the chance to fight 3-round bouts against each other with regulation boxing gloves. About 50 boys responded and the Delaware A.C. Boxing Club was born.
         Today, the location of Welsh's club is now the northern piece of Festival Pier. Boxing clubs to "get youth off the streets" are relatively common and there are still many active organizations of this type in all parts of the city.

We've Got To Do Something About these Schlags!!

              The word Schlag has a lot of meanings in many different time periods and regions of the world (a kind of Viennese whipped cream, an over made-up woman, a punch/slap, the list goes on), but in 1915 Philadelphia, the word meant one thing and one thing only: the owner of what would now call a "Pop-up" store. This, in the view of storeowners and real estate agents of the period, was something that needed to be eradicated from existence.
              You see, chronically vacant storefronts were just as big a problem in Philadelphia 99 years ago as they are now. One thing, in the minds of business leaders of the day, that kept these storefronts vacant, were schlag stores that purposely opened for one month or one season and would move out. These stores would often cater to a certain type of customer or a certain time of the year, either offering shoddy merchandise or seasonal items that would become useless in a month at super-low prices, under-cutting the permanent stores in the same neighborhood. Sometimes the Schlags would collect sales samples and rejected/damaged merchandise from all different factories and stock an entire store with it. Other times the Schlag would be a traveling salesman or a buyer that ran into a dearth of low-overhead merchandise and wanted to dump it all right away. The presence of Schlag stores prevented other storefronts from getting filled, because other merchants and real estate dudes were so weary of the Schlags that they would never want to open a store next to one.
             On top of all that, based on the municipal laws of the period, these short-term stores didn't qualify to take out business licenses or pay mercantile taxes. These motherfuckers were considered quite a drain on the retail and real estate communities. In the second week of July, 1915, a huge call was put out in all the city's publications denouncing the Schlags and begging the city government to do something about them.
            Today, Schlag stores still exist, but most are welcomed to the community and get to be called "Pop-ups", showing up in all parts of the city and even in the King of Prussia Mall. The vast majority have a different kind of purpose today, usually attached to some event or offering some kind of "limited time only" merchandise. If you look closely enough, however, you can still find a true old-fashioned Schlag store or two around the city. The unnamed dvd/cd store that I call White Rectangle Video on the unit block of South 11th Street comes to mind.
           Since that "Pop-up" name is kind of getting old already, why don't we go back to calling them "Schlag stores"? The Art Star Schlag Market? The Philadelphia Fashion Incubator Schlag Shop? I think its a good name. 

Watch Out! Pud Corrigan Found a Sword!

           In the second week of July, 1915, a local drunk miscreant named Pud Corrigan found a broadsword just lying around at the corner of Hope and Huntingdon Streets in Fairhill. Isn't this how Joan of Arc got started? Anyway, good ol' Pud did what anyone would do if they found a broadsword on the street-- he started waving it around, having a swordfight with the air.
          Some guys of they type that used to be called "corner-sitters", probably at the corner of Huntingdon and Howard, got a kick out of Pud's antics and started making fun of him. Pud, in a fit of rage, came at the guys with his sword, swinging it all over the place. The sword wasn't very sharp so it didn't end up slashing the guys, but still managed to hurt them. Eventually, others came out to denounce Pud's swordplay and also got a mouthful of broadsword for their trouble.
           Eventually, there was a wake of injured people all along Huntingdon Street that started getting the attention of passersby. A mob soon formed that drew the attention of Policeman Rainey. Rainey approached Pud to see what was going on. Pud responded by charging at full speed toward Rainey with his sword pointed directly at him. Rainey dodged Pud and tripped him, then proceeded to kick the shit out of him in front of the crowd.
         While Rainey walked the defeated Pud to the police station at 4th and York Streets (still standing!), the crowd followed, screaming curses at Pud until he was brought inside. You'd think someone would get a harsher sentence for randomly fucking people up with a sword, but ol' Pud only got 10 days in jail for his crime. The sword's owner was never found.

Where the broadsword was found as it appears in Google Streetview.

Fill This Front: Mission Grill Space

1835 Arch Street Space A

               Excellent! An empty storefront that consists of a turnkey restaurant space directly across the street from the construction site of the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center. Get in there now to take advantage of what may end up becoming a foot-traffic goldmine!
               Believe it or not, this storefront hasn't been around that long, despite being located on the ground floor of a 79 year old building. The Bell Telephone Company Building is one of several that company has built over the years to hold the big-ass central switching stations that, from what my simple brain understands, connected the local neighborhood switchboards to the long-distance trunk line that runs under Arch Street. While in use by the Bell Telephone Company, the storefront at the northeast corner of 19th and Arch was set up like a bank, with teller windows and a vault, so that people could come in and pay their phone bills. The storefront served as this function until 1970, when the switches were upgraded to the ugly-ass building by the South Street Bridge.
              After 1970, the front was converted into a shitty ground-floor office. The marble details on the walls and the big-ass vault all got covered over with drywall and acoustical tiles. The rest of the building got the same treatment, turning into secondary shitty back offices for all the assholes Bell didn't want lurking around their newer Arch Street building.

Serving as crappy offices in 1980. PhillyHistory.org

            Finally, in the early 90s when Bell Atlantic built what is now called Three Logan Square, they sold off 1827-35 Arch and it became a shitty self-storage. In 2001, Super-mega developer Forest City converted the building into luxury apartments and re-named the place the Lofts at 1835 after getting it nationally registered to help get a tax credit for the construction. Soon after, they put the corner retail space up for lease.
            In 2007, the space got the attention of the Brian Harrington/Gary Cardi et al Empire, who own several bar/restaurants in a bunch of cities. This would be there second of many in Philadelphia, having just opened Public House less than two years before. Their business model is a simple but effective one: Happy Hours for Douchebags. Take advantage of nearby office workers and get them drunk in humongous bar/restaurant spaces. Cater to the Young Claustrophobia Crowd that would never step foot into a bar that is less than 1500 square feet. Get them wasted and then sell them food at exorbitant prices. From a business standpoint, its pretty fucking ingenious. From a cultural standpoint, it keeps the douches out of the real bars. Everybody wins!
           Don't get me wrong-- I don't hate these types of places. They fill a need, especially when you want to go out with a crowd of 20+ people from work or something like that. 
           Mission Grill opened on February 19th, 2007, a southwestern/Mexican-themed version of the Happy Hours for Douchebags business model, counting on customers that weren't going to the new Mexican Post (an unaffiliated restaurant that ran under almost the same exact model) location that just opened a few blocks away 2 weeks earlier. Business went well enough for the next two years, but as the Yelp reviews indicate, the place started going downhill in 2009. In 2012 they were famously shut down for six days after racking up 19 violations in a Department of Health inspection.
          Mission Grill closed in the middle of July 2013, making an official statement less than a month later (funnily enough, both locations of Mexican Post, one of which was open for 25 years, closed a few months later). By this point, the Harrington/Cardi et al Empire had a huge Philadelphia portfolio of Happy Hours for Douchebags barstaurants, including the largest restaurant in the city (Field House). Not a week after officially closing, the city's Department of Revenue slapped a huge violation sticker on the window.

and its still there.

               Nearly a year later, the storefront is still empty and available for the next Happy Hours for Douchebags entrepreneur to take advantage of. This is a 4500 square foot space at the Northeast corner of 19th and Arch Streets in Center City Philadelphia. It is in close proximity to a shitton of office workers and is housed in a building that holds many disposable income-heavy folks on top. For the next 3.5 years, the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center will be under construction directly across the street, which gives this space the opportunity to be a rallying point for skyscraper nerds from around the world. There's also a soon-to-open apartment building under construction on the opposing corner. The place is also accessible by endless amounts of public transit, including regional rail, most of the subway-surface trolley lines, and a fucking assload of bus lines. There's bus shelter right in front of the place, for fuck's sake!
              The spot is already fully fit-out as a bar so all you have to do it put up a bunch of assorted bullshit on the walls and your customers will come streaming in, loosening ties and shit, at about 5:05 every weekday afternoon. The space currently goes for $205,000 per year, or $45 per square foot. The leasing is being handled by Legend Properties but it doesn't seem to be listed on their website. Here's the loopnet listing for it. Get off your ass and FILL THIS FRONT!!

Old-Ass Building of the Week: Bowes Building/LeGar Building

122-124.5 South 8t , 800-802.5 Sansom

Photo by Peter Woodall

           This is one of those buildings that I pass all the time and was never able to get enough info to write about.. until now!!! Check it out at the Hidden City Daily!

Fill This Front: Convention Center Parking Facility

1324 Arch Street

YELLOW!!!!!!!!!111eleven

                      This'll be another quick Fill This Front considering that this storefront has only existed for a little over a year, so there's no history to talk about. Nonetheless, there's little reason that this nice, brand new, gigantic storefront space has sat empty for this fucking long. Let's get something in there!
                    This space is located in the butt-fugly $27 million parking facility recently built by Berwyn-based Realen Properties in anticipation of a hotel conversion of 101 North Broad that'll probably never happen. Sure, its a little out of the way from both Broad Street and the entrance to the Convention Center (which is always the corner of 12th/Arch even though it has like 5 million doors) and there's a bunch of homeless services/mental health stuff/halfway houses/methadone clinics nearby... but when there's a convention going, there's tons of people passing through this block! Also, the Courtyard Marriott and Home2Suites (which was able to fill 2/3rds of its fronts instantly) are nearby.
                  On top of that, get this: there's very little the way of NIMBYs here. The closest residential homeowners are over at the other side of 13th Street... across the street is the Great Wall of Pennsylvania and directly next to it are a women's shelter, a church, and the back of the Masonic Temple. Therefore, if you can get the right kind of license, you could put the kind of shit here that would normally get railed against by Heroes of NIMBYdom. Since conventional retail/food stuff obviously isn't interested in the spaces, try something else out... A nightclub. A small concert venue (its bigger and has a higher ceiling than the Unitarian Church basement). A 24-hour drunkfood restaurant (an entire American city's restaurant scene depends on this and Philly used to have them in droves). The whole thing is 16,256 square feet, but I'm sure that's splittable considering there's a three doors on the front.

The floor plan from Loopnet

                    There's a lot of possibilities. The space is managed by CBRE Fameco... here's the listing. The rent is "negotiable" so after this long you can offer like 6 farthlings and you'll be just fine.FILL THIS FRONT!!

Rendering by Erdy McHenry of what the retail would look like if it was filled and if your named you store "Retail". I wish the real garage looked as good as this.

             ....and while we're on the subject of storefronts, check out the Community Design Collaborative's Storefront Challenge 2014!

99 Years Ago in Philadelphia: End of June, 1915

After Flourishing 6 Decades, Camden's "Squattertown" Finally Destroyed

              In late June, 1915, Camdenites had about enough of Squattertown, the large shanty town that had existed for 60 years on city-owned land on the Delaware Riverfront at Spruce Street in Camden. Highway Commissioner Albert Sayers made it his goal to literally wipe Squattertown off the map. Camden residents of the day called it a "rendezvous of petty criminals, drunkards, and general trouble-makers" leading a "lazy existence".
             Sayers spent a whole afternoon warning the residents of Squattertown of its imminent destruction the next day, convincing most to leave. However, about 40 stayed behind in defiance. These 40 got their assess handed to them the next day, when every cop in town assisted by 100 day laborers descended upon Front and Spruce Streets, armed with picks and axes, ready to rumble. Horses were brought in to pull apart the ersatz structures in Squattertown and the whole kit and kaboodle was dumped into the adjacent Delaware River.
            99 Years later, Squattertown is called "Tent City", but it no longer on the riverfront.  Pretty much the same exact scene as above took place recently, when the city came in and destroyed it all over again.

The site of Squattertown as it appears on Google Streetview.

Thief Steals From Little Girl, Gets Ass Kicked

           Nine-year-old Katie Shuster was given a special task by her father: cash a $35 check and bring me back the dough. Katie followed her Dad's instructions and brought her baby brother with her in his stroller. Upon returning from her three block trek between the house and the bank on 52nd Street, she encountered the likes of John Williams, a local whacko in the neighborhood that everyone knew as "Nervy".
           Seeing the 35 bucks in the baby's stroller, Nervy grabbed the cash and ran, but must have not realized how many witnesses were about, including cops. All at once, scores of people started running after Nervy, having had enough of his bullshit over the years. Storekeepers, women who were shopping, newsboys, "white wings" (street cleaners), and a few policemen started chasing Nervy through the streets and alleys of West Philadelphia. Nervy managed to outrun them all, running into a vacant house at 5425 Chestnut Street and hiding in a closet. The owner of the house, one John Griffith, just happened to be checking on the place at the time, finding Nervy in the closet.
           Griffith, who also knew about this guy and also had enough of his bullshit, locked him in the closet and called the cops without even knowing about the recent robbery. The cops came along and, upon seeing who was locked in the closet, proceeded to beat the everloving shit out of him before locking him up.

The D.F. McConnell Modern Porch House where Nervy tried to hide via Google Streetview

Successful Test of the Curtis Building's "Water Blanket" 

The Water Blanket test with a nice portrait of Fire Marshal Barnum, whose office was in the same building.

                   City dwellers of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were obsessed with fire prevention. Fires were always a big concern because any single one that grew too big could take out the entire city. 1915 was an especially bad year for Philadelphia fires. One that occurred in May was located in a building that was right next door to Christ Church, and nearly took it out-- causing even more paranoia than usual
              To prove that new buildings in the city were equipped with the finest in fire prevention, a demonstration was held at the new Curtis Publishing Company Building for 2,000 spectators and every fire official for 100 miles. While the building had been open for a little while at this point, this was when installation of the "Water Blanket" was just completed. This "Water Blanket" was a big-ass waterfall that would go down the side of a building to prevent a fire in a building nearby from spreading. On the 9th floor of the Curtis Building, several water tanks holding 168,500 gallons each were installed, letting down a deluge of 2500 gallons per minute through sprinklers located above the windows on every other floor on the Sansom and 7th Street sides of the building (the other sides don't face other buildings).
             For the demo, there was a fire drill for the company's 4000 employees, after which Battalion Chief Moodle activated the machine from a switch on the 5th floor (one of many in the building), surprising the fuck out of anyone nearby who didn't know it was about to happen. The system squirted down all of its water over a 30 minute period and made news across the globe.
             The Curtis Publishing Company loved itself some fire prevention. In addition to the Water Curtain system, the building hosted its own city fire station and had a volunteer company made up of Curtis employees. The system was tested one more time in 1922 and I can't seem to find any other record of it being used after that. Even though the building had been renovated and renovated again since, one can still spot the little sprinkler heads sticking out of the facade on the Seventh and Sansom Street sides of the building.

Water Blanket test via Fire and Water Engineering, Volume 58

Who the FUCK Are the Stonemen!?!?

Screen test for a deleted scene in Star Trek V.

              Late June, 1915, suspicions arose across the city regarding a new fraternal organization known as the Stonemen's Fellowship. It was founded in 1910 by Episcopal leader H.C. Stone at the Holy Trinity Memorial Chapel at 22nd and Spruce Streets and only had about 200 members at the start of 1915. However, by late June, that number grew to 6,500. The organization hosted huge banquets every week and allowed members to make use of a huge clubhouse at 2216 Spruce Street (long gone) that offered all the same level of amenities that the big-time motherfuckers like the Union League and the Philadelphia Club did.
              The weird part was that there were NO DUES for membership and all the offerings of the club were FREE of charge. Also, members were allowed to belong to any Christian denomination or political group, or none at all! Membership grew so rapidly in early 1915 that the club was forced to start having meetings in UPenn's gymnasium. The goals and philosophy of the club were kept a tight secret, even to members. One had to achieve the third degree to even get a hint.
             Philadelphians, especially church leaders, began questioning the motives of this new organization, who was funding it, and how the fuck they were recruiting so quickly. Some even thought that this might be some kind of devil-worshipping club and that the benefits of membership for free were the ultimate temptation. Rumors of whacky rituals didn't help matters, neither did stories of individual members recruiting over 80 neophytes a day. The club had no officers, H.C. Stone himself the sole leader.
             As it ends up, the goal of the club was to start a massive Protestant Unification that was planned to sweep across the nation. By the end of 1915, the club had 100,000 members. Ten to thirty thousand at a time would travel to other cities to recruit new chapters, and it always worked, especially because the press would write about how 30,000 members of the same club just reserved all the seats on 20 trains at a time, causing travel woes for others. The unification was to create another church called the Church of God, which members would get baptized into upon reaching third degree membership. While the club stated that there were no conditions for membership, they were decidedly anti-Catholic. When the anti-Catholic part of the club's mission was revealed, there was a huge loss in membership.
            The Stonemen's Fellowship's funding source was never found, but many think that there were a couple of Old Philadelphians involved. Members included some of the city's biggest movers and shakers, including Director of Public Safety (Police Commissioner) George D. Porter and George Wharton Pepper of UPenn. The club seemed like it was going to take over the world and much was written about it until 1917, when World War I claimed a huge part of the membership. After the war, the club was pretty much over and forgotten, though they did exist in a small way as late as the 1930s.

A picture of Stone in 1917, presiding over a memorial for 300 members who died at the start of the WWI.

Fill This Front: Freshii Space

1414 South Penn Square, Suite 1

             Kind of a quick one today, because this storefront hasn't existed for a very long time. Nonetheless, for 1/4th of that time, this little spot has been about as empty as empty gets. There's no goddamn excuse for this, of course, considering that this location gets so much fucking foot traffic that you could open a puppy underwear store here and killlLL!!!
             The Residences at the Ritz building, where this storefront is located, took fucking forever to get built. The corner it sits on, at the southwest corner of City Hall, was blocked off for like 4 years due to its construction. Before it was blocked off, it was mostly a driveway for the parking lot that was here, and before that, was blocked off due to the deconstruction of the old One Meridian Plaza. Therefore, when the RATR was completed, this was the first time this little block had any street level use since February 23rd, 1991.

February 23rd, 1991.

                   In January of 2011, Toronto/Chicago-based chain Freshii came along to occupy one of the two retail spaces on the newly-rebuilt corner. Freshii's decidedly pretentious website describes the restaurant as a place to "help citizens of the world live longer & healthier by making healthy food convenient & affordable" (barf). The chain started in 2005 and has over 80 locations in a whole shitload of different cities and countries... so why not give Philadelphia a try, right?

Freshii in the space in May 2011 from the Google Streetview Time Machine

                 HAhahahahahahaha. I laugh because Goel Management, the Chicago-based company that handles Freshii's American locations, made the same mistake other big chains sometimes make when they expand into Philly: they staffed the placed with real Philadelphians. After its massive free-food giveaway Grand Opening on January 18th, 2011, the restaurant immediately started going downhill. The Yelp reviews of the place show all the indications of the location getting infected with the classic Philadelphian fast food worker: Reports of super-slow service by asshole workers who couldn't get orders right, the menu options dwindling smaller and smaller as time went on, a lack of freshness to the food, the restaurant itself getting dirtier and drabber over the coming months. All the shit that happens when you have a lazy and incompetent staff that think that if no one is puking all over the place or shitting on the floor, everything must be going just fine.
                  Despite all this, they managed to stay opened for over 2 years, probably because nearby office workers who are somehow unwilling and unable to prepare their own healthy lunch felt forced to come here, thinking this was the only place to get a healthy meal on the outside. They officially closed on October 31st, 2013. What a shame. This was meant to be the first of 30 locations in the Delaware Valley. Guess how many there are now? ZERO.
                Baltimore's, D.C.'s, and Boston's locations of the chain are doing just fine. Hell, the place is even kicking ass in Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Westport fucking Connecticut-- but Philadelphia's singular spot couldn't make it. It was that classic Philadelphian incompetence, the same thing that makes our airport suck ass and our fast food locations way worse than their suburban counterparts (which is saying something).
              After the place closed, the folks at the RATR put up a bunch of renderings and text about the new Dilworth Plaza across the street which gives me the hope that MAYBE the city or Center City District is the one leasing the space right now, effectively using it as a billboard. Its gives me the hope that maybe something will open here once the construction it complete. After all, the space doesn't seem to be listed anywhere. Nonetheless, if you are the type of badass that has the ability to jump on a space like this, now's the time.
             This spot gets an unbelievable amount of foot traffic and is soon to be across the street from the newly re-designed Dilworth Plaza, which will hopefully be just as successful as the new Sister Cities Park. The space is directly adjacent to an extremely successful La Colombe coffee location, is right next to City Hall (where lots and lots of people work), a buttload of office buildings (where lots and lots of people work), and the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Directly above live many dangerously wealthy people with tons of disposable income. The space is relatively small but has a huge window frontage and those cool metallic columns in front. What do you have to lose? AGC Realty manages the sales of the condos above, I wouldn't be surprised if they handle the storefront leases as well. Give them a call and get in there before Dilworth Plaza is done! FILL THIS FRONT!!