By Alia Conley
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILDELPHIA — A distinctive, 109-year-old former school building that has been a magnet for illegal activity in the city’s poorest neighborhood burned for more than two hours Wednesday, throwing into uncertainty a plan to redevelop it.
It took 18 fire engines spewing water to control the fire in the abandoned three-story structure in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia.
Fire officials were investigating the cause. The hazardous building should have been demolished three years ago, City Controller Alan Butkovitz said Wednesday.
The former Edison High School and Julia de Burgos Middle School, 701 Lehigh Ave., has been closed since 2002 because it was unusable, said Philadelphia School District spokesman Fernando Gallard.
The building has had problems with thieves, vandals, and drug activity. The district had been trying to sell it since it was closed, Gallard said.
Butkovitz said that in 2008 he told the district to tear down the 475,000-square-foot building.
Not only could the fire “have been prevented, but it was pretty obvious that this was going to happen,” Butkovitz said. “There were many warning signals for many years.”
The School District put more fencing around the building to prevent burglaries, but Butkovitz called those efforts “temporary Band-Aids.”
On June 30, Gallard said, the district sold the building for $600,000 to 701 W. Lehigh Partners, which includes Mosaic Development Partners L.L.C. and Orens Bros. Real Estate Inc.
After working on an agreement for two years, Mosaic signed a deal with the School District to bring a Save-A-Lot grocery store to the site, which would include tearing down the distinctive front section of the parcel.
The more-modern rear addition would be renovated as 56 apartments for low-income seniors. The total cost of the project was estimated at $11 million.
City Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez, whose Seventh District includes the site, said that she was unsure how the fire would affect the project’s fate and that she was particularly concerned about damage to the building’s rear.
The fire started at 1:31 p.m. in the southwest corner of the roof, said First Battalion Chief Richard Davison, and took two hours to bring under control.
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