Restoring a neighborhood landmark<\/p>\n
Work on the $14.3 million project got underway around 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe exterior of the building was in pretty rough condition. A lot of the windows were kind of busted out, boarded up,\u201d said Alexandra Gauzza, ISA principal and studio director. \u201cThe interior, from a structural standpoint, was actually in quite good shape and very little had to be done to bring that back up to a usable condition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Revamping the building involved restoring and repairing the property\u2019s red brick and terra-cotta facade, as well as a grid of 34 vertical window bays and a collection of historic signs. The projects also saw the restoration of an 80-foot watertower, which can be seen from I-95 and the train tracks that run behind the site.<\/p>\n
Today, the property looks much like it did when it was operated by Blumenthal Brothers.<\/p>\n
The work was completed with the help of state and federal preservation funding, including federal Historic Tax Credits and funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The rest of the funding came from traditional construction loans.<\/p>\n
This year, the project earned a grand jury award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Blumenthal Chocolate Factory adaptive reuse project is a model factory-to-commercial conversion project, repurposing a well-built but long vacant and decaying historical industrial building into an attractive workplace,\u201d Executive Director Paul Steinke said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Restoring a neighborhood landmark Work on the $14.3 million project got underway around 2022. \u201cThe exterior of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11000,2327,69,71,70,2312],"class_list":["post-288035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-community-services","tag-northeast-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-planphilly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}