A piazza, Philly-style, opens at former brewery

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - A wide-angle photo of the Piazza Navona in Rome is Bart Blatstein's computer screen saver. And now the developer can gaze out his ground-floor office window and see his modern-day replica.

Nine years and $100 million after he bought acres of abandoned industrial land a sheriff's auction, The Piazza at Schmidt's opened last month to crowds of 20- and 30-somethings coming to eat, shop or hang out in the open courtyard.

"It was a no man's land," Blastein said of the site where Schmidt's brewery operated from 1960 to 1987. His own grandfather operated a pushcart in the neighborhood just north of downtown when it was still a bustling commercial district.

"I thought, it's time to take a stand and do something I really want to do," said Blatstein, 54, who began his local real estate empire in his early 20s with a few South Philadelphia fixer-uppers.

He snapped up the nearly 9-acre brewery site at a sheriff's sale for $1.8 million. Then he added 14 more acres to that and demolished some two dozen empty and crumbling structures.

The six-building complex is home to some 35 art galleries, shops and studios; four restaurants, 500 apartments and 50,000 square feet of office space. The courtyard can hold 5,000 people and features a soundstage where free DJs and bands perform and an enormous LED screen for sports events and movie nights.

Despite the recession and credit crunch, the retail space is fully leased. He expects all of the apartments to be rented by the end of June, even with rents starting at around $1,500 for a one-bedroom.

"I've been in this business for 32 years. This is the fourth (economic) downturn I've been through," he said. "The banks had confidence that if they'd lend us money ... they'd get their money back."

The piazza's storefronts are filled with a quirky mix of local businesses including a custom skateboard maker, magic shop, corset boutique and yoga studio, as well as art galleries, home furnishings, and clothing for men, women and children.

"We're giving people a product they can't get anywhere else," Blatstein said.

The piazza is the second phase of what will be a 28-acre, $500 million development upon completion in two years.

Liberties Walk - a four-block multi-use complex of shops, restaurants and 70 apartments that opened in 2003 - was inspired by Espanola Way in Miami's South Beach.

In 2011, Blatstein expects to open a two-story retail complex, also a stone's throw from The Piazza at Schmidt's, with a supermarket, hardware store and pharmacy. Then come 600 more apartments in three buildings surrounding a one-acre park, and an 86-room boutique hotel with a rooftop pool and restaurant.

"My intent is to never to be done here, to continue to develop in this neighborhood," Blatstein said. "There's so much real estate that I can just keep going on and on."

Taken together, Blatstein calls his vision a "five-minute community" where residents are only a short walk from shops, offices, restaurants and public transit.

"He's one of few people who are smart enough, or crazy enough, to take on such an endeavor," said Scott Erdy of Erdy McHenry, the Philadelphia architecture firm that worked with Blatstein on the piazza.

"It's become what he's envisioned ... the activity, the interaction of spaces and people," he added.

Even so, Blatstein wasn't initially embraced by the neighborhood, a mix of older residents and young artists. As the developer puts it: "I got trashed."

He was seen as a carpetbagger who would saddle them with a strip mall or a "kitschy Disneyesque development," said Tim McDonald, a member of the neighborhood association's urban design committee.

The friction generated scores of discussions, arguments, rejections, revisions and eventually a result that pleased both sides.

"I wouldn't have imagined myself saying this 10 years ago," McDonald said, "but we got really lucky to get Bart in the neighborhood."