Shopping center's rebirth in N. Phila.

After years of planning, work has quietly begun in North Philadelphia on the redevelopment of Progress Plaza, one of the country's first African American-owned shopping centers.

The project, which broke ground two weeks ago and will bring a supermarket to the area for the first time in nearly a decade, is expected to cost $16.1 million. The venture is to be completed early next year, officials said. It will be among several new or renewed developments in north central Philadelphia.

The plaza, on the east side of Broad Street between Oxford and Jefferson Streets, has not had a supermarket since 1998 and has been declining for a long time, said Ben Gilbert, executive director of Progress Investment Associates, which owns and operates it.

"We've come up with a plan that will revitalize this center," said Gilbert. "We're pretty excited about it."

Progress Plaza was founded in the 1960s by the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, the late pastor of North Philadelphia's Zion Baptist Church, who also created Opportunities Industrial Centers (OIC), the national employment and training program.

The plaza redevelopment "brings to fruition" Sullivan's vision for the shopping center, Gilbert said.

"The object here is to have the community provide for itself," Gilbert said. "This is part of a self-help initiative coming to fruition."

Key to the project is the building of a 42,000-square-foot Fresh Grocer supermarket, one of only a handful of supermarkets in North Philadelphia.

Gilbert said it has been hard to attract a supermarket to the plaza because the center's previous supermarket was only 18,000 square feet. He said that most supermarket business models today call for 50,000 square feet.

The market will also have a rooftop parking lot.

The construction is being done by Patterson-Bittendbender, a joint venture between an African American and a female-owned construction company.

The redevelopment is being financed by $5.5 million in state grants, $500,000 from the City of Philadelphia, and $10 million in financing from the Reinvestment Fund, officials said.

The Progress Plaza project is one of the last elements of a revitalization of the North Broad Street-Cecil B. Moore Corridor in North Philadelphia.

The work comes on the heels of the December opening of the $100 million Avenue North complex a block away at Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

The Avenue North features the seven-screen Pearl movie theater, 20 retail shops, and 1,200 units of housing.

Bart Blatstein, the owner of Tower Investments, developer of Avenue North, hailed the Progress Plaza work, noting that Avenue North has been an early success.

"We're doing great," Blatstein said. "The shops and restaurants are opening one by one. The theater is doing well, and the student housing is doing well, too. We have leased out all of our spaces."

Ken Scott, president of Beech Corp., a community development corporation that has produced retail shops along Cecil B. Moore and has been active in the planning of all the projects along the corridor, said the work at Progress Plaza would fulfill a vital need in the rising community.

"Our community has been waiting a long time for a supermarket," Scott said. "Our area is growing by leaps and bounds."

Scott noted that about 1,000 houses had been built in the area in the last decade and that Temple University student housing also grew in that period.

"You need a bank. You need a supermarket. This community didn't have those," Scott said. "Now everyone sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Before, it was a big dream."