Edison Square to rise from rubble of old Edison High

"THE CASTLE" that stood for 110 years in the city's Fairhill neighborhood is now gone. Most of what used to be Thomas Edison High School was reduced to rubble during the building's recent demolition.

Out of the rubble of the vacant school, on Lehigh Avenue at 7th Street, a new shopping center called Edison Square is scheduled to rise on the site next May. It's one path among many possibilities for the school district, which has dozens of empty buildings in its portfolio.

Developers said construction on the Edison development is to begin within "the next few weeks" for the first $13 million phase of the shopping center, which will include a Save-A-Lot grocery store, a Family Dollar, a Burger King, a Subway sandwich shop and a Kicks sneaker store.

The second phase, also expected to cost about $13 million, is a proposed  apartment building, possibly drawing on the school's legacy.

"If you know the history of Edison High School, then you know it was the school with the largest number [66] of former students in the nation to be killed in the Vietnam War," said Greg Reaves, a partner in Mosaic Development Partners.

When plans were revealed last year, the developers  considered converting the school annex building, which faces Somerset Street, into housing for low-income seniors. But in light of its history, Reaves said, his company, which has teamed with Orens Brothers Real Estate Inc. to develop the Edison site, is considering an apartment building for veterans. Built in 1903, Edison High was called "The Castle" because of its Gothic-style architecture and towering center turret. When it opened, the school was one of the city's first vocational schools for boys, the Northeast Manual Training School, and later became the first Northeast High School. After a new Northeast High was built on Cottman Avenue in 1957, the Lehigh Avenue school became Edison High.

As the years passed, a new Edison, this time called Edison-Fareira High School, was built at Front and Luzerne in 1988. The old Edison became Julia DeBurgos Bilingual Middle School, but the building suffered from many problems, including asbestos, and was closed. It sat vacant since 2002.

"It has been quite a lift, to put a project like this together,"Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez said. "It will be a game changer for Lehigh Avenue and the community in Fairhill."

While vacant, the massive building - 3-stories high and a block long, between 7th and 8th streets - was targeted by vandals and vagrants. Windows were broken and its granite walls were scarred by graffiti. It was severely damaged by a fire in August 2011, a little more than a month after the Philadelphia School District sold the building to the developers in late June.

Quinones-Sanchez said it had been "a really difficult project to finance. We had been working on the financing for three years."

The financing was a combination of federal, city and tax credits, Quinones-Sanchez said. She said the developers have agreed to use people from Fairhill and North Philadelphia to work on the construction, and to urge the new stores to hire people from the neighborhood.

"It's in the leasing agreement"that the tenant businesses will make an effort to hire from the neighborhood," Reaves said.

Guy Orens, of Orens Brothers Real Estate, said many national chains were eager to come to Lehigh Avenue. "We had leases signed before we started the financing process,"Orens said. Quinones-Sanchez said the experience serves as a reminder as the school district and city officials discuss plans for its many empty school buildings.

"It is not that easy, but it is not impossible,"Quinones-Sanchez said.