This is actually 2-3 minutes away from where I live, I could actually walk to it. Its a nice suburban-ish street with single ranch homes. I have not gotten to see much since a lot of its barricaded off, but I was able to see a bus and some construction equipment. Traffic has been crazy since that's a very busy area and there's now a detour.
Thu, Mar. 23, 2006
A dream come true
F YOU WERE anywhere near Haldeman Avenue and Montour Street in Bustleton yesterday, you might have wondered about the police roadblocks that limited access from every direction, starting as far away as Red Lion Road.
Or about the very big motorcoach and the trucks, large and small, lining both sides of Haldeman.
Not to mention the row of portable toilets that got dropped off on Montour early in the afternoon and the white stretch SUV that pulled up outside one raised rancher, ready to whisk away the home's occupants to an undisclosed, but presumably warmer, location.
Let's just say ABC doesn't call it "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" for nothing.
Yes, television's most helpful "reality" show has landed in Philadelphia, and no matter how much you love it, unless you're a very sound sleeper, you're probably better off not having it land too close to your back yard.
Because for the next week, William and Carole Py's corner of Northeast Philadelphia is going to be both a round-the-clock construction site and a location shoot, with literally hundreds of people working to replace the three-bedroom raised rancher the Pys share with their three orphaned grandchildren into a two-story, four-bedroom home that will then be decorated by "Extreme Makeover's" designers.
Did I mention the in-ground pool that's coming?
Though yesterday was relatively quiet, with the excitement mostly confined to watching host Ty Pennington wave goodbye to the Pys - then, after the limo carefully backed down the street, doing it all over again - the real fun begins Friday morning, when the house is due to be bulldozed.
All this comes as something of a surprise to the Pys' neighbors.
"It's all new," said Gerry Skalski yesterday afternoon as she and Cindy Groeber, who live on nearby Wistaria Street, surveyed the action from across the street.
"Never even knew who lived there," said Groeber.
Skalski said she first learned of the family's situation when she saw them on the noon news on ABC-owned WPVI (Channel 6).
Though ABC said it wasn't allowing other interviews with the Pys yesterday, a network press release outlined the plight that caught the eye of "Home Edition's" producers after the parent of a child in one of their grandchildren's classes wrote to them.
The Pys are raising William, Samantha and Jose "Joey" Rosario, who were left orphaned after their 33-year-old father died of a brain aneurysm in 1997 and their 28-year-old mother succumbed to breast cancer 14 months later.
The Pys, the network said, worried that the asbestos and lead paint in their house might prove a hazard to the children.
"I salute them," said Skalski, peering at the stretch limo.
"Where are they taking them?" she asked. "They can tear down my house. Rebuild me one on the water."
Nor was she concerned that a week from now, the Pys' house will likely look quite different from the now-practically identical stretch of ranchers on that section of Haldeman.
"Not if they do it the right way," she said.
But at least one of the Pys' neighbors, who wouldn't give his name, complained bitterly that "this thing wasn't done right" and claimed that if the community had been notified in advance, many would have opposed it.
That wasn't the case, though, at the group home next door to the Pys', which houses three adult men with developmental delays, two of whom were watching yesterday's comings and goings with considerable interest.
"We're happy for our neighbors," said Frank Brown, division director of SPIN, Special People in Northeast, which administers the home.
"I met them one time," said resident Dexter Hill, who, along with his housemates, was invited to the Pys' New Year's Day barbecue.
If the Pys' neighbors didn't get advance notice of their "Extreme" experience, they didn't get that much less than John Dewey, whose Wayne building firm, Dewey Cos., is in charge of construction.
"We got a call about three weeks ago from ABC, asking if we would consider doing a build in Philadelphia," Dewey said yesterday.
Sporting a red fleece top with the logos of "Extreme Makeover" and Dewey Cos. - which he paid for himself - Dewey, who owns the firm with his brother, Ken, said he was told that another builder had pulled out.
Dewey's long been a fan of the show, which he watches with his 8- and 12-year-old daughters, along with more than 15.7 million other viewers, every Sunday night.
"They love the fact that basically they get to watch me cry every week," he said.
"It was pretty easy to say yes... [but] the last three weeks have kind of been a blur," he said.
"We typically build a house in about 100 days and we are trying to build this house in 100 hours," Dewey said, with the help of 1,200 to 1,500 workers, 700 to 800 of whom will at some point be present on the Haldeman Avenue job site.
Because ABC insists that "100 percent of everything that goes into the house is donated," Dewey, whose company currently has several projects in the works, including five residential developments in the suburbs, had to reach out to both employees - whom he's paying - and subcontractors for labor.
"Every single one of them said yes, without hesitation," he said. The building unions, too, "have been great," he said. "We told them we were doing it, and... every single person has said, 'Tell me what you need.' "
That cooperation even extended to the city Department of Licenses & Inspections, which had promised to work with the show in expediting building permits, he said.
And when architects from Omnia Group discovered, just three weeks ago today, that none of the plans they'd brought along to a meeting with producers could possibly fit the Pys' small lot, they started over from scratch, Dewey said.
They began drawing at noon, "and by 9:30 they had a finished design plan," he said, "and by the following Monday, they had construction" plans.
As anyone who's ever added more than a single nail to to a house knows, that's extreme.
"You almost have to throw time out the window," Dewey said, "and all the things you thought were not possible become possible."
Thu, Mar. 23, 2006
A dream come true
F YOU WERE anywhere near Haldeman Avenue and Montour Street in Bustleton yesterday, you might have wondered about the police roadblocks that limited access from every direction, starting as far away as Red Lion Road.
Or about the very big motorcoach and the trucks, large and small, lining both sides of Haldeman.
Not to mention the row of portable toilets that got dropped off on Montour early in the afternoon and the white stretch SUV that pulled up outside one raised rancher, ready to whisk away the home's occupants to an undisclosed, but presumably warmer, location.
Let's just say ABC doesn't call it "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" for nothing.
Yes, television's most helpful "reality" show has landed in Philadelphia, and no matter how much you love it, unless you're a very sound sleeper, you're probably better off not having it land too close to your back yard.
Because for the next week, William and Carole Py's corner of Northeast Philadelphia is going to be both a round-the-clock construction site and a location shoot, with literally hundreds of people working to replace the three-bedroom raised rancher the Pys share with their three orphaned grandchildren into a two-story, four-bedroom home that will then be decorated by "Extreme Makeover's" designers.
Did I mention the in-ground pool that's coming?
Though yesterday was relatively quiet, with the excitement mostly confined to watching host Ty Pennington wave goodbye to the Pys - then, after the limo carefully backed down the street, doing it all over again - the real fun begins Friday morning, when the house is due to be bulldozed.
All this comes as something of a surprise to the Pys' neighbors.
"It's all new," said Gerry Skalski yesterday afternoon as she and Cindy Groeber, who live on nearby Wistaria Street, surveyed the action from across the street.
"Never even knew who lived there," said Groeber.
Skalski said she first learned of the family's situation when she saw them on the noon news on ABC-owned WPVI (Channel 6).
Though ABC said it wasn't allowing other interviews with the Pys yesterday, a network press release outlined the plight that caught the eye of "Home Edition's" producers after the parent of a child in one of their grandchildren's classes wrote to them.
The Pys are raising William, Samantha and Jose "Joey" Rosario, who were left orphaned after their 33-year-old father died of a brain aneurysm in 1997 and their 28-year-old mother succumbed to breast cancer 14 months later.
The Pys, the network said, worried that the asbestos and lead paint in their house might prove a hazard to the children.
"I salute them," said Skalski, peering at the stretch limo.
"Where are they taking them?" she asked. "They can tear down my house. Rebuild me one on the water."
Nor was she concerned that a week from now, the Pys' house will likely look quite different from the now-practically identical stretch of ranchers on that section of Haldeman.
"Not if they do it the right way," she said.
But at least one of the Pys' neighbors, who wouldn't give his name, complained bitterly that "this thing wasn't done right" and claimed that if the community had been notified in advance, many would have opposed it.
That wasn't the case, though, at the group home next door to the Pys', which houses three adult men with developmental delays, two of whom were watching yesterday's comings and goings with considerable interest.
"We're happy for our neighbors," said Frank Brown, division director of SPIN, Special People in Northeast, which administers the home.
"I met them one time," said resident Dexter Hill, who, along with his housemates, was invited to the Pys' New Year's Day barbecue.
If the Pys' neighbors didn't get advance notice of their "Extreme" experience, they didn't get that much less than John Dewey, whose Wayne building firm, Dewey Cos., is in charge of construction.
"We got a call about three weeks ago from ABC, asking if we would consider doing a build in Philadelphia," Dewey said yesterday.
Sporting a red fleece top with the logos of "Extreme Makeover" and Dewey Cos. - which he paid for himself - Dewey, who owns the firm with his brother, Ken, said he was told that another builder had pulled out.
Dewey's long been a fan of the show, which he watches with his 8- and 12-year-old daughters, along with more than 15.7 million other viewers, every Sunday night.
"They love the fact that basically they get to watch me cry every week," he said.
"It was pretty easy to say yes... [but] the last three weeks have kind of been a blur," he said.
"We typically build a house in about 100 days and we are trying to build this house in 100 hours," Dewey said, with the help of 1,200 to 1,500 workers, 700 to 800 of whom will at some point be present on the Haldeman Avenue job site.
Because ABC insists that "100 percent of everything that goes into the house is donated," Dewey, whose company currently has several projects in the works, including five residential developments in the suburbs, had to reach out to both employees - whom he's paying - and subcontractors for labor.
"Every single one of them said yes, without hesitation," he said. The building unions, too, "have been great," he said. "We told them we were doing it, and... every single person has said, 'Tell me what you need.' "
That cooperation even extended to the city Department of Licenses & Inspections, which had promised to work with the show in expediting building permits, he said.
And when architects from Omnia Group discovered, just three weeks ago today, that none of the plans they'd brought along to a meeting with producers could possibly fit the Pys' small lot, they started over from scratch, Dewey said.
They began drawing at noon, "and by 9:30 they had a finished design plan," he said, "and by the following Monday, they had construction" plans.
As anyone who's ever added more than a single nail to to a house knows, that's extreme.
"You almost have to throw time out the window," Dewey said, "and all the things you thought were not possible become possible."
I live about 5 mintues away, but my inlaws are just around the corner from where this house is- you can see the lights and crowds from their house!
