Cascia Center

After demolishing several apartment buildings along South Broad Street, St. Rita of Cascia has planned on replacing the buildings with a surface parking lot in front of its school. It wasn't ideal. The apartment buildings South Broad lost weren't significant, but they were urban and had potential.

St. Rita's original center incorporated its existing school.

Unfortunately St. Rita's sits just below the car line where older Philadelphians confuse South Philly with NJ. In any new development, parking is a priority, even surface parking lining the city's most notable urban artery.

St. Rita's proposed Cascia Center

Well, a parking lot will no longer stare at pedestrians along South Broad, but since St. Rita's decided to demolish its school, it will be erecting a new center with parking in the rear. It sounds like a better, if not ideal solution. But the building itself looks more like a Pottsville paint store than a community center befitting the grand St. Rita of Cascia. 

Of course after years of sitting idly vacant, it's hard not to wonder how St. Rita's community center couldn't have been handsomely incorporated into the apartments it demolished.