August 20, 2026
For a year and a half, the orange construction fencing on the 200 block of Market Street did more than block sidewalks. It nearly took down a business. Allen Joseph and Anser Bhatti, the brothers behind Coffee Tea & Company, watched foot traffic disappear as fencing cut off access to their front door during the Market Street Old City Improvement Project. The shop needed grant assistance from the Merchants Fund just to stay open through it.
That same 18-month window, on that same block, is also when the brothers opened a second business two doors down: Liberty Scoops. And when the fencing finally came down this June, it revealed not just a rebuilt street but a cluster of new restaurants that hadn't existed when the orange plastic first went up. The construction that nearly broke one shop is the reason the block now has its most interesting stretch of storefronts in years. That's the part of this story most residents haven't connected yet, because most of them haven't walked the 200 block since the plaza reopened.
Coffee Tea & Company's experience wasn't an outlier. Old City District executive director Job Itzkowitz has acknowledged that a number of businesses along the corridor saw real financial strain while the fencing was up, simply because customers couldn't reach their doors easily. Coffee Tea & Company was one of the hardest hit, and it took outside grant support to bridge the gap.
What makes the story worth telling isn't the hardship alone. It's that the same ownership group used the disruption as cover to expand rather than retreat, opening Liberty Scoops on the same block mid-project. That's not the plot of a construction story you'd expect. Usually 18 months of fencing kills momentum. Here, it ran alongside it.
The project itself, formally the Market Street Old City Improvement Project, broke ground at 2nd and Market in December 2024 and wrapped with a ribbon-cutting on June 9, 2026, timed deliberately ahead of the city's America250 summer, which brought the FIFA World Cup and MLB All-Star Game through Philadelphia. The stretch runs from 2nd Street to 6th Street, four dense blocks that sit at the center of the city's historic district.
What residents actually got for the $16 million:
The design wasn't handed down from the city. It came out of a resident survey the Old City District ran as part of its Vision2026 planning process years before construction started. Itzkowitz explained the logic behind it at the ribbon-cutting:
"They said, we want to walk, bike, take public transit more, and we want to drive less."
That's a rare thing in municipal infrastructure: a finished project that maps directly back to what the people living around it actually asked for, years in advance, and then had to wait through 18 months of fencing to get.
Walk that same stretch today and the storefronts read like a timeline of the construction period itself. Frame Philly, at 222 Market, has anchored the corner since 2022 and predates the project entirely. Next door at 224, Qahwah House, a Yemeni coffee chain, is aiming for a summer opening. At 226, in the former Mac's Tavern space, Fergus Carey and his partners from Fergie's Pub are close to opening the Monto, an Irish bar built around a kitchen led by sandwich specialist N.A. Poe. Sonny's Famous Steaks has held down 228 since 2000, giving the block its one true elder. At 230, the team behind Oh Brother's cheesesteak spot a few doors away at 206 Market is readying Baba Döner, a döner-kebab counter, for a July opening. Across Bank Street at 232, where Tangerine and later Kick Axe Throwing once operated, a hot pot restaurant is in early planning.
That's a 26-year-old steak shop standing next to a frame shop that's been open since 2022, with four newer openings clustered inside the same construction window, all now visible without a fence in front of them for the first time. Itzkowitz has counted at least 10 new businesses that opened or announced plans on Market Street during the 18 months of work, with the Monto and Liberty Scoops specifically called out as the two on the 200 block. That's a restaurant row that assembled itself during the exact period the sidewalk in front of it was hardest to reach.
A few doors south on 2nd Street, a bigger and slower story just cleared its own hurdle. For nearly two years, a Marine veteran-led nonprofit called the Tun Legacy Foundation and a rival trademark holder, Montgomery Dahm, fought in federal court over who had the right to use the name Tun Tavern for a reconstruction of the colonial-era tavern where the U.S. Marine Corps was founded in 1775. That dispute settled on February 7, 2026, clearing the way for the foundation's $21 million project at 19 S. 2nd Street, on a parking lot the foundation bought for $4.4 million in 2024.
The plan calls for three components in one building: a ground-floor mariners tavern facing 2nd Street, a second-floor dining room recreating Peg Mullan's Beefsteak Club, and a small museum. MBB Management, the hospitality group behind Tony Luke's, Martorano's, and Greens & Grains, will run the food and drink side. Construction is expected to begin later this year, which means Old City residents who just watched one 18-month project wrap up are about to watch another one start, this time a block away from the plaza that just reopened.
None of this touched the rhythms that have defined Old City for decades. First Friday, which started in 1991 as a handful of galleries opening their doors together, ran every month through the entire construction period and continues on schedule, with the next dates falling on September 4 and October 2. More than 30 galleries between Front and Third, Market and Vine, still open their doors on those nights regardless of what's happening with the streetscape outside.
The Old City Eats Block Party kept its June date too, running June 4 on the historic 2nd Street corridor between Market and Chestnut, and this year it expanded for the first time to include the 100 block of Chestnut Street, giving the summer kickoff more room than it's ever had. A few blocks away, the Philadelphia Chinese Lantern Festival at Franklin Square has been extended through the end of August because of demand, with weekday deals running all month, discounted dumplings on Mondays, free carousel rides on Tuesdays, and free mini-golf for two on Wednesdays.
Put those threads together and the picture is less about a single ribbon-cutting and more about a block that changed on several timelines at once. The plaza finished. The restaurant row filled in around the same fencing that squeezed Coffee Tea & Company. The Tun Tavern saga resolved just in time to start its own construction cycle a few doors down. And through all of it, First Friday never missed a month.
If you live in Old City and haven't walked the 200 block of Market since June, it's worth the ten minutes. The street looks different, the storefronts have turned over faster than the construction timeline alone would suggest, and the next disruption is already lining up a few doors south.
Arielle Roemer tracks these shifts closely because they're the texture that makes a neighborhood worth knowing, not just worth visiting. If you're curious how a changing block like this one affects home values or timing in Old City, or anywhere else in Center City and the Main Line, Arielle Roemer is always glad to talk through it. Schedule a Consultation whenever you're ready.
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