William "Billy" Procida, a North Jersey
developer-turned-financier who in the past has promoted project ideas in Camden
and Fishtown, hoped work would have started by now on 120 new apartments plus
ground-level stores at the Divine Lorraine, the badly-gutted, grafitti-marked,
vacant-for-15-years Victorian ex-hotel that looms above the gentrifying North
Broad St. corridor that links Center City to Temple U. That's what Procida told
my colleague Jennifer Lin in May, after cutting a deal with developer Eric
Blumenfeld (who has his own complex financial history) to pump $31.5 million
into the project.
