This former Bridesburg chocolate factory made Raisinets and Goobers. Now it’s serving Northeast Philly families

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A former candy factory in Northeast Philadelphia is now home to a group of nonprofit organizations dedicated to providing social services, health care and education.

The Chocolate Factory Community Hub is located on the 2200 block of Margaret Street in a residential section of Bridesburg. Concilio, which primarily works with underserved young people and families, is the project’s anchor tenant and occupies the second and third floors of the historic property. That includes offices for its foster care and adoption programs, as well as an event space available to rent at affordable rates.

The first floor is shared by The Madden School, an affordable child care center, Gateway Community Action Partnership and BAYADA Home Health Care. The final tenant moved into the building in June.

“Because of this new building, our reach has just expanded tremendously,” said Olivia Villarruel, marketing manager for Concilio, which moved into the building last August. The nonprofit also operates a building roughly 2 miles away in the Feltonville section of North Philadelphia.

Opened in 1922, the factory was built for the Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate Company at a time when Philadelphia was one of the country’s biggest candy-manufacturing centers. The factory, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was the original producer of candies such as Goobers, Raisinets and Sno-Caps.

The building sat vacant for decades before it was acquired by D3 Development, LLC in 2018. At the time, the factory was packed solid with car parts from its previous owner, including headlights, windshields and doors.

To reimagine the interior of the concrete structure and restore its exterior — to pay homage to its sugary roots and repurpose the building to serve the community in a new way — D3 later tapped Interface Studio Architects, whose sister company Meantime is behind the East Market Street pop-up retail initiative.

Restoring a neighborhood landmark

Work on the $14.3 million project got underway around 2022.

“The exterior of the building was in pretty rough condition. A lot of the windows were kind of busted out, boarded up,” said Alexandra Gauzza, ISA principal and studio director. “The interior, from a structural standpoint, was actually in quite good shape and very little had to be done to bring that back up to a usable condition.”

Revamping the building involved restoring and repairing the property’s red brick and terra-cotta facade, as well as a grid of 34 vertical window bays and a collection of historic signs. The projects also saw the restoration of an 80-foot watertower, which can be seen from I-95 and the train tracks that run behind the site.

Today, the property looks much like it did when it was operated by Blumenthal Brothers.

The work was completed with the help of state and federal preservation funding, including federal Historic Tax Credits and funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The rest of the funding came from traditional construction loans.

This year, the project earned a grand jury award from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.

“The Blumenthal Chocolate Factory adaptive reuse project is a model factory-to-commercial conversion project, repurposing a well-built but long vacant and decaying historical industrial building into an attractive workplace,” Executive Director Paul Steinke said in a statement.