The Mason on Chestnut, an off-campus residence near Penn’s campus, has faced management changes, failed inspections, and resident dissatisfaction since 2020, when development company CSC acquired and renovated what was formerly International House Philadelphia. An eight-day shutdown due to a Cease Operations Order is the latest incident in the building’s tainted history.

The Mason — located at 3701 Chestnut St. — received a Cease Operations Order from the City of Philadelphia after a flood on June 10 rendered the building uninhabitable. At the time, the building had several code violations, including a lack of electric power from the fourth to 14th floors, no running water, and issues with the fire pump.

The Mason was cleared to reopen on the evening of June 19. 

“There was a leak which has been corrected since,” CSC co-founder Sal Smeke wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian in response to a request for comment on what had caused the shutdown. He did not elaborate further or respond to requests for clarification, instead writing that there was “no point [in] addressing what had happened.” 

The DP spoke with Mason residents, who criticized management’s inadequate response to the shutdown, and representatives from the City of Philadelphia to discuss the circumstances surrounding the shutdown, the current state of the building, and its potential future.

Inside the shutdown

“On Monday, June 10, we were alerted to an incident at [the Mason],” Deputy Commissioner of Strategic Initiatives/Quality Control for the Quality of Life Department of the Department of Licenses and Inspections Ralph DiPietro told the DP. “What this turned out to be was a large scale chiller pipe that flooded through the building and damaged several of the building’s safety systems.” 

One resident of the Mason — a Penn student who was granted anonymity due to safety concerns — said that a fire alarm went off on the morning of June 10, but she did not evacuate, as fire alarms in the building are a common occurrence. 

“All of a sudden, the electricity in my room went out,” she said. “I thought it was just my room, but I looked outside, and I realized the whole building was out.” 

The resident told the DP that it was only after she began walking downstairs after gathering her belongings that she realized the building was flooding. 

“It looked like it was raining inside, and nobody was telling us anything,” she said, adding that the next day, occupants received an email around 3:45 p.m. informing them that “it was illegal” to occupy the Mason after 5 p.m. that day. 

“I just remember chaos,” she said. 

Another Mason resident, who is not a Penn student and was also granted anonymity due to safety concerns, told the DP that the flood began after management tried to turn on the building’s air conditioning system, which up to that point had not been operational.

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She said that, according to residents who saw the system being switched on, "water started leaking from the sixth floor down."

"And then the property manager, he really just ran, he just didn’t know what to do," she added.

The resident also said that tenants received conflicting messages about the state of the building: L&I representatives told residents to “be prepared” for a potential evacuation, while the property manager told them to “stay in place” and assured them that “this will get resolved.” 

DiPietro told the DP that since the building had no functioning alarm system, primary or emergency lighting, or pump systems, the department “didn’t have much of a choice [but] to institute the [Cease Operations Order].”

Immediate responses

The two Mason residents told the DP that representatives from Redstone Residential — the building’s newest management company, which took over on April 1 — barely communicated with residents in the aftermath of the shutdown. 

“I expected an email, at least by the end of the day,” the Penn student said. “We got nothing. The first email we got was to evacuate within an hour and 15 minutes.” 

The other resident said that Redstone Residential gave prepaid credit cards to residents and sent them to a hotel near the Philadelphia International Airport — a 20-minute drive from the building. When she and other residents arrived and tried to pay for their rooms, the cards declined, she said.

Redstone Residential did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Immediately after the shutdown, a reception center was set up “for a few hours” at the Newman Center, which is located at 3720 Chestnut St. adjacent to Penn’s campus, Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management Public Information Program Manager Jeffrey Kolakowski wrote in a statement to the DP. 

“That same night of the 11th, we opened a shelter at South Philadelphia High School for six people with the help of the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and School District of Philadelphia," he wrote. 

The City’s emergency shelter remained open until June 19, according to Kolakowski, with an average of six or seven residents present following the first night. 

Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier — whose district includes the Mason’s property — wrote in a statement to the DP on June 18 that she was “deeply concerned” by the building’s shutdown and the response from management and CSC, the development company that owns the building. 

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“On the behalf of Mason tenants my office reached out to CSC … but we have not received a reply,” the statement read. “I expect CSC to comprehensively support its tenants during this disaster and cooperate with my office and other City agencies.”

Several University agencies also offered support to Mason residents, many of whom are Penn students. Penn’s Student Intervention Services wrote that they provided “support and advocacy” to students displaced by the shutdown. 

“While the Mason is a privately owned and operated building, SIS and campus partners have assisted the Mason’s management by identifying Penn affiliates who needed relocation and by finding temporary housing options available through Penn’s Business Services Division,” Director of Strategic Initiatives for University Life Laurie McCaffrey wrote in a statement to the DP.

DiPietro told the DP that the extended shutdown was due to L&I needing to “look at all their detectors and dozens of trouble signals” to ensure the building was habitable. 

“They had to go floor by floor, checking every device, every electrical panel, the water pumps, the elevators were shut down,” he said. “[A] very slow process … and as they would clear certain items, other things would pop up.” 

DiPietro said that CSC was at first “a little bit slow to respond” to L&I, but he acknowledged that the company was likely not “prepared for an outage this large.” However, CSC has “done a pretty good job and have been responsive to getting the systems back up,” he said. 

History of failed inspections, management changes

The eight-day shutdown this month is the latest in a series of maintenance issues and dissatisfaction with the management at the Mason.

According to property records reviewed by the DP, the building failed eight inspections between June 12, 2023 and June 11 of this year. In addition, the building’s Sprinkler Certification and Fire Alarm Certification were marked “deficient” during inspections on March 24, 2023 and May 2, 2023, respectively. 

“The property has operated without a valid license since April 6, 2024,” a resident wrote in a May 31 email to the Mason community that was obtained by the DP. “Tenants may have grounds to reclaim rental payments made post-April 6, 2024 due to the landlord’s non-compliance with licensing requirements.” 

The email stated that a “significantly overdue gas bill” — totaling about $70,000 — had caused “the suspension of hot water services … [which] constitutes a breach of the essential utility services as stipulated by law and [tenants'] lease agreement.”

“Our legal advisors have also recommended withholding rental payments in an escrow account … until such time as the property meets all regulatory requirements,” the message read. 

The email’s senders did not respond to a request for comment.

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“There are a number of violations in addition to what we said,” DiPietro told the DP, noting that some of the other violations are of typical fire safety inspection protocols. He said that management “seem[s] committed” to fixing the issues with the building. 

“If the past several months are any indication, we expect they’ll get these done quickly,” he said.  

In addition to the failed inspections, the building has operated under three separate management groups within the last 12 months. Outpost Club, a third-party management company, ran the building until June 30, 2023, when CSC began managing the site internally. 

The goal of the new management change was to “enhance the experience for the residents,” Smeke told the DP at the time. The switch had been announced in an email to residents on June 21, 2023. 

CSC managed the building internally until April 1, when Redstone Residential took over operations. The transition to the new firm, which is based in Utah but has property managers on site, was not smooth, according to residents.

One Mason resident told the DP that when she moved in a year ago, “they didn’t even have [her] lease.” 

“New management has not been great at responding to emails, and it's just been sketchier and sketchier with every management change,” she said, adding that the new management appears to have reduced maintenance staff, making areas of the building “rancid with trash.” She also said that residents were not notified of the management change until “all of a sudden” communication came from a new group. 

“There were no significant improvements” after Redstone Residential began managing the building, according to the Mason resident who is unaffiliated with Penn. “If anything, it got worse.” 

What comes next?

“The thing to watch for is how quickly [managers] are able to respond and how effectively,” DiPietro said with regard to the building’s future. “I feel like they’ve done a fairly good job to this point and probably learned a lot from this episode.” 

DiPietro added that L&I representatives will continue to monitor the Mason and ensure that violations are addressed, including that “the alarm system gets cleared and recertified over the next several days.” 

Since the shutdown, some occupants have attempted to terminate their leases. The Penn-affiliated resident said that management has been largely unresponsive and has referred residents to a “legal team” that is supposedly handling requests for termination.

“We can’t trust this building and this company,” she told the DP. “I wish management was less shady and was just honest and direct about what was happening.”

The other resident agreed, saying that she worries that CSC is “getting into some shady business practices” with the proposed 40-50 story drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility that the company plans to build directly behind the Mason. The project is expected to break ground by the end of 2024 and will cost $300 million, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

CSC appears to be focusing much of its energy and resources onto the new facility, and changes to the Mason seem to be on the horizon. A zoning permit issued by the City of Philadelphia on May 30 revealed the developers’ intent to reduce the number of units in the Mason from 409 to just 85. 

The building is historically protected, meaning no drastic changes — including construction or demolition — can be made without approval from the Philadelphia Historical Commission. 

Smeke did not respond to requests for clarification, including if the reduction in units is connected to the new facility or what the purpose of such a drastic reduction is. 

“CSC’s response to the situation at the Mason speaks to its ability to be a responsible property manager and good neighbor,” Gauthier wrote in her statement. “How CSC conducts themselves now will help me determine whether they can be trusted to own a rehabilitation facility.”