We're probably subscribed to every community group e-newsletter in town, and on days we're willing to sift through the neighborhood minutiae (lost cat! found dog! parking is getting tougher! neighborhood wine tour! school bake sale!), we commonly find out about development projects that will be coming before the community. It just so happened that we were in a sifting mood today when we got an email from Fairmount Civic Association, advertising a Thursday night community meeting at which developers will present plans for a vacant warehouse at the corner of 28th & Cambridge.
This building, as you might imagine considering its location on a residential block, has some history to it. Per an old city map, this was once the home of Commonwealth Brewing Company, one of the many breweries that gave this part of town its name. The brewery closed a century ago, and we'd guess that the building has gone through a collection of other industrial and commercial uses in the time that's passed since then. A major change of pace, the folks buying this building want to add two stories and convert it to mixed-use, with commercial space and seven parking spots on the first floor and fourteen apartments above. In addition, they want to build three single-family homes on George Street, on the backside of the property. These homes will sit across the street from a pair of new homes built a couple years back.
With only some basic details, this sounds like a pretty cool plan to reactivate an old building and add a bunch of new customers for the burgeoning West Girard corridor just a block away. As is always the case with community meetings though, you never can be sure how the neighbors will respond. Will people appreciate the effort to reuse the building and add density close to a commercial corridor? Or will they push back against the project because it will provide less than 1:1 parking? To be determined.