For the property at 312-330 Fairmount Ave., the last few years have been something of a roller coaster ride. In the spring of 2014, developers presented plans to the community to demolish the collection of warehouses on the site and build a 108-unit apartment building in their place. The Northern Liberties Neighbors Association had all kinds of feedback, requesting lower density and a shorter building, and at some point the developers decided to move on to another project, selling to PRDC Properties. PRDC had a totally different take on the property and presented plans for 27 homes. The community was into it and the ZBA gave their approval at the beginning of this year.
Checking in on the property today, you can see that the old warehouses are gone and a row of homes and a row of foundations have appeared.
We took a look at the Zoning Archive and found the site plan for the project, learning that there will eventually be 9 homes on Fairmount, 13 homes in a row behind (which are the homes you see in the photo above), and 4 more homes on 4th Street, as part of the same project. Easy math would tell you that adds up to 26 homes which is one less than 27- we don't know what happened to the final home but would guess it fell out of the plan somewhere along the way.
It would have been really cool if the developers could have maintained and reused some or all of the warehouses that were standing here before as a link to the neighborhood's industrial past. But we get it, new construction is usually more cost effective to develop and there would have been serious challenges in redeveloping the old one-story warehouses. It's great that developers are reusing some of the more substantial buildings in the neighborhood, like the Color Reflections building at 4th & Green and the Transatlatic building on the 400 block of Fairmount, which is incidentally another PRDC project. But we can see how this one would have been a tough lift. On the plus side, the neighborhood will get 26 new homes, continuing its upward trajectory.