Slowly but surely, we’re continuing to see development creep northward in South Kensington. Just the other day, for example, we told you about three homes under construction on the rarely explored 500 block of Morse Street. Today, please allow us to draw your gaze to a large vacant lot right around the corner, where something a little more significant could soon be in store.

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Zoning notice

The zoning notice in the image above relates to 1812-16 Germantown Ave., properties that sit pretty much at the point that 5th Street hits Germantown Avenue. Developers bought this triple-wide property last year, but need to go to the ZBA to build what they want to build. Their plan calls for four buildings, with a trio of triplexes and a mixed-use building with a coffee shop on the ground floor and three units above. The project was continued at the ZBA last month, but we have to think it’ll be coming back soon. We don’t know that there’s much of a hardship here, at least in terms of building four buildings instead of three, so we wonder whether the developers will ultimately get their way. Even if they have to modify their plans, it seems like a safe bet that some kind of project will happen here in the near future. And then maybe the properties next door can get developed too?

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Looking south on 5th Street
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Looking south on Germantown

Assuming a project does indeed move forward here, the people who eventually move to this location will have at least one thing going for them, and that’s close proximity to Saint Benjamin’s Brewing Company. That’s certainly a better perk than being close to Honor Foods, also located directly to the south. That company, which distributes frozen foods and dairy products, takes up a huge amount of space (as you might expect) but provides nothing in the way of retail. We wonder, as the development continues to move northward in the neighborhood, will Honor Foods and companies like it move away, with developers redeveloping their properties into residences? This certainly seems like it’s in play, given the pace at which development has progressed in South Kensington and nearby neighborhoods.