If you always wanted to live near the Art Museum and have a spare couple million in your pocket, the Green Street Estates might be your dream come true. But it wasn't always clear that we'd end up with this project at this location. Two years ago, How Properties bought the former Saint Francis Xavier convent at 2322 Green St. and planned to convert it into an 18-unit apartment building. With additional space on the parcel, the developers were going to build some more buildings, with an expected total unit count of 48 in a by-right project. This sounded pretty good to us.
It didn't sound so good to the neighbors though, who weren't pleased with the idea of 48 units and no parking at this location. With that in mind, the developers scrapped the project and instead put together a plan for ten enormous homes with three on Pennsylvania Avenue and seven on Green Street. The new project required approval from the Historical Commission because the property sits within the Spring Garden Historic District and also from the ZBA. But with community support, it seems the project made its way through permitting pretty easily. We last checked in here about a year ago, shortly after the developers tore down the former convent. It comes as no surprise that they've made some significant progress since then.
The homes, if you can't tell from the photos, are enormous. The designs vary slightly, but the smallest home will have over 5,500 sqft of living space. Each home will have four bedrooms, three full baths, two half baths, two-car parking, and a roof deck. Looking at the listings for the project, at least two of the homes on Green Street are now under agreement at list prices over $1.75M. On Pennsylvania Avenue, one of the homes is currently listed for sale for $1.9M. Wowza.
As we said before, we'd have preferred the reuse of the convent and the greater density here, and since that project was by-right and this one wasn't, we'd imagine that the Planning Commission would have agreed. But alas, people freaked out about parking and density, and soon Spring Garden will have ten new mansions on its hands. So it goes.