It’s true that South Broad Street has come a long way in the last couple of decades, but once you get south of Bainbridge Street it’s pretty slim pickings. Sure, 777 South Broad has been a huge success from a residential standpoint, but it’s taken years to get all the retail spaces filled. And aside from that? A school, a couple of one-story retail properties, and a ton of vacant land.

Pretty much the best thing south of Bainbridge

So you can imagine our excitement when we learned that one of the large vacant parcels on South Broad Street would soon be filled. A reader checked in, and gave us the heads up that a new home at 740 S. Broad St. was currently listed for sale, at the (remarkable) pre-construction price of $1.8M. Accompanying that new home will be seven others, representing the third phase of the wildly successful Artisan Townhomes development.

The lot

Artisan Townhomes on Bainbridge

According to the listing, the homes will be 22.5′ wide, and will offer 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, 2-car parking, and 4,000 sqft of living space. Based on the dimensions of the site, we’d guess that four of the homes will front Broad Street and the other four homes in the development will front Rosewood Street. Across from the western homes is a parking lot for a funeral home, but we’d imagine that this won’t be a significant concern for potential buyers, as demand for the Artisan homes has been very high as they’ve been built. And homes like this simply don’t get built these days in Philadelphia.

Western end of the parcel. Chain-link fence for funeral parking lot visible on the right

We’re almost as pleased to see one more South Broad Street lot disappear as the owners of Tashan will be to gain some new neighbors who should be able to afford their prices without batting an eye. That being said, we’re a little disappointed at the lack of density that will be coming to this nearly 11K sqft site. We can appreciate that it’s much easier to design, build, and sell eight single family homes than a larger mixed-use development. But for South Broad Street to really flourish, it needs more people, more retail, and tall buildings. Hopefully, that will be the case when news arrives about the next vacant lot on South Broad, whenever that day comes.