Liberty Choice has been operating out of a space at 1939 N. Front St. for over a decade, providing the community with a convenient local grocery store, plus some “choice” breakfast and lunch offerings. Regrettably, their time at this location is at an end, as developers have purchased the property with an eye toward a new project. A demolition permit was pulled at the end of last year, and this permit also subdivided the 10K sqft property into three smaller lots.

The developers pulled a permit in February for a four story building with nine apartments over commercial for one of those three lots. This week, the City approved similar zoning permits for the other two properties, though these apartments will be used for visitor accommodations, likely short term rentals. As a bonus, those permits included renderings of what we can eventually expect here.

All three buildings are designed by Ambit Architecture, which was an inspired choice. We’ve appreciated their designs for other medium sized buildings, like the Le’ Adrienne building around the corner on Frankford Avenue or the recently completed project on the other side of Shissler Rec Center. The building at 1943 N. Front St., dubbed “The ’43,” will have three large floor-to-ceiling windows and a utilitarian facade that references the neighborhood’s industrial past. The building at 1947 N. Front St. will be called “19 FOURTY 7” and will come with twice as many small windows, a slightly more decorative facade, and multiple colors of brick, possibly trying to recall nearby mixed-use properties.

In all, this project will result in 27 units and three new commercial spaces. Yet it leaves us feeling a bit unfulfilled. Wouldn’t it have been better to maintain the property as a single parcel and build a larger building with more density and a unified commercial space? A spec drawing from a couple years ago provides a sense of what could have been built here, as does the 95-unit six-story building around the corner on Norris Street, which was built in the last few years.

It’s quite possible that the developers were looking for smaller, more manageable buildings, as they can be built in phases and could be considered less risky than a larger, denser building. It’s also very much within the realm of possibility that the motivation for dividing the property and dialing down the height and density was due to the fact that the property sits within the Mixed Income Neighborhoods Overlay District, which triggers affordability requirements for buildings with ten units or more. While a project that takes advantage of the higher density and reduced parking requirements allowed for this site because of its proximity to the Berks Station would have been allowed here, a percentage of the units in such a project would have needed to be offered at affordable rental rates.

In the end, this project will represent a higher and better use, providing new density next to the El and close to a transit station. But we suspect we’ll always wonder about what might have been every time we pass this site in the future. While the legislation requiring affordability is extremely well intentioned, we’ve seen it have a chilling effect on development in parts of town where it’s in effect. This being the case, we’d propose some fine tuning to hopefully align public policy goals more closely with the economic realities of real estate development.