How did we even manage to get through life before our burgers were smashed?! Luckily those dark days are behind us and residents of Fishtown will soon have yet another smash burger joint to check out. Earlier this week, 7th Street Burger secured permission from the ZBA to open their first Philadelphia location at 1216 Shackamaxon St., half a block north of the intersection of Frankford & Girard.
Though the address of this property is on Shackamaxon, the building runs street to street, all the way to Frankford Avenue. In recent decades, Bill Russell (the artist, not the 11-time NBA champion) had an art gallery at this location with the words “Fine Art Furniture” on the awning outside. Mr. Russell sold the property, along with the vacant lot next door at 1213 Frankford Ave., to developers back in 2023. The developers made some improvements to the building, renovating four residential units and preparing the ground floor for a new commercial tenant.
The new restaurant will occupy about 1,300 sqft inside and will also provide a roughly 600 sqft outdoor dining section in a courtyard next door. This courtyard will replace a parking space, which certainly feels like a superior use. It might be too hot out today to imagine wanting to eat outside ever again, but with some nice lighting and landscaping, we can imagine this being a pleasant place to munch on some burgers and fries on a cooler spring evening. The restaurant won’t serve any booze, but there are fortunately no shortage of options nearby on Frankford Ave. for a pre or post dinner beverage.
While a restaurant would typically be allowed by-right on this commercially zoned block, this project needed to secure a couple of special exceptions from the ZBA before proceeding. One exemption is triggered because the business will serve food to go, which is pretty absurd. And because the property is in the North Delaware Avenue Neighborhood Commercial Area Overlay, even this relatively benign restaurant needed special permission from the ZBA.
After securing the strong support of the Fishtown Neighbors Association, the project had a largely uncontentious hearing before getting final zoning approval. Although acquiring special exceptions requires a lower burden of proof for the applicant than a zoning variance, it’s still insane that a burger joint on Frankford Avenue needed to jump through these hoops. If we want to see more mom and pop businesses open and thrive here, City Council needs to take a long and hard look at the zoning code and all the overlays in this town. Philadelphia doesn’t exactly have a sterling reputation when it comes to being business friendly; some of the draconian measures in our zoning code really aren’t helping.