The 2000 block of Abigail Street runs between Coral and Amber Streets, sitting in the shadow of the former Harbison Dairy building. While East Kensington has experienced a tremendous growth trajectory over the last decade plus, there are few blocks where the changes are more apparent than the 2000 block of Abigail. As recently as 2012, the old dairy building was empty and the entire east side of the street was sitting totally vacant.

Slowly though, as the years have rolled along, the block has filled in. In 2015, two homes appeared on the block. By 2020, there were five homes. In the following half decade, the old dairy on the west side of the block was renovated into apartments, and just about all the other vacant lots on the east side were redeveloped.

2035-45 Abigail St. sits at the corner of Coral and represents a notable exception. This property, which was being used as an illegal parking lot when we visited recently, has remained vacant even as the rest of the block repopulated. But this shouldn’t be the case for long. Developers are looking to relocate the lot lines for this property to create four 18′-wide parcels and build townhomes with rear parking accessed from a drive-aisle. Check out the rendering from KJO Architecture:

Thanks primarily to the proposed rear drive-aisle, the project needs a variance from the ZBA. This should be a relatively straightforward application, given that the homes constructed on the other side of the block have a very similar feature. Incidentally, parking at this corner is something of a return to form for this property; old newspaper records indicate there was a small garage at this site more than a century ago.

The project went to the ZBA last week and board held off voting on the application for a week to give the development team time to answer questions about mitigating car fumes from the garages seeping into the houses. We’re nevertheless confident the board will eventually give the project the green light. Once they do and construction moves forward here, the 2000 block of Abigail Street will have completed its rebirth. It’s amazing that all of this will have happened over about 15 years, but if there’s a neighborhood where we’d believe that timeline, it’s East Kensington.