About a decade ago, we moved into a house a block away from Pat's and set upon exploring our new neighborhood. We quickly discovered and fell in love with a new bar called Pub on Passyunk East, which had just opened its doors at Passyunk & Dickinson. And it wasn't too long after that Cantina Los Caballitos opened a few blocks down the Avenue. Over the following years, we saw dramatic changes on Passyunk Avenue as commerce exploded, with new businesses opening all over the place between Dickinson and McKean Streets. Today, Passyunk Avenue is a vibrant commercial corridor, and it makes the surrounding neighborhood a wonderful place to live.
If you're so inclined, you can now join in on the fun, though we'd be hard pressed to say you'd be getting in on the ground floor.
1701 E. Passyunk Ave. is home to Interior Concepts, a furniture store. As you might imagine would be the case with a furniture store, the building is quite large, with frontage on both Passyunk Avenue and 12th Street. It's currently on the market for $2.2M, which we recognize is a pretty penny. But when you consider the redevelopment possibilities here, with commercial on the first floor and three stories of apartments above, the price seems like it could be somewhere in the range. Still, it would likely require an experienced developer to put together a project that works financially and would be supported by the community. Are you that experienced developer?
Just two doors down, 1709-13 S. 12th St. are also for sale. These buildings are currently home to a dollar store, four apartments, and Addiction Boutique on the corner. The list price is an easier to stomach $925K, but it's also a very different product, compared to the furniture store building. This investment would entail fixing up the apartments to try to get higher rent numbers, and possibly fixing up the larger commercial space and finding a new tenant. For someone looking to buy and hold some commercial real estate, this could be an interesting opportunity.
Let's face it, Passyunk Avenue is still on the upswing. New stores and restaurants continue to open, and new residents continue to stream into the surrounding neighborhood. Both of the properties mentioned may seem like they're listed at a high price today, but we wouldn't be surprised to look back on these opportunities ten years from now and smack ourselves for not taking advantage of them.
Wait, how long to foxes live again? Asking for a friend.