Norris Street west of Frankford has experienced some major changes over the last several years, as a number of old industrial properties have turned over and gone residential. We’ve seen vacant land get filled in and old buildings torn down, with a few different projects rising on Norris Street and in both directions on Blair Street. Through it all, 2187 E. Norris St. has remained relatively unchanged, with its white painted facade and a splash of blue wrapping around the first floor. You probably don’t realize it, but for many years this building has been home to Miner Street Recordings, a recording studio that does both analog and digital recording production.

You also might not realize that the building extends back along Blair Street quite a bit, though it shrinks down to a one-story garage for most of that section of the property. Given all the residential development in the area, it seems that the owners of the building are looking to get in on the act and build a three story addition atop the one-story section of the building and use the newly expanded building for eight apartments and the recording studio that’s already operating here. The project was scheduled to go before the ZBA this morning, and we don’t know how it went, but the proposal seems pretty reasonable so we don’t see why it wouldn’t move forward.

While we’re here, let’s take a look around, just to remind you of how much development has happened here of late. Right across the street, developers are in the process of building 24 town homes, replacing an old industrial building that was previously used as a baller home. Further up Norris is the Norris Point project, a collection of 8 homes which were constructed a few years back. On the opposite corner of Blair & Norris is a small town home development that replaced an auto shop, and further down Blair are some completed garage-front town homes and a bunch of duplexes now under construction.

The last image shows the car wash/detailing place that runs from Blair Street to Frankford Avenue. If you think back a mere few sentences about all the other projects around here, you’ll agree that it’s only a matter of time before this parcel gets redeveloped as well. Amazingly, it traded for a mere $275K back in 2011, so when the owners eventually decide to sell to developers, they’re gonna make a great return on investment. At this point, it seems like it’s only a question of when that’ll happen.