There’s a big empty lot at 1224 Frankford Ave. next to Frankford Hall which might be one step closer to being redeveloped this week, after the Civic Design Review committee recently gave their blessing to a less than straightforward proposal. Considering we’ve been wondering about this site for more than a decade, we’re pretty happy to see progress being made, but we’ll reserve final judgement until shovels are actually in the ground. Redevelopment of this property has dragged on for so long, there was time for Shepard Fairey to install a mural on the legacy structure at the property in 2014.

As we’ve told you in the past, the property had a variety of industrial uses over the years. The building in the image above was built as a brewery, served for a time as a pickle factory, and operated as an ice storage building between 1925 and the mid-1990s. It was sitting vacant over the last couple decades, until it was demolished at the end of 2018.

Over the years, we’ve been anticipating a hotel concept for this property. And indeed, at the CDR meeting, the development team presented a plan for a hotel here, sharing plans for a five-story building with 59 rooms over retail. This plan would require a number of variances, which brings us to the heart of what makes this submission rather unusual. Not only did the development team present the hotel concept, but they also presented plans for an mixed-use project with 59 apartments over commercial. The apartment plan would be permitted by right.

The two proposals would be located within an almost identical footprint with nearly the same architectural features, with the residential plan including a courtyard in the rear and no parking and the hotel version replacing the courtyard with additional commercial space and adding 5 parking spots. We can see from the plans from Gnome Architects, the building’s gorgeous brick facade and primary entranceway will join the commercial corridor along Frankford Avenue, with the building having a reduced presence in the rear along the more residential Leopard Street. The top floor will use wood cladding with a scalloped profile that will add a bit of a contemporary touch to the building.

This project has been slowly evolving for the last decade plus. An initial proposal called for 125 hotel rooms and would have combined a new structure with the old industrial building on the site. Though that plan got ZBA approval, it formally went out the window in 2018, when the old building was demoed. A revised plan with 108 rooms had trouble securing financing, per the developers, as lenders worried about the lack of weekday demand or hotel rooms in Fishtown. Now, with the additional reduction in size and scale, the ownership team still seems committed to the hotel vision for the project, but are simultaneously pursuing a mixed-use approach as a back-up plan.

While acknowledging that plenty of restaurants would be interested in the ground floor retail space, the developers indicated a hope to bring in a different type of tenant to add some more diversity to the commercial properties along the corridor. With combined commercial of around 10K sqft, the retail space is large enough to accommodate all sorts of possibilities, with the development team specifically mentioning apparel and retail as particularly desirable tenants. That being said, we predict at least one restaurant. This is Frankford Ave., after all.

The CDR Committee concluding the review process for each version of this project after the first meeting is a positive step, but we’re not really sure what’ll happen next. Legally the development team could now secure permits to build the version of the project with 59 apartments. But it seems more likely they’ll put those plans on pause for now as they seek the necessary variances from the ZBA for the hotel version of this project later this month, especially as they have the support of the Fishtown Neighbors Association.

There’s no guarantee they’ll be successful though, and even if they are, they may still end up taking the residential approach if they can’t convince a lender that a new hotel in Fishtown would achieve a high enough occupancy for the project to perform. As long as one version gets built soon, we’ll be happy. A new hotel in the heart of Fishtown would help cement the neighborhood’s reputation as a national tourist destination. But a couple dozen apartments right around the corner from the Girard Station isn’t so bad either.