Despite its proximity to Center City, Francisville experienced significant disinvestment and blight in the later part of the 20th century, such that the neighborhood found itself with tons of vacancy and a hollowed out commercial corridor on Ridge Avenue. All this vacancy created a situation where a few developers were able to acquire large swaths of land to build medium to large sized projects, offering homes at some of the most affordable prices in the city for the time. One such project occurred on the 1700 blocks of Poplar, Cambridge, and Ridge, where developers built a dozen twin homes in the late 1990s.

As we’ve seen many times in this neighborhood in the last few years, this little area has undergone some significant changes. In 2018, we told you that two homes had been demoed on the 1700 block of Cambridge, with plans for an 8-unit building at 1710 Cambridge St. and a 5-unit building a few doors down. A couple years later, we told you that 1721 and 1723 Ridge Ave. had been demoed, with a mixed-use building with 14 units planned in their place. Those buildings are all complete and occupied, leaving us with only nine out of the original twelve twins still standing.

Soon enough, another one of those twins will bite the dust. Developers are planning to demolish 1709 Poplar St. and replace it with a five-story building with ground-floor commercial space and five apartments. They pulled the zoning permit for this by-right project last week, and we imagine they’ll have building permits in a few months.

This project will take advantage of permissive zoning to produce a five-story building with a bit of density to replace a single-family home. While the commercial aspect might seem a little curious, it’s required by the property’s zoning and its elimination would require a variance, which developers are understandably eager to avoid. Though the address is on Poplar Street, the property sits steps off of Ridge Avenue, so the inclusion of a commercial space is reasonable to us, and should only add to the energy on the Ridge Avenue corridor.

Given the density and the 1,300+ sqft floor plates, the units in the building will be quite generous. We’d typically expect rentals in a building like this, but given the larger units we wonder if a condo play might instead be the approach here. Interestingly, the developers around the corner at 1716 Cambridge St. went the condo route, selling apartments at prices far below home prices nearby. It’s not a super common approach for buildings of this size, but we wouldn’t rule out the possibility. And if that’s indeed the direction the developers go with this project, we’d certainly welcome the added affordability in a neighborhood that’s barely recognizable from even a dozen years ago.