It appears there’s another project on the horizon on the 200 block of Vine Street, and this one has a little bit of everything. The site in question covers 207-213 Vine St., which is now a surface parking lot, a contributing historic building at 209 Vine St., and a double-wide non-contributing building at the corner of American & Vine. It’s a little tough to see the buildings on the site through the trees, but we did our best to snag some photos of how the property looks today.

Greythorne Development is behind the project, which will entail the demolition of the aforementioned non-contributing building and the demolition of the significantly altered rear section of the historic building. In the future, assuming the project receives its necessary approvals, the developers are planning to build a duplex on the site of the surface lot, with a six-story apartment building wrapping around the rest of the site, running to Wood Street. They’re also planning to renovate what’s left of the historic building at 209 Vine St. into a triplex. It may sound a little confusing, but these aerial massing images paint a clearer picture.

The apartment building will include 50 units with 14 underground parking spots. Cleverly, the duplex on Vine Street will utilize the same drive-aisle, accessed from American Street, and will also include a pair of underground parking spots. We expect that the apartment building and the triplex will be listed as rentals, while the duplex, which will cover about 6,500 sqft, will surely be a for-sale product. Figure those will be seven-figure units, or at least close to it. Check out these renderings, from CANNOdesign.

From what we can tell, the proposed project is completely by-right and won’t require approval from the Zoning Board of Adjustments. It will, however, require sign-off from the Historical Commission, due to the inclusion of the historic building at 209 Vine St. and the fact that the entire site sits within the Old City Historic District. The renderings above are cribbed from the developer’s submission to the Historical Commission, and based on the staff recommendation for approval, we suspect the project will proceed more or less as the renderings indicate.

We’ll hand it to the developers, they have clearly thought through their project, both in terms of preserving the one historic building on the site and building something new that generally fits within the aesthetic of the district. If the developers had proposed demoing the entire building at 209 Vine St. or an ultra-contemporary facade at the apartment building, we imagine they would be facing a bit of an uphill battle. Instead, they will be adding some appropriate height and density to a less traveled section of Old City, while largely maintaining the fabric of Philly’s oldest neighborhood.