A reader who knows what we like checked in and gave us the heads up about a new residential development on the way in Pennsport, near numerous other homes that have gone up in the past several years. South of Washington Ave., between Front and 2nd Sts., a few dozen new homes have been built by a different developers in the last ten years, completely transforming this area. And now, seven more houses are on the way.

Current view

114-22 Ellsworth St. is currently a large vacant lot which was purchased by developer Temple Resev LLC for $540K back in January. The developer purchased this land from the folks who developed the new construction homes that you see behind the vacant lot, which front Federal Street. From what we understand, the sales for those homes have not met expectations.

As we mentioned above, the plan for this lot, which was presented to the neighborhood a few days ago and will be going to the ZBA at the end of the month, is for the construction of seven new homes. These houses, which will include garage parking, will each be four stories tall, and will have 3 bedrooms, and 2.5 bathrooms. Architects on the project are Harman Deutsch. Take a look at these drawings, to get a better idea of what these things are gonna look like:

Zoomed out site plan shows the new construction homes on Federal St. in relation to the planned homes

Zoomed-in site plan shows how the homes respond to the angled street

And here's a rendering!

No idea about pricing at this time, but we’d have to guess they’ll be listed somewhere in the $500K range.

And as an aside, we couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d seen this developer’s name in the past. Turns out, they’ve been building student housing in the neighborhood around Temple (with a name like that, who’d have guessed?). We’ve even covered one of their developments!

Photo from April. They own both the completed units as well as the ones under construction

It’s clear that these guys can build successful student rental properties. Will this translate into an ability to build quality, high-end residential units that will sell?

Official Naked Philly Magic 8-Ball says ‘Reply hazy, try again.’