We’ve been covering the transformation of western Washington Avenue for years now, with a number of properties making the jump to mixed use, but plenty remaining entrenched as industrial or commercial. 2400 Washington Ave., a nearly 3-acre property that’s primarily used for the storage of building supplies, falls into the latter bucket. When we last visited the property a few years ago, we told you about a 2008 proposal to turn this parcel into a shopping center which clearly never moved forward. Fast forward to 2025, and the owners are again pursuing redevelopment here. This week, they presented their plans to the Point Breeze Coalition RCO.

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The southern side of the 2400 block of Washington when it was a factory
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View from 24th & Washington
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Southern section of the property, looking west on Ellsworth
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Looking into the property from Washington Avenue
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Aerial photograph from 2023, with building materials being stored on site

The owners presented a project that’s pretty similar to the plans from two decades ago, with an anchor supermarket, additional commercial spaces, a sit-down restaurant, and a food court. The largest change is that the plans shift away from office space in the five-story section of the property, opting for 30 apartments on the upper floors. The project is extremely auto-centric, calling for 152 parking spots in a surface lot that will cover the vast majority of the property’s frontage on Washington Avenue.

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Aerial rendering depicting the structures behind a large landscaped parking lot
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A small building will be demolished and replaced at the interior corner of the structure
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The third through fifth stories of the building in the back will be apartments now instead of offices
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The low-rise commercial portion of the project

While the neighbors seemed largely supportive of the project, we have major issues. From a city planning perspective, this is the wrong project at the wrong location at the wrong time. We are talking about almost three acres, located a little over a mile from Rittenhouse Square, on a corridor that’s seen numerous mixed-use projects appear over the last decade. 2101 Washington Ave. is about 1/3 the size and will add 247 units to the corridor. Lincoln Square at Broad & Washington sits on a slightly larger parcel and has 322 apartments. The former will have underground parking and the latter includes a parking garage. 2400 Washington Ave. could accommodate a parking garage, all the commercial currently proposed, plus 500+ apartments, and it could do all it without breaking a sweat.

The fact that the project at 2400 Washington Ave. only calls for 30 apartments represents such an unfathomable underuse of this property, it’s hard for us to comprehend. Planning for a supermarket here with Aldi opening down the street and the new Giant on Broad Street seems like a dubious proposition. And a massive surface parking lot is almost as much of a middle finger to Washington Avenue as the storage facility next door. The 2008 plan would have been a forgivable missed opportunity, given the state of the corridor and the surrounding neighborhoods at that time. In 2025, it’s honestly a mind boggling waste of some of the best real estate in Philadelphia.

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Satellite photo of 2400 Washington Ave in 2008
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By 2023 many of the nearby vacant sites have been redeveloped

The property’s inappropriate industrial zoning prohibits residential and most commercial uses, so the project needs to secure several variances before it can move forward. Considering the support from the community meeting, we’re guessing the ZBA will grant their appeal when they hear it on February 19th. No guarantees though, especially if folks opposing the project participate in the hearing.

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The surface parking lot will be quite visible from Washington Ave

Regrettably, the owners will have a compelling case that the zoning code imposes a hardship, due to the fact that industrial zoning is outdated at this location and an overlay prohibits additional uses. While we’ve opined for years that the continued mis-zoning of Washington Avenue is a political tool to slow the roll of mixed-use development on the corridor, in this case it has the destructive side effect of being more permissive of a wildly inappropriate shopping center. Fun fact, this property was once considered for conversion to a prison; the zoning on Washington Avenue is, remarkably, more permissive of such a use than it is for an apartment building. Seems like yet another good reason to remap the corridor, doncha’ think?