Kim’s Cleaners operated for years out of a double-wide building at the southwest corner of 20th & Waverly. While this business provided a valuable service in a part of town that’s home to the largest percentage of professionals in the city, the one-story building always kind of bugged us, representing a major underuse in a great location. The building was three stories tall at one point in its history, losing its upper floors sometime in the middle of the 20th century. A dry cleaner operated here since around that time, with the building previously being used as a garage and as a small grocery.
When we last visited this property back in 2019, we told you that the suboptimal use would likely come to an end, as developers were planning to buy the building, tear it down, and replace it with a five-story building with a grocery on the first floor, four condo units on the upper floors, and underground parking. This project was permitted by right, but a few neighbors didn’t like the proposal and appealed the permit anyway. The years dragged on and the old building got demoed, but no condo building appeared.
Whether it was due to the appeal or simply a change of plans, the developers decided to pivot away from the condo project and are now planning to build three homes at this corner. High Top Development needed a variance for this new approach, but got the ZBA’s blessing at the end of 2023. They got their building permit this week and are aiming to break ground this summer. The first home in the project is listed pre-construction for $3.5M, and will include 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, over 4,000 sqft of living space, and two-car parking. You can see, the eastern homes will have parking accessed from a drive-aisle in the rear, while the westernmost home will be slightly smaller and will have parking access through a garage on Waverly Street.
The high end townhome market in Philadelphia has not been awesome over the last couple years, with mortgage rates higher than they’ve been in years and empty nesters opting for more condos than has historically been the case. That being said, these homes are breaking ground in a few months and will likely deliver in the fall market of 2026, so it’s fairly likely that the market will look pretty different by then. Add in the fact that there are hardly ever any new homes built in the Rittenhouse neighborhood, and we expect that these homes will find buyers at prices close to the current asking price. And who knows, if rates come down, we might even see higher sale prices by the time these homes are done.