South Street west (Philadelphia, Washington, Jefferson: section 8, real estate, apartments)

[Pennsport]

Awesome project (keeping The Royal front façade) completing a long depressed section of west South Street. The city proper is really coming together - pandemic or no pandemic. In 2/3 years there won't be an open lot or vacant building from Oregon to Jefferson and river to river.

Royal Theater Apartments are Finished and Occupied, Townhomes Are Under Construction - OCF Realty

[ilovephilly79]

Originally Posted by Pennsport

Awesome project (keeping The Royal front façade) completing a long depressed section of west South Street. The city proper is really coming together - pandemic or no pandemic. In 2/3 years there won't be an open lot or vacant building from Oregon to Jefferson and river to river.

Royal Theater Apartments are Finished and Occupied, Townhomes Are Under Construction - OCF Realty

Are you saying that within two or three years you expect 8th and Market, 13th and Market, and several other open vacant lots to be filled in and developed?

[skintreesnail]

Looking good; this project was a long time coming, so it's great to see it wrapping up. South Street West has seen a lot of development over the last decade. I miss when blocktoberfest was on south Street, but the empty lots it used have since filled in. I think it helped spur a lot of development, so maybe it will do the same thing for Washington Ave.

[rowhomecity]

Originally Posted by Pennsport

Awesome project (keeping The Royal front façade) completing a long depressed section of west South Street. The city proper is really coming together - pandemic or no pandemic. In 2/3 years there won't be an open lot or vacant building from Oregon to Jefferson and river to river.

Royal Theater Apartments are Finished and Occupied, Townhomes Are Under Construction - OCF Realty

I would not call this project awesome. The architectural quality is complete garbage. It looks awful. And it also looks poorly constructed of cheap materials.

And to think they only paid $300,000 for three lots AND the original theater and this is the outcome, is just sad for Philadelphia.

Awful project. I love density. But we need some more design and construction standards in this city.

Im all for developers to make a profit, but this is prime real estate and they could of executed this much much better. This is not awesome IMO.

It looks like the units will fall apart in about 5 years time... which 7 years is a standard ROI investment for developers... so this is why the cheap construction is so encouraged because after they got their money. They do not care...

[skintreesnail]

Awesome might be the wrong word, but so is garbage. I've seen better and worse quality recently. My bar was pretty low on this one, but I think this is pretty decent infill using a historical property that was left to deteriorate for years under UCs stewardship. It's a shame in that regard, but I'm happy that at least the facade was preserved and it's over with. You'd be right though to say that there was some weirdness around this project. I remember seeing someone on SSP post a photoshopped pic of the developer or someone flipping everyone off from that weird small window next to the top of the preserved facade. Thought that was funny.

[thedirtypirate]

Originally Posted by rowhomecity

I would not call this project awesome. The architectural quality is complete garbage. It looks awful. And it also looks poorly constructed of cheap materials.

And to think they only paid $300,000 for three lots AND the original theater and this is the outcome, is just sad for Philadelphia.

Awful project. I love density. But we need some more design and construction standards in this city.

Im all for developers to make a profit, but this is prime real estate and they could of executed this much much better. This is not awesome IMO.

It looks like the units will fall apart in about 5 years time... which 7 years is a standard ROI investment for developers... so this is why the cheap construction is so encouraged because after they got their money. They do not care...

Disagree. It looks fine, if not, good.

[Duderino]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

Disagree. It looks fine, if not, good.

Yeah, I'll give it a middling grade. It's not offensive, but it would have definitely benefitted from using primarily brick to complement the preserved facade of the Royal Theater.

That being said, though, it's a very good thing this project is finally finished. It was a long time coming and will bring some much-needed vibrancy back to South Street.

[Pennsport]

It's awesome because it's happening and happening in its entirety. It's been vacant and empty lots for three decades. To me, this is an awesome outcome. Also, the design is fine. We are lucky in that we are one of the few cities with enough history and historically protected buildings as well as a huge stock of turn of the century housing to not need to define the city with new building. In my opinion, because of this, we can be less concerned with unique architectural features in new buildings. We already have unique architecture over basically the entirely of the city (outside of the NE). Infill should be practical, useful and frequent in our city IMO. Get more tax dollars, density and vibrancy in our neighborhoods.

Edit to add: Don't forget about the reverse happening all over the city as well. For a solid decade now, construction groups have taken formerly vacant non-descript factories, preserving any unique characteristics and changing them into super cool and interesting residential or work lofts.

[Hedonism]

Do a little more exploring in the NE, PP. It's not all airlite rows.


Anyway, that project looks fine ... Nice that they kept the original façade design.


And, yes, some of these new joints are slapped together and aren't going to last very long.

[Hedonism]

Originally Posted by Pennsport

Naw, I don't go to the NE Hedonism. You tell us all yourself about 2-3 times a day via your uber enlightening crime thread how dangerous the city is. You think I want to go into the heart of it by venturing into the NE? No thanks.

I figured you'd have some Section 8 properties up there ... Guess you're helping destroy other parts of the city first.


Anyway, I'm glad you enjoy 'my' crime thread.