Let's try this again.
A couple years back, we excitedly told you about plans for forty-eight new homes at 2012 Wharton St., immediately next door to a proposed twenty-two home project at the corner of 20th & Wharton. The latter project ran into some tough sledding at the ZBA, which inspired the developers of the former project to put their plans on hold. The twenty-two home proposal was revised and got approval from the ZBA over the summer, the large and ugly warehouse at the corner has been demolished, and construction is set to get moving in March. So naturally, the developers for 2012 Wharton St. are now looking to bring their project back from purgatory.
A reminder, this property is enormous, stretching from Wharton to Reed Street and covering more than 3/4 of an acre. It's been home to a large warehouse for as long as just about anyone can remember, housing a print shop in recent decades. The building is actively being demolished from the inside. The proposal now on the table would demolish everything on the site and replace it with forty-six homes (down from forty-eight), each home with either one or two parking spots. Here's a look at a rendering from JKRP Architects which will give you an idea of what the new homes will look like.
A few days ago, a flyer started circulating, announcing a community meeting for this project. That meeting will take place on January 14th at 6pm at Gospel Temple Baptist Church at 1327 S. 19th Street. Oddly, the flyer included 2010 Wharton St. on its agenda despite that project getting approved by the ZBA over the summer, as we already mentioned. We've since seen a revised flyer floating around on Facebook that has removed 2010 Wharton St. from the agenda.
There's another flyer being distributed which takes a decidedly less professional approach.
To be clear, the meeting on Thursday night will cover a forty-six home project, not a "95 ($600,000) Condo Complex." If you'd like to learn more about the project, we encourage you to attend the meeting on Thursday. If you've never attended a community meeting in Point Breeze, it'll surely be an eye-opening experience.
This is probably the most important development proposed in the neighborhood in last 60 years. We understand that these are boring town homes, but if the developer gets frustrated and walks away for whatever reason, Point Breeze will never reach its full potential. For so many years, two warehouses have effectively cut off Point Breeze Avenue from a swath of the neighborhood, making the community less walkable and greatly reducing the attractiveness of the commercial corridor for businesses.
To this day, the corridor still has a ton of vacancy and you can count on one hand the number of new businesses that have opened in recent memory. The conversion of these two industrial sites into residential will open Point Breeze Avenue to the neighborhood to the east, and a bunch of new residents seeking neighborhood amenities will make it more attractive for businesses to locate on the neighborhood's commercial corridor. There are those that would like for these parcels to remain industrial, but even the amateur city planners among us would agree that residential is the sensible approach here. At the meeting on Thursday, expect to hear from amateur city planners that share this opinion and others who would strongly disagree. Should be a grand old time.
Disclosure: OCF Realty, the parent company of this website, is the broker for this project. Despite the flyer, OCF has no ownership at 2012 Wharton St.