With the weather warming up and Memorial Day quickly approaching, summery thoughts are starting to creep into our consciousness. That’s probably got something to do with how we found ourselves wandering down the 2000 block of Lombard Street the other day. The Lombard Swim Club makes its home on the south side of this block, and even though we’re not members, we still appreciate second hand swimming pool enjoyment.

This block has changed quite a bit in the last few months. For decades, the middle of the north side of the block was dominated by 2031 Lombard St., a building that we believe was originally used for industrial purposes. Somewhere along the line, it became a parking lot for a couple hundred cars, and that’s how it was used for a good long time. But no longer. A little over a year ago, we called this property to your attention, noting that it had been sold to developers and would close around the end of 2017. Last summer, we learned that the developers had come up with a plan to build a new building here with 14 units and 14 parking spaces. Since then, the building has been torn down.

The plans for 14 units called for a trip to the ZBA and we have to think that it ran into some tough sledding with neighbors or CCRA, because the developers have scrapped them in favor of a different plan. The current iteration of the project calls for eight homes, with parking accessed from Addison Street. It appears the project is moving forward by right but we don’t exactly understand how. The homes will range in width from 19.3′ to 21.7′, and each will rise four stories. It’s certainly possible to build four stories at 38′ of height, but it’s not ideal. A few more feet of height makes a huge difference for a four-story building.

We don’t yet know how these homes will be priced, but we would assume that they’ll come in at prices starting with a 2 that’s then followed by 6 numbers. The developers paid roughly $6.6M for the property, which means they’re into each lot for $825K before soft costs and demolition. Given the location and the expected footprints of the homes though, we expect they’ll find buyers at those price points, which means these homes will join other residential projects on surrounding blocks that have sprung up over the last few years with seven figure sale prices. It’s amazing to consider that there were almost no new construction projects in southern Rittenhouse until a handful of years ago, considering the prices people are willing to pay for the recent wave of new homes.