Look out South Kensington, here comes the next wave of high end homes. PRDC Properties, the company that redeveloped the corner of 13th & South and is currently building Liberty Square near 5th & Fairmount, is behind this 36-home project, which will span a few different blocks around the intersection of Howard & Montgomery. They’re calling the project Regent Row, and according to a story from Philly.com, they’ll be breaking ground on the first phase as soon as next month. Currently, the properties that are slated to be redeveloped are a mix of vacant land and old industrial buildings.

The first phase calls for ten homes on the west side of Howard Street, with another half dozen homes around back on the phenomenally named but rarely noticed Waterloo Street. The homes will be among the fanciest and largest in the neighborhood, and will include 3,400 sqft of living space, with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, and parking. We’re also digging on the architecture work from Atrium Design, as they’ve thought up homes that will have a very contemporary appearance but will still evoke the industrial history of the neighborhood. Also, it appears that the homes built in the first phase won’t look the same as the homes built in future phases, which is a welcome change of pace from what we typically see for projects of this size.

As we mentioned above and as you can clearly see in the aerial rendering, this project will entail 36 new homes on a few different blocks around the same area. The developers are taking the unusual approach of handling four separate development sites under the umbrella of a single project, at least for now. Depending on the timeline for future phases, we can envision a scenario in which the western sites ultimately fall under a different moniker, but that’s impossible to predict at the moment.

Also worth noting, the prices for the project start at $569K, pre-construction. We have a feeling that the prices will immediately go up as soon as shovels go into the ground, and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see the last homes in the first phase sell for $100K more than the pre-construction price. As we said, these are some of the biggest homes we’ve seen in the neighborhood, and we believe that people that had been thinking about buying in Fishtown will be strongly tempted by these homes to cross the El and come over to South Kensington. When you consider that Frankford Avenue is less than a five minute walk away, it starts to feel like a bit of a no brainer, actually.