Last fall, we told you that the surface parking lot at 1314 Spring Garden St. had shut down, to our surprise. This was an unexpected development because the lot was clearly getting quite a bit of use before it ceased operations.

We reached out to the company listing the property for sale, and they explained that the business model didn’t work anymore for this parking lot due to rising property taxes / use & occupancy taxes. Maybe that’s the case, maybe not. All we know for sure is that the property has been listed for sale on Loopnet for a number of months, but without a list price. As you might expect though, things have changed some since our last update.

We don’t know whether new owners have the property under agreement or whether the longtime owners are looking to redevelop their property, but something is definitely cooking here. Last night, Callowhill Neighborhood Association hosted a community meeting at which developers presented plans for a mixed-use building with retail on the first floor and a storage facility on the upper floors of the building. We don’t know how the neighborhood reacted to the project, but we would hope it wasn’t with a ringing endorsement.

In general, we ascribe to the theory that a surface parking lot is one of the worst uses for valuable real estate in our urban core. And it’s true that no building and a bunch of cars is a generally terrible use for land that could be otherwise improved. And yet, this project would be so much worse than a surface lot. A storage facility is used by a limited number of people on a relatively infrequent basis and functionally has the same value to a neighborhood as a giant cardboard box. While the retail space planned for the first floor of the building would add some something to the equation, it wouldn’t make up for the black hole created by the rest of the building.

The proposal is all the more frustrating because of all the momentum around the intersection of Broad & Spring Garden. Tower Place converted the old State Building into rental apartments a few years back. More recently, the Mural Lofts did the same with an old school. And don’t forget, a residential building and an officer tower are planned on the northwest corner. 1314 Spring Garden St. could be redeveloped into a mixed-use residential and retail building by right, and with a Broad Street Line stop just steps away that would seem to be the intuitive choice for the property. If the ZBA shoots down the storage facility idea, let’s hope for a future proposal that’s more in line with those ideas.