Over the last several years, we’ve seen quite a bit of construction activity on the eastern edge of the Grays Ferry neighborhood, what we’d describe as development overflow from Point Breeze. As time goes by, we see occasional projects a little further west in the neighborhood, but nothing resembling the critical mass of construction that happened in Graduate Hospital maybe fifteen years ago, or in Point Breeze half a dozen years back. Still, bit by bit Grays Ferry is turning over, and we’re starting to see construction crop up on more blocks in parts of the neighborhood further from Point Breeze. Take, for example, the construction we discovered not too long ago on the 3000 block of Titan Street. This construction is most evident from Grays Ferry Avenue, where you can see new buildings by looking through the parking lot for the shuttered Bottom Dollar supermarket.

As we mentioned, the entire northern side of this block is part of the commercial property associated with the former supermarket. The south side of the block is ostensibly residential, though we see only four homes on the block between 2004 and last year. And one of those homes has been sitting blighted and vacant for many of those years. But as the photo above shows quite clearly, things are changing on this block. Developers are currently building four homes at 3014, 3022, 3024, and 3048 Titan St., and since this group also owns 3044 Titan St., figure they’ll also build a home there in short order.

You can see, another developer already built two homes on this block, on the western end. Those homes sold last year for $350K and $375K, and could provide a sense of price points for the other homes now under construction. It’s probably safe to assume that the new homes will sell at a slight premium, since they’re not the first new homes on the block and there’s now a pattern of development on a formerly desolate street. With other developers owning several other lots on the block, it’s also safe to assume that more construction will soon follow.

Of course, the best thing that could happen to this block would be the revitalization of the huge parcel on its northern side. That property, which clearly wasn’t cut out for a supermarket, is zoned CMX-3 and could accommodate a mixed-use development with a couple hundred units as a by-right project. For the people who live on Titan Street and the people who will move there soon, we just hope that any future project on the Bottom Dollar site include town homes on Titan Street, to restore its historic layout and create a more comfortable setback from an apartment building.