Yesterday, we mentioned Wood Street, one of the few cobblestone streets left in town. Last week, we were traveling down another cobblestone street, Trenton Avenue, and spotted a new construction project on an adjoining block. Currently, two homes have been framed out at 2147 and 2149 E. Sergeant St., formerly a vacant lot.

In the past

Current view

You can see, there’s a vacant lot immediately next door to the two homes under construction- this will also soon be a third home, built by the same developer. 2100 E Sergeant St LLC purchased all three lots earlier this year for $158K, and initially wanted to build three garage-front homes here. They presented to EKNA and ORCA several months ago, and encountered significant opposition to this plan, according to this thread on Fishtown.us. After two no-shows at the ZBA, the developers scrapped the garages and decided to build the homes by right, with designs from Harman Deutsch.

Our experience in this area is that parking is not nearly as challenging as it is in other parts of town. With that in mind, it seems a little curious that the developers were planning for garages in these homes in the first place. While dedicated off-street parking is a valuable commodity in some neighborhoods, a garage almost always significantly hampers the interior design of a row home. Kitchens are often forced to the second floor, and a third bedroom is commonly stuck behind the garage. Fortunately, the community was able to convince the developers to go in a different direction. As a result, the homes will be much more intuitively designed, and possibly easier to sell.

Now, if only they didn’t have those third floor setbacks…