Early this summer, we told you about some nascent construction activity at 4215 Chestnut St., previously the site of a catering hall. At that point, we guessed from the location, the scale of the building, and the construction permit that we found online that the building would be another structure meant to house students attending the nearby universities. After all, the much publicized and controversial new construction at 4044 Chestnut Street, which is a similar development on the surface and only two blocks away, was built solely to house students. Since we have some contacts with the developer, we thought it would be a good idea to reach out and find out some more details.
It turns out that we were off about our original prediction of student housing at this site. HOW Properties, the developers, seem to think that this area is already fairly saturated with apartments and are looking to change things up with 28 condo units. Ownership new construction seems to be fairly underrepresented in this area, and we think it's a fantastic change of pace. As we stated in our original post about this building, this is going to be a 5 story building, with the first story being parking for residents, with the residential units above. The developers were kind enough to provide us with a rendering for the new building.
Despite the curb cut on Chestnut Street, this looks like a pretty interesting project and it's clear that the architects at Morrissey Design were instructed to design something of a higher caliber than most of the student housing developments nearby. As of now, the developers say that there will be 8 one bedroom and 20 two bedroom units. For the one bedrooms, they'll be shooting for a price point of the upper $100Ks and the two bedrooms will be in the upper $200K range. We'll be tuning in to see how these units sell- it may be indicative whether or not this area could handle more of this kind of development.