Here’s a profoundly uncontroversial take: We love Passyunk Avenue. We appreciate the way it combines modern day Philadelphia with an old school South Philly vibe. We dig the restaurants, the coffee shops, the boutiques, the people watching, the street fairs, the fountain, and so much more. But the Passyunk Avenue of today is a relatively new animal. Up until about 20 years ago, Passyunk was more like a place frozen in time, better represented by King of Jeans and A Man’s Image than a physical therapy office and Barcelona.
As the corridor’s offerings have expanded and it has stepped into the 21st century, the surrounding area has experienced a boom. We’ve seen countless rehabs, along with a number of new construction homes, apartments, and mixed-use buildings. Underused properties have leveled up and outdated commercial / industrial uses have fallen by the wayside, in favor of more residences.
Fitting very nicely into this narrative is the property at 900-08 McKean St., which sits about five blocks from Passyunk Avenue. Back in the day, Penn Syrup had an industrial operation here, but more recently this property was home to auto shop Mike’s Car Care. About a year ago, we visited this property and shared that Mike’s was closed and that a project with 24 units over commercial would soon rise at this corner. While work hasn’t quite started on the new building, the former Mike’s is now very much gone. This is a decent indication that we could see construction start sometime soon.
Perhaps you noticed, in the “before” photo of Mike’s, there was some framing in the background of the image. Let’s get a clearer view of said framing, shall we?
Maybe you also noticed that, in the “after” photos of 900 McKean St., there’s no framing to be seen. Not only is there no framing, there are no buildings there at all!
Back in 2020, we saw a demo notice on a warehouse at 2012 S. 9th St., the property pictured above. At the time, we told you to expect six homes here, and the framing which we photoed last year was the beginning of the construction process for those homes. We even shared some renderings, which honestly looked pretty sweet.
Looking at public record, we see numerous violations for this project, requiring that the developers remove the framing, fill in the foundations, and level the ground to grade. We can’t speak to what happened here, just that we can’t think of any other project offhand that has gotten this far in construction, only to have the framing removed due to City violations. To add insult to injury, the building permits for the project have expired, and getting new permits could be costly and time consuming.
In short, we don’t know when or if we will see this project or any project start (resume?) work here. In the meantime, it seems like a safe bet that the mixed-use project on McKean will get started before we see any movement on Emily Street. We can’t say we would have seen that coming when we last visited this site just a little over a year ago.