If we’re being honest, we’ll admit that the 1400 block of N. 28th Street isn’t one of the best in Philadelphia. The west side of the block is actually in pretty good shape, with a row of mostly intact, mostly occupied two story homes. The east side is a bit of a different story though, with a smattering of three story homes mixed in with a bunch of vacant land. But things are changing quickly on this block, with two fistfulls (fists full?) of homes on the immediate horizon.

Most of the new construction on this block is coming from Argo Property Group, a developer that we’ve covered previously in Brewerytown. Recently, we covered their project on the 1200 block of N. 27th Street, where they’re currently building a duplex, a triplex, and a pair of six unit buildings. On 28th Street, they’re going in a different direction, opting for nine single family homes on non-contiguous lots. They’re calling the project Brewers Mill Townhomes, and they’ve already started construction on the first few homes.

In the image above, from a couple weeks ago, one of the new homes is part of the project, and the other is from another developer simply building a one off home (completing the second fist, if you will). More recently, work has progressed on additional units. Once the homes are finished, expect them to look something like this:

According to the project website, these homes will each have 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2,150 sqft of interior space, and a starting price of $425K. That’s an aggressive price point for this far north in Brewerytown, but given the number of homes being built on the block, we think that buyers will have considerable interest. Also, we suspect that the smart home features mentioned for these homes, like integrated Nest, Sonos, and Alexa, could move the needle toward those higher prices.

You probably noticed, in the renderings above, that the block has some vacant lots breaking up the new construction. The good news is that only three of those lots are owned by the City, with others already owned by developers. It’s quite likely that the Brewers Mill project will stimulate additional development on the block, and the several of the gaps in the rendering will be filled by new homes by the time the project is completed. We doubt they’ll update the rendering along the way, but it should be fun to compare and contrast the rendering and real life, maybe in a year or so, and see just how many other lots get filled in the interim.