A little less than a year ago, we visited the 2500 block of W. Oxford St. and discovered a block on the edge of Brewerytown that was full of potential. If we’re being less nice, we could alternately say the block looked like crap. The north side of the block was dominated by a large vacant lot. The south side had a few occupied homes and old industrial buildings, but also featured a row of half a dozen blighted homes. We were drawn here because the garage at 2538 W. Oxford St. had been listed for sale, but was taken off the market when the sellers couldn’t find any takers at a list price of $200K+. Back then, we opined that the block had potential, but we expected that nothing much would change on the block over the coming years.

Ten months later, we’re not wrong. The vacant lot remains. The blighted homes are still sitting vacant. The industrial buildings are untouched. But there should be some big changes on the horizon. Yesterday, @genbrewerytown posted an image of the garage we previously mentioned, but now it’s sporting a demolition notice. It turns out, developers bought the property in November, paying $150K. We don’t see any permits for the property just yet, though a row of three new homes would be permitted by right. Alternately, we’d prefer some more density, but we don’t know whether the community would like that idea.

As for the row of blighted homes, we see that a developer purchased five of them just a couple months ago. Again, we don’t see any permits on these properties just yet, but we’d expect either renovations, if the developers can save the existing buildings, or demolition and new construction. We’re hoping for the former but fully expect the latter.

But that’s not all! V2 Properties has bought two of the parcels that make up the large vacant lot on the north side of the street, along with another vacant lot on the south side. These guys don’t mess around, and we have to think they’ll be starting construction on new homes on this block in the upcoming months.

So it seems we were way off base with our assertion that the block wasn’t going to change much. Nobody likes being wrong, but in this case, we’re celebrating our incorrect assumption. Take it to the bank, folks, this block is going to look very different very soon. Trust us this time.