Westrum Development Company was an early believer in the potential of the Brewerytown neighborhood, building out the Brewerytown Square development over an entire city block about a decade and a half ago. Though Westrum owned several other sizable properties in the area, they didn’t move forward with any other projects in this area for quite some time, surely due to the housing crash in 2008 and perhaps because there wasn’t enough demand for their initial offering. A few years back, Westrum started their comeback in the neighborhood with the Flats at 31 Brewerytown, a row of rental units on the 3000 and 3100 blocks of Thompson Street. They followed that up with the Point at 31 Brewerytown, a 50-unit building on 31st Street. Now, they’re working through the Hub at 31 Brewerytown, their biggest project in the area since Brewerytown Square.

This project calls for three buildings, with the first one located at the northwest corner of 31st & Master. When all is said and done, the project will entail 201 units, roughly the same number of parking spots, approximately 6,000 sqft of retail, and a swimming pool, ‘natch. You can see in the photos, building #1 is proceeding along nicely, which could mean that work will start soon on phase two, which will be located to the north. The western building will arrive somewhere down the line, as a third phase of the project. As has been their typical approach on projects in this neighborhood, Westrum has gone with modular construction for the building as the corner, and we have to think that will extend to the other buildings in the development.

If you combine all three of the 31 Brewerytown projects together, you get roughly 350 new units added to the neighborhood in just a handful of years. That would be a strong number if that were all the development in Brewerytown, but you’re well aware that there are plenty of other projects that have come online in the last few years, including the Pyramid Lofts, the Fairmount @ Brewerytown, and dozens of other one-off projects around the neighborhood. And of course, there are others still to come, like the Otto Brewerytown and MM Partners’ conversion of the former Red Bell Brewery, both just up the street.

To be sure, any questions Westerum might have had about Brewerytown ten years ago are put to bed at this point. Today, Brewerytown Square seems like a prescient move, and anyone that’s lived there since the beginning has seen unending changes on the surrounding blocks since they moved to the area. They should expect those changes to continue ’til the empty land runs out.