Until the listing was removed a couple of months ago, the huge red building at 1406 Fairmount Ave. was on the market, listed for $1.4M. Most recently an Apostolic church, the building is 56′ wide by 115′ deep, and the interior square footage is about 20K.

Big and red

While it seems that no one was willing to take on this property at the somewhat high asking price, we’re wondering what its future holds. With other market rate development on the horizon on the 1400 block of Fairmount, and all sorts of construction, renovation, and adaptive reuse happening on surrounding blocks, this building should become more desirable as time passes. On the other hand, with 55 low income apartments potentially being built across the street by Project H.O.M.E., that might not necessarily be the case. In a perfect world, we’d love to see condos or rental apartments in this building, a la the Loonstyn conversion currently under construction at 16th and Fairmount. Anyone have a better idea?

Ultimately, our sense is that the fate of this immediate area is closely tied to the Divine Lorraine Hotel, just on the other side of Broad St. While that building continues to waste away, its blight sucks the energy out of the blocks that surround it and makes the immediate area less attractive to developers. Hopefully, we’ll see progress at both 1406 Fairmount St. and the Divine Lorraine sometime soon- for now, we’ll bet the on the former before the latter.

The Divine Lorraine looks on