Okay, we should probably be more specific here, as there are two furniture wholesaler buildings on Delaware Avenue. The property we are not talking about is 1130 N. Delaware Ave., which is a white and boxy industrial building, with old signs painted on its facade. This property has been subject to a couple different development schemes over the last decade or so, including a 2017 proposal that would have included an addition atop the historic Edward Corner building. That plan never came to fruition, and the latest we heard about that property was a plan from 2019 for a 10-story building with 244 units. Alas, it hasn’t materialized as of yet and we don’t see any permits on the property since the end of 2019.

If we’re not talking about this building, then you can probably guess that we’re referring to 1212 N. Delaware Ave., which sits just on the other side of Marlborough Street from the aforementioned property. This parcel has also seen some previous proposals, but due to its much smaller size, the past possibilities have been smaller in size than those next door. A 2016 plan, for example, would have entailed a 6-story building with retail on the first floor, office space on the second floor, and 38 units on the upper floors. The plan, however, never came to fruition, and the old furniture wholesale building remains intact.

This week though, we noticed a new permit pulled for this property, indicating that it could indeed get redeveloped some time in 2022. The new permit, much like the old one, calls for a six-story building. It will also have retail on the first floor and apartments on the upper floors. The biggest change appears to be that the office space is being swapped out in exchange for more density, as this plan calls for 48 units. This will be a nice little project, with easy access to Penn Treaty Park, Rivers Casino (if you’re into that sort of thing), and a jaunt under an overpass to Frankford Avenue. It’s a bit tough to tell from the elevations drawing, but it looks like it’ll be architecturally compatible with the larger building planned next door.

Of course, that big building is a key aspect of any long term planning on this stretch of Delaware Avenue, as it will add hundreds of additional people to the area and go a long way to making it feel more like its own neighborhood and not just a Fishtown offshoot. We confess we don’t know what’s holding up that project, and we would think it would have gotten building permits by now, ahead of the year-end change to the tax abatement. Here’s hoping that both projects move forward sometime soon, as 300ish units sounds like a far better use at this location, compared to the status quo.