Three new homes should be on the way in Fishtown at Thompson & Colona, a corner we brought to your attention last year. Back then, we showed you a long vacant home with ivy-like sideburns on it sides wall and an enormous overgrown side yard with a fancy and flowery fence.
When we wrote about 1244 E Colona St. last summer, the property was under contract. It officially sold last November for $149K. Since then the overgrown yard has been trimmed, and recently developers appeared before the Fishtown Neighbors Association, which supported plans to demolish the building, create three lots from one and build a single-family home on each, making for three in all. Two of the homes will have garages.
Permits to demolish this property first appeared in 2008; in its history the owner had been cited for violations numerous times by L&I for an unsecured vacant building, for the overgrown weeds and plants, and for exterior rubbish and garbage, among others. So action here has been like a sub waiting to get on the field for some time. With consistent building across Fishtown, it's hardly a surprise that developers are looking to build here. To turn one lot at $149K into three new single-family homes appears as though it will provide a valuable investment and illustrates how excited developers are about projects in this neighborhood right now.
While we have yet to see the renderings, one home will front Susquehanna and the other two will front Colona Street. Just a block away, along the 1200 block of E Fletcher St., we told you in June about three new single-family homes being built. That project will actually include one new home on Colona St., which faces the front of the vacant building pictured above that will soon be demolished. So right in this tucked away little parcel near the elbow bone of I-95 and Girard, that means six new single-family homes in a really short period of time. And you know even more are coming soon.