Just a few years ago, two corners at the intersection of 20th & Parrish were vacant lots. Now, two new homes stand on the northwest corner and another one is on the southwest corner. This speaks to the development we've seen in Francisville of late and the rapid disappearance of desirable vacant lots.
Nearby, we recently noticed that yet another vacant lot is disappearing, this time at 825 N. 20th St.
According to the permits, this will soon be a triplex, which we would speculate will be condoed out. It's a little hard to tell from the image above, but the parcel is quite large, at 24' x 100'. A "normal" Philadelphia row home is only 16' wide, so all of the units will have tons of space. The developer, 20th Street Properties LLC, has several other projects in the neighborhood, which we told you about last month. Like many of the others, this parcel was acquired from PHA, but this may be the only parcel that was a vacant lot and not a blighted building prior to acquisition.
Also similar to several other projects from this developer, this property will be set back from the street. While other buildings have utilized the space in front for parking, we're not sure that this will be feasible here. And there's no mention of parking in the permits from what we can tell. It's possible that the building is set back to pay respect to the two buildings immediately to the south, pictured above, which were built about fifteen years ago. Why Community Ventures opted for the setback back then, we couldn't tell ya.
Still, even with the sort of goofy setback, it's great to see this lot being developed.