We recently discovered plans to redevelop 3900 Main St. while perusing the Zoning Board Calendar, and the address felt oddly familiar. Then we realized that we had written about this sizable chunk of vacant land over five years ago. Yeesh, we've been doing this a long time.
Back when we last visited this property, it was owned by a company called Brunson Ross, which is surely attached to the family Dorothy Brunson. Ms. Brunson, for those that are unaware, was the the first African-American woman to own a radio station and start a television station, and operated WGTW-TV 48 out of a space across the street thoughout the 1990s and early 2000s. According to a commenter from our previous story, there was a warehouse at 3900 Main St. until the early 1990s which was used for decades as storage for a local record chain.
In 2008, the owners of the property came up with a plan to build a nine-story apartment building on this property, with 58 apartments and 76 parking spots. We'd guess that the plan wasn't so popular with the community, or that the Great Recession claimed another victim, as it was withdrawn in 2011. Soon after, the property was listed for sale at a price of $3.4M, but it seems nobody was interested at that price and the property finally sold earlier this year for a relative bargain of $950K. We see that the new owners are now proposing 27 new homes for this lot, each of which will rise four stories. The project goes to the ZBA next week.
For some reason, we can't find any more info on the project at this time. Surely the project went before the Wissahickon Neighbors Civic Association– is there anyone who attended a meeting that can shed some light on the project? We're particularly interested in how the homes will relate to the river and how the developers will account for the flooding factor which seems like a real thing given the proximity to the river. On the other hand, these homes will have some amazing views!