Just a few steps from the Piazza, Northern Liberties is picking up a new, albeit much smaller apartment building. 1018 Germantown Ave. was home to a pretty cool looking industrial building which was used as a printing business and a machine shop back in the day. We couldn’t tell you what it was used for more recently, but we suspect it’s been sitting empty in recent years, given its ragged appearance.

You may have noticed the ‘For Sale’ sign on the building in the image above, so it should come as no surprise that the building was purchased by developers and the old industrial building is now gone. In its place is a construction site where those developers are working on a 6-story mixed-use building which will have 49 apartments and some commercial space on the first floor. The steel work appears to be done on the first floor, but there’s still quite a bit of framing yet to come.

The owners of the property are actively searching for a tenant for their 2,400 sqft retail space, and have listed it on Loopnet. Fortunately for us (and for you too), this listing includes some renderings, which give us a sense of what the building will ultimately look like. Based on these renderings, we can expect a fairly straightforward contemporary apartment building which could accommodate any number of potential tenants.

Appropriately, the listing points out all the other businesses located in the area. From Target to Silk City, from Standard Tap to Sugarhouse, there’s no shortage of commerce in this area. Of course, we can imagine a scenario in which potential tenants might balk at the incredibly close proximity to I-95.

Then again, we’ve seen people buy high end homes even closer to the highway in this neighborhood, not to mention in Pennsport, Queen Village, and Fishtown. So Piazza proximity would probably trump I-95 views for this building, both for possible commercial tenants and people looking to live upstairs. Oh, and don’t forget, there’s a swimming pool half a block away too!