We've been waiting for South Broad Street to take a big step forward for years, but to date, progress has been fairly incremental. Sure, there have been changes, like the reopening of the Broad Street Diner, the reawakening of long-shuttered Boot & Saddle, and the slow-moving construction of the armory apartments. We'd wager that any kind of sea change won't happen here until there are shovels in the ground at one of the corners of Broad & Washington. And while that could happen sometime soon on the northeast or northwest corners, uh, we've heard this song before. Repeatedly.
So for now, it's one project at a time. And that brings us to 1111 S. Broad St., where a reader noticed a demolition notice and brought it to our attention. This building was most recently home to a mechanic shop, but developers purchased the building a little over a year ago. This past summer, Passyunk Post gave us the lowdown on the plan from Ampere Capital Group to demolish the building and replace it with a five-story mixed-use structure with ground-floor commercial and 42 apartments. With the demolition notice now posted, it seems like this thing is a go.
Since the 7,600 sqft parcel is zoned CMX-3, this project is entirely by right. Regrettably, that will mean that the project will include about a dozen parking spots, square footage which will unfortunately come at the expense of the retail space. With a subway stop mere steps away, parking seems like it would be a huge waste, but tell that to the guys including 53 parking spots at the armory project just a couple blocks to the south.
We'll be glad to see this project get moving, and we'll be interested to see what will come next. Perhaps we'll see Philip's Restaurant come back to life? Maybe someone will do something with the old Meglio Furs? Or for a moment, we'll allow ourselves to dream that something will finally happen at Broad & Washington. But we ain't holding our breath for that.
Update: Post has been changed to reflect parking requirement for CMX-3 district.