About half a year ago, a reader noticed a demolition notice at 1111 S. Broad St. and we told you about plans for a new mixed-use building coming soon to this location. In the time that's passed since then, the two-story building most recently home to a mechanic shop has been demolished, just as the notice predicted.
Our original story discussed a by-right five-story building for this property with ground-floor commercial, a dozen parking spots, and 42 apartments. At some point since then, the project has grown a wee bit, and will now rise six stories and include fifty-three residential units. We know this thanks to the Civic Design Review packet recently posted to the City website, a document that also includes a bunch of renderings from Harman Deutsch to give us an idea of exactly what we can expect here.
The building actually looks pretty good to us, but there's one thing in the rendering that's nagging us just a little. Now we enjoy Papa Johns as much as the next guy, but doesn't that little two-story building look a little silly in between the Rock School building and the proposed six-story building? One would imagine that the developers tried hard to buy that building but the owners weren't interested in selling. Alas.
The first-floor plan shows that the building will have a 1907 sqft commercial space on the first floor (would have been perfect for a relocated Papa Johns!) a parking area accessed from Alter Street, and three residential loft units with separate entrances. Those units, per the plans, will lay out like two-bedroom townhomes and you can see they'll offer a ton of living space. Another fifty units will be built on floors 2-6, with ten units per floor. We'd wager that all of these units will be listed as rentals. Considering that we're looking at a lot size of just over 10K sqft, the developers are doing an impressive job in terms of density, and on a by-right project no less. Let's hear it for the CMX-3 zoning designation working out pretty well, for a change.
Of course, this project is happening as South Broad Street is about to see a boatload of new construction, notably with the dueling vacancies at Broad & Washington soon getting developed. Probably. We hope. While those other projects will dwarf this one in terms of scale, all of the newer projects in the image above will bring added life and commerce to Broad Street, Washington Avenue, and the surrounding neighborhoods. From the smaller projects to the huge, it should be a fascinating few years ahead for this area.