If you ran Broad Street on Sunday, and you’re a tourist, perhaps you made your way to Pat’s or Geno’s to reload after your triumphant ten mile run. If you did indeed visit either establishment over the weekend, it’s possible you noticed some relatively new ‘For Sale’ signs in the immediate vicinity.

We’ve covered both of these properties before, and for different reasons. There was a vacant building at 848 Wharton St. for many years, until it partially collapsed after a snowstorm in 2014. It was demolished soon after and to be honest, the vacant lot is a better look at the corner than the empty building. Still, it’s not ideal.

1304 E. Passyunk Ave. is a different story entirely. For years, this was an empty asphalt lot, with weeds growing from the cracks in the pavement and a worn looking sign on the wall advertising Pat’s Steaks. Then something entirely odd happened. In 2011, the Rachael Ray Show transformed the lot into a garden space, installing planters and a pergola, and hiring local artists to paint the murals you see in the image above. After several years, it’s still in operation as a garden and still looks pretty great.

As we said though, both of these properties are now listed for sale. 848 Wharton St. is available for $450K, and the Passyunk Ave. garden lot is listed for $859K. The former property is zoned for mixed-use, and we think would accommodate 3 units and ground-floor retail by right. The latter lot is zoned for single family use, and by right we don’t think you could build more than one home here. So we’d think that anyone buying these lots at these prices would probably try for a variance to build something beyond what’s permitted by the code. And that could be a problem.

Of course, we can’t visit this intersection without bringing up the vacant northeast corner of 9th & Wharton. We were so excited, three years ago, when developers bought this property, incidentally, from the same person selling the other two properties described above. Three years later though, nothing’s doing. What happened?

This property is zoned for single family use, but the developer wants to build mixed-use here. And frankly, given that there’s a 24-hour cheese steak place across the street, that makes perfect sense. But the community pushed back against the project, according to Passyunk Post, citing parking concerns as the main objection. The last version of this project, presented in late 2015, included 18 apartments and over 4,000 sqft of commercial space, and would have been a great addition to the neighborhood, in our estimation. Alas, the parcel continues to sit empty and we haven’t heard anything about plans to develop here in quite some time.

So we’d say buyer beware for the lots now listed for sale. If you have a plan that works financially that doesn’t require a zoning variance, then you should feel free to put in that offer. If you’re going to need a variance of any kind, understand you could have a real challenge getting community support. Because, you know, parking.