The other day, a friend of ours that lives in Pennsport shot us a text with an image of a zoning notice at 1422 S. Front St., an address that rang a bell. Then it hit us. We wrote about this property over a year ago, blasting out to anyone who would listen that a development opportunity existed on Front Street between Reed and Dickinson. Now someone is taking advantage of said opportunity.
Fifteen months ago, the warehouse you see pictured above was "For Sale By Owner" with an asking price of $2.75M. At the time, we indicated that the owners would need to reduce the price in order to move the property, which covers almost 13K sqft. By August, they hired a Realtor and dropped the asking price to $2M. And a few months ago, the property sold for $1.35M. Not for nothing, but the new owners actually got a pretty solid deal in the end.
Those new owners intend to demolish the warehouse you see today and replace it with fifteen new homes. We have not seen plans, but it stands to reason that about half the homes will front Front Street (that looks funny but it's grammatically correct) and the other half will front Howard Street. According to the zoning notice, each of those new homes will have a private driveway and ostensibly a front-loading garage. The plan for garages wouldn't eliminate any street parking, but we still wouldn't be sad to see a revised version of this project with a drive-aisle and rear-access parking. Wishful thinking perhaps but we'll see what the community has to say.
This collection of new homes will join a number of similar projects nearby, further beefing up the new resident population in Pennsport. Unlike the other projects we've covered in recent years, these homes will have highway views. But if you have to live next to I-95, this is just about the best situation you could hope for- the shielding really makes a big difference.
We couldn't tell you whether the new owners of this property learned about it because of us, but we'd like to think that they did. And as such, we'd appreciate a small gift when their project comes to fruition. How about one of the new homes? Seems perfectly reasonable to us.