The other night, at the monthly South Philadelphia H.O.M.E.S. zoning meeting, developers presented a proposal for two duplexes at 1256-58 S. 20th St., the northwest corner of 20th & Wharton. Looking at the corner currently, you see a large vacant lot. This project will only fill about half of this lot, as the rest is owned by another developer.

The lot

At the meeting, a representative from KJO Architecture presented plans for two 3-story duplexes which would totally transform this corner. To give you an idea how, the corner currently has vacant lots on the northwest and southeast corners, a giant warehouse full of construction supplies on the southwest corner, and a corner store on the northeast corner.

Looking north, corner store is on the right and OCF Coffee House is just out of sight in the distance

Warehouse. Might someday make a nice apartment conversion...

The duplexes will have one bedroom units on their first floors and two-bedroom units on their upper floors. An odd topic that came up at the meeting was just how “high end” the construction would be. The architect expressed that the apartments would be “very nice” and not “super high end,” which seemed to satisfy some members of the community but not others. Is there any other neighborhood where residents would prefer something that’s less nice?

Looks pretty nice to us...

Seems to us that people would want new buildings in their neighborhood to be as nice as possible, no?