If you’ve lived in Philadelphia for any period of time, you’ve surely heard of local moving company Mambo Movers. Their trucks are everywhere, especially during the summer months when most people are doing their moving from one place to another. They have a memorable logo, with a drawing of two guys pushing a rhino into the back of a truck. And in case you’ve never visited their website, we highly recommend it as a source of surprisingly funny and informative content which we imagine surpasses most other moving companies around.

Anyway, Mambo Movers was based, for years, in a building at 1205 S. 15th St. in Point Breeze, but has moved to a new facility in Southwest Philly. The former home of Mambo Movers is a nondescript one-story garage as seen on 15th Street. But the property runs street to street, and a second building (or an extension of the 15th Street building, we can’t tell) is actually pretty cool looking from Carlisle Street. Check out the contrast:

With Mambo moving on to greener pastures, the owners of the building placed it on the market over the summer, seeking about $1.5M. The listing expired a couple months back. Last week though, we discovered a zoning permit on the property to demolish the existing building(s) and construct a new building with retail on the first floor and sixteen apartments. This by-right project will utilize a low income bonus to bump up its density numbers, and it appears it won’t include any parking. And while we’ll be sorry to see the Carlisle facade disappear, this project will be a welcome addition to the eastern edge of Point Breeze, adding some great density to the area.

While we’re here, we should mention that Federal Beer is located just a few doors to the north, at the corner of 15th & Federal. From the looks of it on the outside, you wouldn’t necessarily expect their strong inventory of high end beers, but they have a tremendous selection behind the counter. So check ’em out! And by the way, their building is pretty sweet, too.

Finally, we should say that the title of this post is a clumsy reference to the song Mambo Number 5, popularized in 1999 by a horrible Lou Bega sample/cover. Here’s a link to the original, by Perez Prado, which is worth a listen. We won’t provide a link to the Lou Bega version, for obvious reasons.