In the spring, we told you about Lombard Estates, an 11-home development going up on the 1800 block of Lombard Street. At the time, we had just come from a CCRA zoning meeting where neighbors and the developers seemed at odds over certain aspects of the project, including height, rear yard space, and the proximity of the planned homes to the existing homes on Addison Street. Also, neighbors were disturbed that the parking lot, which allowed egress from their rear yards, would disappear.

Fencing is up

It's a hole!

While we can certainly understand the concerns of near neighbors regarding the idea of new houses going up less than ten feet from some of their homes, it also made sense for this surface lot to be replaced by development, in this extremely desirable location. From what we’ve heard, the developer and the neighbors came to some sort of an agreement, the ZBA approved the project, and work has recently gotten underway.

Project rendering

In case you don’t recall, the project will include four 16′ wide homes, five 21′ wide homes (with 4,100 sqft of living space), one 31′ wide home, and one 40′ wide home, with three car parking, and 7,200 sqft of living space. While several of these homes, designed by Landmark Architectural Design, will be enormous, we suspect the developers will be able to find buyers, considering the quality location and of course convenient access to take-out beer at Tangier.

Front and back

It always brings us pleasure to see downtown surface parking lots developed, though we’d guess that some near neighbors who have used this lot for years are now parking-spot-less. With the (totally appropriate) development of this and other surface lots in Center City, it does beg the question of what car-owning residents can do for parking moving forward. Have we perhaps reached the point where it would make sense for somebody to build a few well-designed, pedestrian friendly (ie with commercial on the first floor) parking garages in the Rittenhouse or Graduate neighborhoods? Or is street parking sufficient? Or should everybody just get a bike already and stop worrying about parking?