If you haven’t gone past the intersection of 22nd & South recently, you might not realize that a new five-story building is making some nice progress on the northeast corner. 2145 South St. was home to Omega Pizza for more years than we can remember, offering the rare combination of mediocre pizza and a nice selection of mostly overpriced beer. Back in January, we showed you that Omega Pizza was getting demolished and reminded you that Alterra Property Group was planning a building with 20 apartments and a Wawa in its place. That building is now taking shape.

As we were thinking about this project, we realized that we never really shared the final renderings of this project, only having passed along a blurry image of an early iteration from a community meeting. With construction moving along at a solid clip, this seems like as good a time as any to share the renderings from the Alterra website. As you might guess from the sign on the property, Coscia Moos did the design work.

You’ll recall, this intersection has already seen a CVS open on its southeast corner and earlier this year, a Starbucks opened on the northwest corner. With Wawa on the horizon for sometime in 2018, 22nd & South is getting increasingly corporate, and this thought that would have seemed quite unlikely for South Street West just a few years ago. And don’t forget, there’s an Unleashed by Petco at 23rd & South, along with local chains City Fitness, Rita’s, and Honey’s all on the 2100 block. The new building and this tenant are the logical next step for South Street West, and we imagine we’ll see a couple of similar projects with other credit tenants pop up on the corridor in the coming years.

And to think, just a handful of years ago, we heard that businesses weren’t interested in retail space on South Street. Maybe times have changed.