1307 Germantown Ave. covers almost an acre in the southern section of South Kensington, but it’s quite possible that it’s never caught your eye. The sizable property has frontage on both Germantown Avenue and N. American Street, but neither side is especially notable, with corrugated metal fencing on the western side and some slightly more attractive metal fencing on the east side, joining a low slung warehouse building. Emils Gourmet, a deli meat manufacturer, has been based here for a number of years, but we would argue that the dramatic uptick in residential development in the area has been like a ticking clock for this business at this location.

Sure enough, it appears that the clock will soon strike midnight for Emil’s presence in South Kensington, as developers at Streamline have the property under agreement and have big plans for the site. This plan calls for the demolition of everything on the property and the construction of 26 duplexes, 6 triplexes, and a mixed-use building on N. American Street with roughly 10K sqft of retail on the ground floor, 120 units on the upper levels, and 45 underground parking spots. Add in the parking associated with the other buildings on the site, and the project will offer a total of 106 parking spots. Design work was done by Harman Deutsch Ohler Architecture, and since the project went to Civic Design Review this week, we can share a site plan and some renderings, to give you a sense of what’s in store for the property.

This project joins a pair of other sizable projects in the immediate vicinity, Liberty Square and Dwell Luxury Apartments (formerly Soko Lofts), but takes a slightly different approach. Liberty Square includes a total of 201 units over three large apartment buildings. Once it’s finished, Dwell will include over 300 units, also exclusively in large buildings. The project at 1307 Germantown Ave. reduces the scale for half the property, offering a more varied mix of units than the others.

We should note, the lead time for construction for both Liberty Square and Dwell stretched across a number of years, in part because it’s so complicated to underwrite and build such large buildings. Duplexes and triplexes, on the other hand, are pretty straightforward on both counts, which should shrink the timeline for this portion of the 1307 Germantown Ave. project. Assuming they get the necessary approvals in place, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the low rise portion of this project break ground before the end of the year.