We’ve been at this awhile, and we sometimes find ourselves considering some material for a potential post and spending a few minutes trying to remember whether we already covered it at some point. Such was the case with a property at the southeast corner of 5th & Master, where we recently spied a banner promoting an upcoming project. We had a nagging feeling that we’d written about this property before, but we snapped the photos anyway, just in case.

After digging through the archives, we realized that we have indeed covered this property in the past. A little over a year ago, we told you that developers were planning to demolish the existing structures here and replace them with a mixed-use project with 31 apartments, retail space, and a dozen parking spots. We expressed some skepticism about the plan, as the 6,700 sqft parcel didn’t seem to have enough size to accommodate both the desired number of parking spaces along with a retail space with any sort of worthwhile size. Perhaps the developers saw things the same way, or maybe they didn’t see a path at the ZBA, because they withdrew their proposal last summer.

Their new plan is to build seven homes with parking here, a plan that was approved by the ZBA last fall. That aforementioned banner on the property gives us an idea of what’s to come, and we’re thinking these will be some big and fancy homes. Also per the banner, the developers are calling the project North Point, which clearly makes the project 22% fancier.

This project is made all more exciting by the ongoing renovation of the former umbrella factory across the street. You can see, Core Realty is slowly making progress on this huge building in their effort to convert it into a 181 unit apartment building.

For years, as this building sat empty and blighted, it loomed over the area, casting a pall over the surrounding blocks. Now, as we’ve seen, there’s development happening in every direction, even to the west. We won’t suggest causation here, but there’s definitely a correlation between the renovation of the umbrella factory and the development nearby. At the very least, we don’t think that Rock Development wouldn’t be looking at high end townhomes at North Point if the umbrella factory was still sitting blighted across the street.