Last fall, we told you about two new homes under construction on Palethorp Street, just north of Girard. Palethorp, in case you're unfamiliar, is a tiny north-south street just east of 2nd Street, which is lined with homes as you make your way up through South Kensington. At its beginning on Girard, there's a double-wide mixed-use property that was most recently home to a place called the Lodge 215. At some point in the last couple of years the clothing and furniture store closed its doors at 177 W. Girard Ave., and now a corner commercial space on Girard Avenue sits waiting for the next sucker entrepreneur.
The property has been on the market for over a year, and was originally listed at a price of half a million dollars. That seems high to us and apparently seemed high to everybody else because it's listed as under contract at a list price of $360K. The property has the double-wide commercial space which you can clearly see in the photo, and it also has two bilevel apartments above. One unit is liveable, the other is seemingly unfinished.
Hopefully, the new property owner will put a couple of bucks into the interior and exterior and create an attractive retail space for potential tenants. Girard has seen plenty of new businesses come on the scene in recent years, perhaps aided by the opening of the Superfresh at the corner of 2nd Street. And if the large projects supposedly in the pipeline on the southern end of South Kensington come to pass soon, spaces like this will become even more attractive, as foot traffic stands to increase dramatically. Will the neighborhood see an influx of hundreds of new residents? Will a new owner fix up this building? Will the signage for whatever business eventually opens here compare favorably with the pharmacy down the block? Just wait and see, folks. We'll know soon enough.