The past year or so has brought a whirlwind of change to 5th Street in South Kensington, and since it all seems to be going pretty well, how about a little bit more? Over just a few days during the summer of 2015, we told you about two major projects coming to the 1200 block of N. 5th Street. We weren't totally sure that either of these projects would happen, let alone both. But if you visit this block today, you'll see that there's a bunch of construction on the east and west side of the street.
As we told you previously, this project will entail a total of 45 units, with 14 duplexes on 5th Street, 7 duplexes on Orkney Street, a mixed-use building at 5th & Thompson, and a dog park on Orkney Street. You can see in the photo above that construction progressing nicely. Here's an idea of what's coming, thanks to the architects at Harman Deutsch.
Looking across the street, we see that the other project is also totally happening. This project will eventually mean 29 units, 20 parking spaces, no retail, and absolutely no dog park. Eh, it's fine, people will just walk around the corner.
We told you that the project on the east side of the block will include a mixed-use building on the southeast corner of 5th & Thompson- but the property at the southwest corner of this intersection has been sitting empty for quite some time. About a year ago, developers got a variance from the ZBA to build a quadplex here but for some reason now they're going back to the board for a variance to build a mixed-use building with three apartments and a ground-floor commercial space. Does anyone know what happened? On the plus side, more neighborhood retail!
You may have noticed in the first image above that it looks like there's active work happening just a block to the north at the long blighted former umbrella factory at 5th & Master. A little less than a year ago, we told you that Core Realty was planning a residential conversion for this building and that we believed it would finally get redeveloped. With hundreds of new residents coming in the next few years for that project, along with the two large projects on the 1200 block, we'd think that any possible retail tenant will be sitting pretty. What kinds of tenants do people expect to see in the future at 5th & Thompson?