An individual named Negesh Aberra purchased the roughly 3,400 sqft vacant lot at 304 W. Master St. back in 2003, paying $20K for the property at sheriff’s sale. At the time, this probably constituted a reasonable price, considering the state of the real estate market in South Kensington at the time. To put a finer point on it, things were still transitioning in Northern Liberties back then, with the Piazza still roughly 6 years away from opening, so developers weren’t exactly clamoring to buy properties on the other side of Girard Avenue. Needless to say, times have changed.
Aberra held onto the property for a decade and a half, using it for surface parking and offering it for sale a couple of times without finding a buyer. Finally, a few months back, a developer took the parcel off the hands of the longtime owner, paying $650K and providing a pretty strong 3200% return on investment. Now sure, he would have done three times better if he would have had $20K in Amazon stock over the same time period, but let’s not split hairs, this proved to be a tremendous investment. If the investment goes one tenth as well for the new owners, they’ll surely be quite thrilled.
The first step in seeing a return on investment will require a trip to the ZBA, where the developers will seek a variance to build a five-story building with retail on the first floor and ten apartments on the upper floors. The ZBA step is necessary because the property is zoned ICMX, which allows for commercial and industrial uses as a matter of right, but not residential use. We get the industrial angle, as the property is just a few steps away from the N. American Street industrial corridor. But it’s not right on the corridor, so residential uses are probably even more appropriate.
Right across the street, G-8 Life recently converted an old industrial building into a mixed-use project with fifty units and ground floor retail. Around the corner on the 1400 block of Germantown Ave., we’ve seen several homes and multi-family buildings get built in the last few years, and a couple of sizable apartment buildings are under construction as we speak. Right next door is the roastery for Reanimator Coffee, an awesome space which also includes a coffee shop that would welcome some additional customers. Given that there’s currently nothing at 304 W. Master St., and considering some of the other new projects nearby, we believe a small apartment building with retail makes all the sense in the world here. We just hope the ZBA agrees.