Though East Girard has gotten much of the press over the last few years, West Girard has experienced serious growth as well, most notably with the opening of the supermarket a five years back at 2nd Street. Aside from that large project that included the market, we've seen many existing buildings get renovated on West Girard, as was the case with the UPS Store at 3rd Street, and some new buildings rise as well, like the building that's now home to the expanded Paesano's. You can now see an example of the latter at 225 W. Girard Ave., a triangular lot that had been sitting vacant for a number of years. On the plus side, the wall of the adjoining property boasted a phenomenal mural.
We excitedly brought this property to your attention a couple years ago, after it had been listed for sale for $400K. At the time, we told you that another developer once had a plan for a mixed-use project at this property with a ground-floor restaurant and apartments above, but remediation costs 86-ed the project. Perhaps due to those remediation costs or maybe because the lot is small and oddly shaped, the property ultimately sold for $160K in early 2015. The new owners are now pursuing a mixed-use project here and the new building was mostly framed when we passed by the other day.
According to the permits, this project will have three apartments and a ground floor commercial space. We'd guess that the apartments will be rentals, though condos are certainly in play. As for the ground floor, it could go in any number of directions but we'd think that neighbors would be most excited about a new restaurant in the neighborhood. That being said, each floor will only have about 1,000 sqft of space, which does limit the options for possible tenants.
On the other hand, any business that opens here will eventually have a ton of possible customers living very close by. Liberty Square is under construction at last just to the north, and that project will add about 200 apartments to the area within the next couple of years. Throw in the Apex Fountains conversion into 80 apartments just on the other side of Girard, and it adds up to good news for whatever business opens in the new building and just about every other business on the West Girard commercial corridor.