Right before he kicked the bucket, Smiler Grogan told a group of assembled motorists about a buried treasure underneath a big ‘W’ in Santa Rosita State Park. This conversation set off a hilarious set of circumstances that culminated in a misadventure with a fire truck and ended with Ethel Merman slipping on a banana peel in a hospital ward. Sadly, what follows won’t be nearly as entertaining, and holds but a tenuous connection to the plot of this classic movie. But hey, maybe you’ll give us points for trying.

You can see in the image above, the diagonal runs of Germantown Ave. and Cadwallader St., seen in conjunction with the north-south runs of 3rd and 4th Streets, collectively create the image of a ‘W,’ when viewed on a map. Right in the middle of said ‘W’ is 1630 Cadwallader St., a vacant parcel that covers roughly 4,300 sqft and seems to be crying out for redevelopment. And that’s exactly what’s coming, in the near future.

The folks at Fin Development bought this parcel for $300K over the summer and are now moving forward with a plan to build an apartment building with 9 units and 9 parking spaces. We’re guessing, but we’re thinking this will only be a 3 story building, with one unit on the first floor (ADA accessible) and four units on each of the upper floors. Since this property runs from street to street, we suspect there’s no open space, and frankly that doesn’t seem like such a problem to us.

This block of Cadwallader Street has seen a bit of development over the last few years, with a smattering of newer three story homes mixed in with older homes. So this project will fit in quite nicely, especially because it’ll only go up three stories. The 48-unit building coming soon to the 1600 block of Germantown Avenue around the corner, won’t fit in quite so seamlessly, but that doesn’t distress us in the least, as this part of town could still stand to see an uptick in population density. We wonder whether we’ll continue to feel this way, as developers proceed apace in filling in other scattered vacant lots in northern South Kensington.