A little over a year ago, we shared the news that development would be forthcoming on the north side of 1100 block of Cecil B. Moore Avenue, at the vacant lot to the south of The View at Montgomery. Not surprisingly, that development was coming at the hands of the Goldenberg Group, the same company that developed the aforementioned View project. In a display of great creativity, they were naming the followup development View II, which actually sounds better than it looks in print. Hooray for rhymes.

At the time, we told you to look out for a sizable development with two residential towers of 18 and 12 stories, and a total of 352 apartments and 874 beds. That project also called for a community center in the eastern building, lots of retail space in the western building, and a public green space along 11th Street. Throw in underground parking for 94 cars and a bunch of residential amenities and this project sounded like it would fit in Center City just as well as at this location. We know we sound like a broken record, but these kids today, they don’t know how good they’ve got it.

We were in the neighborhood recently, hitting up one of our favorite food trucks ($6 for delicious bi bim bap!!!), and passed by this address, and were pleased to see some serious progress. The steel has already gone up five stories for the eastern building, while the western building is still getting out of the ground. This makes sense, as it’s the eastern building that will eventually be the taller structure.

Somewhere along the line, the details of the project changed some, with the unit count expanding to 368 and the number of beds rising to 984. The total retail footprint will be roughly 22K sqft, with most of the spaces in the western building, but with one retail space on the eastern side, at the corner.

The expected completion date, per Philly.com, is the summer of 2019. That’s over a year away but seems rather aggressive to us. Then again, given that this is a project that targets students, if it’s not done by the fall semester of 2019 it’ll sit mostly empty until the fall of 2020. That being the case, look for the developers to put their foot on the gas to get this project to the finish line in the desired time frame.