The other day, we found ourselves up around Temple again, eating a delicious lunch at Champ’s Diner and wondering what’s next for the neighborhood. Working off some of those calories, we turned onto 18th Street from Cecil B. Moore Avenue and there we saw a pair of new triplexes under construction. While we weren’t surprised by the new construction — it isn’t exactly out of the ordinary in this part of town — there was something about it that made us pause and go, “Huh, that’s odd.”
This block of 18th Street is lined with twins with that distinctive look of late-1990s affordable housing: setbacks, driveways, an architectural vernacular that feels more at home in the Midwest than Philadelphia. We wouldn't have thought that the properties on this block would get redeveloped anytime soon. And, while there are a couple of rowhomes popping out and reminding us what was here before the affordable housing got built, we were pretty sure this site wasn’t one of those. So we double-checked on Google Street View, and sure enough, 1702 N. 18th St. previously looked exactly like its neighbor: a late-1990s twin.
It turns out that these twins were indeed built as affordable housing and included a deed restriction that they were only allowed to be used by owner-occupants for ten years after construction. This time period has gone by, however, and with it, the deed restriction has disappeared. That’s why a development company was able to come in and buy one of these properties last August, flatten it, and redevelop it into a pair of triplexes — all by-right.
So what do you think? Is this redevelopment just a one-off fluke, spurred by the bubble-like demand for Temple student rentals, or is it a harbinger of things to come — intensification and redevelopment of 1990’s affordable-housing areas as their deed restrictions come to an end? We'd bet that at least in the near term, we'll see similar projects pop up in this neighborhood and others too.