Excavation is underway at the site of the six-story, 50-unit mixed-use building planned at 342-54 West Girard Avenue in Northern Liberties, North Philadelphia, as Philly YIMBY’s recent location visit has revealed. Designed by Coscia Moos Architecture and developed by Hightop Real Estate and Development, the 43,010-square-foot project will rise from a 8,124-square-foot footprint and include 2,252 square feet of retail, a basement, full sprinkling, and a parking garage. Permits list Ferraro Construction Group LLC as the contractor and a construction cost of $4 million.
342 West Girard Avenue. Photo by Jamie Meller
342 West Girard Avenue. Photo by Jamie Meller
342 West Girard Avenue. Photo by Jamie Meller
342 West Girard Avenue. Photo by Jamie Meller
342 West Girard Avenue. Photo by Jamie Meller
The proposed building, also known under the alternate address of 342 West Girard Avenue, will be a vast improvement for the site over the suburban-style freestanding restaurant and large parking lot that previously occupied the site. The single-story, mansard-roofed structure was built at the southeast corner of Girard Avenue and North 4th Street in the 1960s and additionally housed a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
342 West Girard Avenue before demolition. Credit: Google Maps
342 West Girard Avenue before demolition. Credit: Google Maps
Since that time, the venue went through a number of various retailers, the most recent of which was Trio’s Pizzeria & Trattoria. The restaurant, part of the Trio’s Fresh Italian franchise that also has a location in West Philadelphia, opened at the Girard Avenue site around 2009. Although nothing remains of the structure at this point, North Philadelphia fans of the eatery need not be disappointed, as the restaurant has since moved to another location several blocks down the avenue to 1308 West Girard Avenue, just to the east of Broad Street.
Curiously, over its 12-year operational span, the restaurant exterior underwent several color changes. When the eatery took over the venue around 2009, its proprietors swapped the structure’s green roof and white-yellow walls for a red-roofed, yellow-walled visage, then updating it again to an olive-green roof and olive-brown walls some time between 2009 and 2011, and finally changing again to a gray roof and light gray walls some time between late 2014 and early 2015. Its final appearance, surprisingly somber aside from a tomato mural that the restaurant had maintained until its closure.
342-54 West Girard Avenue. Looking southeast. July 2007. Credit: Google Street View
342-54 West Girard Avenue. Looking southeast. September 2009. Credit: Google Street View
342-54 West Girard Avenue. Looking southeast. June 2011. Credit: Google Street View
342-54 West Girard Avenue. Looking southeast. July 2015. Credit: Google Street View
Arguably, the most attractive feature of the site was the whimsical, maritime-themed mural painted on the wall of an adjacent building facing the pizzeria’s parking lot. The new structure would have blocked the mural entirely; however, for whichever reason, the mural was painted over in mid-2017, so this is no longer an issue.
Mural facing 342-54 West Girard Avenue. Looking southeast. September 2014. Credit: Google Street View
The earliest permit for the new six-story structure dates to December 2020, while the latest, and most detailed, was issued just three days ago. Demolition permits were issued in June, with JC Excavation Services LLC listed as the demo contractor. Our recent site visit revealed that the lot has been fully cleared and excavation has begun.
The development is the latest in a series of projects that are ushering a long-overdue transformation of Girard Avenue into a dense corridor lined with mid-rise, mixed-use buildings (for instance, another building of similar scale is proposed half a block to the east at 310-30 West Girard Avenue).
The site could have easily accommodated a taller building with more residential units, which is an argument supported by the street’s width, adjacency to the Route 15 trolley that runs in front of the site, and proximity to in-demand destinations such as Temple University to the northwest. Still, we have no complaints regarding the proposal at hand, especially given its crisp white exterior with asymmetrical windows and projecting, black-paneled cantilever bays.
We look forward to seeing further progress on this and other projects along Girard Avenue that promise to positively transform the thoroughfare in a few years.
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