Foundation work is making significant headway at 300 Christian Street, the site of a new multi-family development in Queen Village, South Philadelphia. Designed by Ambit Architecture, the new building will rise three stories tall and hold 30 residential units, as well as underground parking for 11 cars and 14 bicycles. A roof deck will be located at the top of the building, offering amenity space for residents.
Rendering of 300 Christian Street. Credit: Ambit Architecture.
The new building will feature a very attractive exterior that will be a great addition for the site once completed. Ambit nicely deployed brick on the majority of the facade, rising all three floors. Industrial windows will interrupt the brick, some of which will be situated on boxed bay windows clad in black trim. At the northeastern corner of the property, the building will have a striking abutting brick piet which will rise slightly higher than the rest of the building, before traveling horizontally and connecting with the top of the brick portion of the building, which also rises slightly higher than the building’s roofline. This will create a stylish effect by forming a small gap between the building and the brick.
Rendering of 300 Christian Street. Credit: Ambit Architecture.
The building’s street presence is another reason to look forward to its completion. In renderings, street trees are shown planted around the building’s footprint, as well as planters in some locations. The combination of brick, window, and black trim also makes for a welcoming sidewalk environment that will be nice to have at this location upon completion. A singular curb cut will be created for the building’s parking garage, however, which is somewhat unfortunate.
300 Christian Street. Credit: Google.
300 Christian Street. Credit: Google.
The new building will be replacing a vacant lot that has persisted at the location for quite some time. A variety of developments have been planned for the site and have fallen through, leaving the property sitting idle in the meantime, awaiting construction. The site sits at the northeastern section of a Philadelphia Housing Authority development that has had wiped out almost every pre-existing structure on the blocks it sits on. This gives the area touching the housing develop a much different feel from the rest of Queen Village, although seeing natural infill such as this development is something that will continue to change the atmosphere without displacing any existing residents.
300 Christian Street. Credit: Robert Austin Huber.
A YIMBY reader recently reached out with updated photos of the site, revealing lots of progress. While renderings for the project first came out for the project just under a year ago, developers have been moving forward very quickly, with active process now being made on site.
300 Christian Street. Credit: Robert Austin Huber.
The site was (obviously) cleared, and excavation work moved forward soon thereafter, digging out space for concrete foundations to be poured. Now, that stage of construction has wrapped up, with lots of foundations now visible on site and the footprint of the building slowly coming into scale.
300 Christian Street. Credit: Robert Austin Huber.
Some progress still remains to be made in terms of foundation work, although the bundling should soon be ready for its vertical rise. Once this happens, things should start coming together quickly.
300 Christian Street. Credit: Robert Austin Huber.
The new building will be a great improvement for the site, removing an underused property and replacing it with an attractive new multi-family development. The facade takes cues from existing neighborhood architecture and will fit in well with its surroundings, although some features of the design will certainly allow for it to stand out from the street.
No completion date is known for the project at this time, though construction may be finished by early 2023.
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This building should at least be one story taller. It makes no sense to me why the neighboring houses are four stories and this is only three.
One? Try five stories taller.
Related to this site, because it’s visible in the pictures, the city needs to adopt a new, dense, mixed-use strategy for PHA properties. That Southwark Homes site is 16.7 acres and it holds a tiny fraction of the number of units it should. There is no reason that they can’t build a mix of affordable and market-rate housing there, with some ground-floor retail.
Let me guess your new to Philly and don’t remember the towers.
I know that the towers used to be there. The Southwark Homes was an overcorrection.
You’re absolutely right. Those little suburban-style houses are hideous, destroy the flow of the urban environment, and are a complete waste of space. A total overcorrection from the old towers.