A recent site visit by Philly YIMBY has confirmed that construction work is nearing completion at a two-building, 24,000-square-foot warehouse development at 510 East Haines Street in East Germantown, Northwest Philadelphia. Designed by the Trans-Pacific Engineering Corporation, the development consists of a two-story warehouse and an adjacent shed, described in the permit as “for use as wholesale, distribution, and storage,” and an adjacent parking lot. Permits list Lehigh Valley Building Systems as the contractor and a construction cost of $750,000.
510 East Haines Street. Photo by Jamie Meller. June 2022
510 East Haines Street. Photo by Jamie Meller. June 2022
Philly last reported on the project in December 2020, when permits were filed. Since that time, it appears that construction work has been nearly finished, with the corrugated steel structure still fenced in but apparently mostly finished. Sidewalk work is currently underway.
The site sits at the edge of a small commercial-industrial district along the elevated trestle of regional rail. The boxy, nearly featureless structure looms oppressively over adjacent residential blocks. Even though it replaces an overgrown, nuisance vacant lot (as well as a single prewar rowhouse, as seen in the image above), the replacement is, to put it bluntly, not a great fit for the quaint, predominantly residential surroundings. While the location by the industrial district makes the current development technically appropriate for the site, and while we appreciate the importance of such development for the city’s economy, we wish to see the complex replaced some time in the future with a medium-density residential or mixed-use project, which is further justified by the site’s ten-minute walking proximity to the Washington Lane regional rail station to the northwest.
510 East Haines Street prior to demolition. Credit: Google Maps
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STUPID & UGLY, READY TO BURN DOWN………
I would have asked for a zoning change and built multi-family housing…Why? Because I care about “neighborhoods”!
What you might not know is that this area in Germantown has tripled the number of people at or below the Poverty Line and tied No Philly with over 45% Making this area the Poorest area in the Poorest Big City in our country. The fact that the Lumber Company across the street and this new relocation of an established Plumbing Wholesaler have not abandoned the City should help offset your valid observation that it is not going to win any architectural awards. I would like to share some thoughts with the author of this article about the topic I just raised i.e. the economic future of the city I have been in my entire life
“I would like to share some thoughts with the author of this article about the topic I just raised i.e. the economic future of the city”
And I’m more than happy to hear those thoughts, Mike. I tried to express my ambivalence about the development in the article. Clearly, while the design on its own may be innocuous enough, it is an affront to the neighborhood, especially combined with its planning; however, I acknowledged, or at least attempted to, the fact that the city can’t be all rental/condo units and needs commerce and industry to function in the last paragraph:
“[While] the location by the industrial district makes the current development technically appropriate for the site, and [while] we appreciate the importance of such development for the city’s economy, … [etc.]”