A 188-apartment building is the latest new development slated for North Broad Street
The property was sold by Bart Blatstein to Omega Homes at the end of last year.
A new 188-unit apartment building is the latest in a burst of development proposals around North Broad Street between City Hall and Temple University.
The eight-story building at 1527 Callowhill St. is being developed by Philadelphia-based Omega Home Builders with architecture from locally based firm Designblendz.
The project features 13,300 square feet of commercial space and 24 parking spaces accessible from 16th Street. The building will have a green roof, and the developer plans to plant additional street trees.
The property is currently a surface parking lot that was once owned by The Philadelphia Inquirer, as an annex of the media company’s former 400 N. Broad St. offices. The building is now the Philadelphia Police Department’s headquarters.
The Inquirer’s former properties were bought by Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein 15 years ago. He sold the parking lot to Omega Homes’ Roman Ovrutsky at the end of last year for $5.6 million.
“I think it’s [a] good location, next to cops, plenty [of] parking around,” Ovrutsky said in a text message, “so I think it’ll thrive with our finishes and competitive pricing.”
Ovrutsky’s project is the latest development proposed for this area. In the past eight months, not including this project, at least 1,221 apartments have been permitted along this stretch of North Broad Street.
The majority of the apartments in this Callowhill Street project, 111 units, will be one-bedrooms, which Ovrutsky says will rent for between $2,200 and $2,400.
The building also will include 52 two-bedroom apartments, starting at $2,800, and seven three-bedrooms with two bathrooms each and over 1,000 square feet. Those will start at $3,400.
There will be 18 studio apartments, although the development team wanted to minimize that number. They believe the market currently has too many small studios, which they argue do not incentivize long-term living.
“We will have a little bit more space for residents to actually live here, not necessarily the kind of studio-esque [apartments] which Center City often gets hit with,” said Scott Woodruff of Designblendz Architecture.
We are “sizing these units with more storage space and generously sized bedrooms, so it doesn’t feel like you’re living in a shoebox,” Woodruff said.
Ovrutsky said that he hopes to start construction by this time next year and finish by early 2029.
Woodruff said they have been asked why the project isn’t including more parking. He noted that the proposed apartment building is within a short stroll of the Broad Street subway line and on a number of bus routes.
It is also walkable to multiple grocery stores and restaurants, and the area has excess parking capacity.
“With the access to public transit and where this is in the city, we didn’t feel like there was a great need to try and push a lot of parking,” Woodruff said.
The commercial space could be ideal for a restaurant and could even be carved up between two tenants, he said.
The property does not require zoning changes to move forward, but it is large enough to trigger consideration by the city’s advisory-only Civic Design Review committee on July 7.
It was warmly received at a presentation to the Logan Square Neighborhood Association.
“The group was very pleased with the building as described,” said Alan Williams of association. “We liked the green roof, the focus on new street trees, sizing in line with neighboring buildings, and the overall aesthetics.”
The burst of development attention along this stretch of North Broad Street was partly spurred by a City Council bill that would have banned new housing around the former Hahnemann University Hospital campus.
That pushed a number of property owners to try to secure permits for apartment projects before the bill went into effect, which means these units aren’t necessarily coming any time soon. Council eventually shelved the bill.
The North Broad Street corridor’s popularity for developers also relates to the large parcels available at attractive prices. More residents will also activate the streets in the area, which are often devoid of pedestrians at present.
“This is a big chunk of open parking lot right now, flanked by two parking garages, so it just ruins the fabric,” Woodruff said.
