144-apartment building proposed for Callowhill, replacing a parking lot
A surface parking lot previously slated for a co-living development will be a conventional apartment building instead.
Another parking lot in Callowhill is set to be transformed into apartments.
Zoning permits filed Thursday call for a seven-story, 85.17-foot-high building, with 144 apartments, ground-floor commercial space, and 33 underground parking spaces at 1201-15 Callowhill St., formerly a surface lot owned by Patriot Parking Inc.
The developer is Linden Lane Capital Partners, which is also involved in another nearby surface parking-to-apartment building project in Chinatown. The company’s owner, Michael Wachs, did not immediately return a request for comment.
A previous plan for the site would have brought a “co-living” apartment building to the area, promising bedrooms with shared living space that could be rented for cheaper than the average market rate apartment. But the company behind the deal, Quarters, filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of 2021.
“We had permits ready to go, and the co-living tenant went bankrupt,” said Jerry Roller, principal at JKRP Architects, which has been working on the project across multiple owners. “So it’s evolved and we reworked it as conventional apartments with the same footprint and added a floor.”
The building will largely consist of one- and two-bedroom apartments and will have about 2,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor. It requires no zoning variances and the developers will not be required to revisit the Civic Design Review committee because the existing plan is similar enough to the co-living proposal, which passed the board’s scrutiny in 2020.
Callowhill Neighborhood Association has not seen the latest proposal, but confirmed that they had embraced JKRP’s earlier vision for the co-living project.
“In general, we are pretty amenable and welcoming to new development, especially on long-vacant lots,” said Vincent DiMaria, zoning chair of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association. “So it’s exciting to hear it has come back to life.”
Although Patriot Parking Inc. was involved in the development of the co-living proposal, they sold the land for $7.9 million in March. At the time, it was not clear who the buyer was, but Roller confirmed that it is Linden Lane Capital Partners’ project.
The proposal is the latest multifamily development to come to Callowhill, and the northwestern edge of Chinatown. These areas are dominated by sprawling surface parking lots, but apartment builders have taken increasing interest in these neighborhoods on the northern periphery of Center City as more centrally located vacant parcels have grown scarce.