Boutique hotels around Fishtown are betting on overnight tourists who don’t want to stay in Center City

The discerning tourist, looking for a chic little getaway in Philadelphia, may soon have an option in Kensington — with rooming options that almost allow them to touch the Market-Frankford Line.

On Wednesday, the Zoning Board of Adjustment granted Starr Restaurants veteran Joshua Mann and his partner permission to open a six-room hotel at 2205 Front St., the former site of Fluehr’s Furniture Store.

The five-story building will include a French restaurant on the first two floors, followed by two floors with three rooms each, and then additional restaurant space with a roof deck.

“When we saw the building, it was love at first sight,” said Mann, who is co-owner of the space with Graham Gernsheimer of the Loco Pez restaurant group. “It’s kind of romantic in a way to be so close to that piece of iconic public transit and have it go by. It’s nice in an urban romantic kind of way.”

Mann and his team won’t be opening the first boutique hotel in this corner of Philadelphia. In recent years, as Fishtown boomed and its restaurants flourished, a handful of small overnight offerings have opened up.

At 1511 Frankford Ave., across the street from the popular restaurant Suraya, is Roland Kassis’ Archway with 11 rooms. The international chain Sonder Holdings has a 20-room location down the street at 1502 Frankford Ave. There are four rooms above the Wm. Mulherin’s Sons restaurant at 1355 Front St., and the six-room Lokal Hotel is at 1421 Front St. (“Nowadays, no proper visit to Philly is complete without a stop in Fishtown,” the hotel’s website reads).

More are on the way. The lot next to the Wells Fargo building at Frankford and Girard is being turned into a 60-room Sonder operation. At least two more boutique hotels are in the works in addition to Mann’s project, which in East Kensington is farther from the rest of the action.

The large vacant lot just to the north of Frankford Hall and across from the new Two Robbers bar and restaurant, is also owned by Kassis, who has long wanted to open a hotel there.

“The space next to Frankford Hall has been recently cleared, which leads us all to think that something may be coming now,” said Marc Collazzo, executive director of the Fishtown business improvement district.

Kassis was not available for comment on his plans.

This blossoming of overnight options in Fishtown comes as the neighborhood’s visibility increases nationally. “For good food as well as other diversions, visit neighborhoods like Fishtown and Northern Liberties where a young, hipster vibe is emerging,” the Wall Street Journal commented in 2021.

The locus of Philadelphia’s food scene shifted toward Fishtown in recent years, with much-hyped offerings like Kalaya relocating from South Philadelphia and Center City. The entertainment options are robust, too. Apart from the abundant watering holes, there’s Johnny Brenda’s, the Fillmore, Brooklyn Bowl, Five Iron Golf, Barcade, and — across a harrowing strip of traffic — the Rivers Casino.

The neighborhood’s lodgings are, of course, still tiny in comparison to the large chains and luxury accommodations of Center City and University City. The boutique hotels of Fishtown came as news even to Bob Cosgrove, the president of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, whose organization mainly represents businesses downtown and by the airport.

“That’s a weird area to put a hotel, just my personal opinion, but I don’t think I would stay at a hotel on Girard Avenue,” said Cosgrove, when told of the 60-room Sonder operation. “There are parts that have gotten nicer, but I’m skeptical about that.”

Cosgrove notes that his organization probably wouldn’t know about the boutique hotels in Fishtown, as they are too small. But he remained perplexed about why guests wouldn’t want to stay downtown, even if they were going to Fishtown for dinner.

“You could be back in Center City in a matter of, what, less than 10 minutes,” Cosgrove said.

But Center City is not quite where it stood in 2019, while Fishtown flourished during the pandemic, Collazzo said. These days a tourist could take a weekend trip to Philadelphia and never leave the neighborhood or its immediate environs.

“Fishtown is very similar to places like Soho that have a certain artistic vibe you can’t get anywhere else,” Collazzo said. “There’s walkability that makes everything easier. Some daresay it might be safer.”

For Mann, who has worked in the restaurant industry for more than 20 years, the boutique hotel under the El is less about being part of a trend and more about finding a way to reuse an idiosyncratic L-shaped building that dates to 1875. The former Fluehr’s Furniture Store has been vacant for 17 years, and it enjoys no historic protections in the midst of a building boom under the elevated train line.

“My partners and I are in hospitality; we aren’t developers,” said Mann, when asked why he decided to outfit his new building with hotel rooms instead of apartments.

“We can’t fill five floors with just a restaurant,” Mann said. “Because the building is so beautiful, and we want to keep it, we want to do something that shows off its beauty. This is the best way.”