Redevelopment is coming to a former factory in East Kensington after years of delay
The project has faced setbacks in a market that is on the edge of redevelopment pressures in Philadelphia's River Wards.
The long vacant industrial building at 1807 Huntingdon St. in East Kensington is moving toward redevelopment after seven years of setbacks.
Philadelphia-based Smith & Roller has been eyeing the faded brick structure since 2019 but struggled with funding following the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of a lender after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in 2023.
But last week New Jersey-based Ellavoz Impact Capital announced that it was acquiring the building in partnership with Smith & Roller, allowing the developers to move forward with their plans near SEPTA’s Huntingdon stop on the Market-Frankford line.
Developers Tayyib Smith and Jacob Roller see the project as a catalyst for change around the elevated train station, which is haunted by the opioid crisis.
“I’ve always imagined connecting nodes of vitality and then seeing how it almost has a regenerative spring of people looking at a neighborhood differently,” Smith said.
“I can imagine that block having a different feel, a different type of lighting, a different type of walkability, more socio-economic diversity, more eyes on the corridor,” he added.
The developers plan to break ground on the project in about six months.
Smith & Roller’s neighboring development, 1801 Huntingdon, will transform a historic bank building into a banquet hall and commissary kitchen for Black-owned caterer Strother Enterprises, which has been expanding elsewhere in the city recently. That development will need approval by the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment and is on a longer timeline.
Over the years, the project at 1807 Huntingdon has added more housing and cut back on space for businesses.
The current version of the project includes 109 residential units and 8,600 square feet of commercial space. According to Ellavoz Impact Capital’s news release, the commercial space has been preleased, but the tenant list is not public yet.
An earlier version of the project, reviewed by the city’s Civic Design Review committee in 2022, would have contained 80 apartments and 38,000 square feet of light industrial space.
That’s partly because the federal program Smith & Roller originally planned to use, New Market Tax Credits, requires that at least a fifth of a mixed use project be devoted to commercial development.
But the project at 1807 Huntingdon has been in process for so long that this part of Kensington no longer qualifies for the federal incentive, which is meant to spur investment in struggling areas.
The project is still in a Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ), however, which will give state tax breaks to businesses at the 1807 and 1801 Huntingdon projects.
That policy is also meant to incentivize development in lower income areas, but there are many examples of its application to parts of Philadelphia like the Navy Yard and University City.
“I don’t know many [KOZs] that are in neighborhoods like Kensington,” Smith said, “where there’s somebody trying to use it in the spirit and intent of how the legislation was written.”
The project will include both the redeveloped factory with additional space above it and an adjacent parking lot, which will have multiple stories of housing on top.
It will include a mix of studios, one-bedroom and a few two-bedroom apartments, along with loft-style units that can be rented out as either short-term rentals or office space.
Sixty percent of the units will be set aside for households earning 80% of area median income, or almost $67,000 for one person.
“We don’t have a direct subsidy, like a Low Income Housing Tax Credit or anything like that,” Roller said. “In some cases, it’s not that different a number than a market rent in the neighborhood.”
Roller said that the project is inspired in unit mix and general location by the success of Shift Capital’s mixed use project at 3400 J St., home to Càphê Roasters. Smith & Roller was a junior partner in that project.
The Huntingdon Street project will be the firm’s largest project by unit count.
“I am extremely impressed by the work of Smith & Roller,” Jeffrey Crum, president of Ellavoz Impact Capital, said in the news release. “They have proven themselves as professional and experienced urban redevelopers who have a unique vision for revitalizing neighborhoods in partnership with local communities.”
The proposal has been presented to the East Kensington Neighbors Association several times over the years, and the community group is supportive of Smith & Roller’s proposal.
The group also sees the development project as a means to bring new life to the block, where the current dilapidated state of the buildings often attracts opioid users from nearby open air drug markets on Kensington Avenue.
“The block has been challenged for a long time,” said John Theobald, president of the East Kensington Neighbors Association. “It’s really where a lot of the Kensington Avenue activity impacts the neighborhood, so hopefully more people living there and less vacancy will help.”