260-apartment project is proposed for long vacant site on Ridge Avenue in East Falls
The proposal is the second large apartment project slated for the site since the COVID-19 pandemic.
A 260-apartment development, largely composed of one-bedroom units, is the latest residential project slated for 4401 Ridge Ave. in East Falls.
The almost two-acre site has been long vacant and is now covered in trees. It is owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority, which operated a dozen rental homes there until the late 1990s. The property is under an agreement of sale, according to the agency.
Plans for the project were posted on the Philadelphia Planning Commission’s website Tuesday, showing a six-story building from Stokes Architecture & Design.
The zoning paperwork in city records is signed by Eric Marshall, who is the principal with MGMT Residential. The company, based in Northwest Philadelphia, owns and manages hundreds of units in neighborhoods including Roxborough and Manayunk.
MGMT itself is not the developer and will not own the property, according to the project’s zoning lawyer Richard DeMarco, although the company will manage it once construction is completed.
The development team declined to comment in advance of a neighborhood meeting Wednesday night.
The plans show that the apartment building proposed for 4401 Ridge Ave. will offer 217 parking spaces. It will also host at least 8,000 square feet of commercial space, according to the East Falls Community Council, which has been negotiating with the developers.
The neighborhood group’s zoning chair, Hilary Langer, reports progress at the discussions.
He says that many neighbor concerns center on traffic, parking, and the preponderance of smaller units — a concern he does not personally share.
“The … fact is that one-bedroom apartments are in demand and their vacancy rate is [almost] 10%, which is really the same as annual natural turnover,” Langer said in an email.
Langer said that by his calculations, 115 two-bedroom apartments have been built in his neighborhood since 2021, and a quarter of them are still vacant. But 399 one-bedroom or studios have been constructed in that time frame, and only 12.5% of them are empty.
The project needs approvals from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment to move forward, with a hearing set for March 25. It will appear before the advisory-only Civic Design Review committee on March 3.
The last proposal for the site in 2021 came from Baltimore-based Atapco Properties. That project included 189 parking spaces for 185 apartments.
That former proposal’s frontage was pushed back from Ridge Avenue, which the East Falls Community Council feared would make an already pedestrian unfriendly environment even worse.
The newer development has the apartment building fronting on the sidewalk.
“You’re not going to get walkability if you just put in plazas and parking lots,” Langer said. “This building, at the very least, it provides the chance of walkability.”