There is a building boom currently happening on Front Street in Fishtown, along the monumental Market-Frankford elevated rail line, writes Jake Blumgart for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
There are so many ongoing projects that the number of apartments between Girard and the York-Dauphin stations is set to nearly double in the next year.
“The amount of construction that’s ongoing, I don’t see that anywhere else in Fishtown,” said Henry Siebert, co-founder of Archive Development.
There are 441 apartment units under construction along the 1.1-mile stretch of the Market-Frankford Line, with 174 more proposed units, and 231 have already been completed since 2019. Before that year, that stretch of Front Street had about 215 apartment units.
The new apartments are replacing storefronts of renovated older buildings in the area, including the building that housed Mighty Mick’s boxing gym made famous by the Rocky movies. Once the revitalized historic brick building is completed, it will have four apartments along with a commercial space of 2,600 square feet.
All of this is taking place amid a steep drop in SEPTA ridership on the Market-Frankford Line, which is currently only at 58% of February 2020 levels.
Ridership at the stops in this part of Fishtown is even lower.
Read more about Fishtown’s building boom at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on PHILADELPHIA Today in January 2024.
