A 59-unit hotel is planned for Frankford Avenue in Fishtown
“We’ve become a real destination location for people throughout the region,” said the executive director of the Fishtown Business Improvement District.
A 59-unit hotel is slated for 1224 Frankford Ave., a vacant lot owned by developer Roland Kassis, who is known for his key role in remaking Fishtown into a residential and restaurant hub.
Kassis has long planned a hotel for this space, just a block north of Girard Avenue and a block east of the Market-Frankford Line.
The project is being designed by Philadelphia-based Gnome Architects and is officially being developed by a group called the Fishtown Collective, which Kassis is leading.
“It is the natural progression of where our corridor is going,” said Marc Collazzo, executive director of the Fishtown Business Improvement District. “We’ve become a real destination location for people throughout the region — and even travelers from across the country — to have the best at dining and entertainment.”
Plans submitted to the city show a five-story structure with five parking spaces and two commercial spaces both fronting on Frankford Avenue. The design facing rowhouses on Leopard Street seeks to respect the residential nature of that block.
Fishtown is already studded with smaller boutique hotels, usually with only a handful of units, catering to weekenders who plan their stays around a neighborhood that’s become a restaurant hub.
Several larger-format hotels in the area have been less successful. The short-term-stay company Sonder abandoned a 60-unit project on Girard Avenue, and its 20-room location at 1502 Frankford Ave. is now being run by a different owner. The Rivers Casino also opened a 62-room hotel, called Riversuites at the Battery on the other side of Delaware Avenue from Fishtown.
Collazzo said the boutique hotels along Frankford Avenue have been thriving because of their proximity to the neighborhood’s world-class restaurants.
“They’ve been doing well, at least in the corridor,” Collazzo said. “Riversuites, which is outside [Fishtown], I think they’re doing OK. But I think there is certainly still a need for it at least within our business improvement district and commercial corridor.”
The Kassis project on 1224 Frankford Ave. will require a variance from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment to move forward, as a hotel use is not currently permitted. The plan will be reviewed by the advisory Civic Design Review committee June 3.
The developers met with the Fishtown Neighbors Association on May 13, and the group overwhelmingly voted to support the project at the zoning board.
An earlier, slightly taller version of Kassis’ hotel ambitions on the site received approval at the zoning board before the COVID-19 pandemic. But that permit expired, so Kassis needs the approval for this iteration of the project.