81-unit apartment building is planned for East Mount Airy
The project will add retail and a diversity of apartment sizes to Northwest Philadelphia's main drag.
TierView Development is planning an 81-unit apartment project for 6903-6915 Germantown Ave. in Mount Airy, with mid-market prices and some family-sized units.
The plan for the five-story building includes 11 parking spaces in the rear, over 2,700 square feet of retail, and building materials that seek to echo its surroundings, especially the historic building at 6901 Germantown Ave.
“We’ve tried to maintain the beautiful parklike setting,” said Jenn Patrino, president of TierView Development, based in Philadelphia. “The brick is meant to be very traditional and part of the historic fabric of the neighborhood. The entire design was meant to be as thoughtful and reflective of the neighborhood as possible.”
Seven of the units are designated as affordable at 60% of area median income, or a little over $50,000 for a one-person household. The rest of the units won’t be priced at radically more than that, Patrino says, with an average unit meant to be affordable to those at 79% AMI.
The project includes a mix of studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms large enough to house parents and children. Patrino said the mix of units reflects the diversity of tenants the company has attracted to the roughly 200 units that TierView already owns and operates in Northwest Philadelphia.
“We have a very broad demographic” in Germantown and Mount Airy, Patrino said. “Everything from people just getting out of school to long-term residents of the neighborhood who didn’t want to be homeowners anymore. That’s a big part of why we target the middle market price point, so that our units are attainable for long-term residents.”
Patrino says TierView’s Northwest Philadelphia apartments tend to be larger than their counterparts closer to Center City as well. Partly that’s because land is at a premium in more centrally located parts of the city, but it’s also because they’ve found tenants’ space needs are more diverse in the Northwest.
“We have people with families, everything from young children all the way up to teenagers living at home,” Patrino said. “Our units go all the way down into efficiencies that are very affordable, all the way up to large units that would be appropriate for families.”
The project has approvals needed from the city’s Historical Commission and the Zoning Board of Adjustment. It will be considered at the advisory Civic Design Review committee meeting on Aug. 5.
Patrino said a main point of neighborhood pushback has been the small number of parking spaces, but the company was constrained by both historic preservation regulations that cover the site and the presence of heritage trees on the property. TierView is working on an alternative means to add more parking off-site.
The Mt. Airy Business Improvement District held community meetings about the project in June, and ended up endorsing it.
“The Mt. Airy BID RCO supports this development project which will add new residents and potential customers to our commercial corridor,” reads a letter posted to the BID’s website.