1600 W Girard AveUnder construction

A seven-story, 209-unit residential building is under construction at 1600 W Girard Avenue, anchoring the northwest corner of Fairmount's CMX3 corridor where Girard meets the diagonal of Ridge Avenue. The project, cleared to build in late 2021, uses a hybrid construction approach—Type IA for the podium's first three floors, Type IIIA for the upper residential levels—over a nearly acre-sized lot. Ground-floor commercial space remains vacant shell, requiring separate fit-out work before any retail or restaurant can occupy. A recent amendment in late 2024 bumped the unit count from 202 to 209 while trimming back parking, a move that suggests the developer is betting on walkability and transit access over car storage in a neighborhood already well-served by the Spring Garden trolley and the Art Museum corridor.

The site, owned by 1600 W Girard Ave Ground Owner LLC since 2021, sits in a CMX3 zone that permits this kind of mid-rise development by right, and the project's scale reflects exactly what that zoning was designed to produce. The 41,700-square-foot parcel is one of the larger assemblages in the immediate area, offering room for amenities and parking that smaller infill sites can't accommodate. The horizontal fire separation strategy—essentially treating the podium and tower as two discrete buildings for code purposes—is the kind of technical maneuver that lets developers push density without triggering full high-rise construction standards.

This project is the heavyweight in a cluster of smaller efforts reshaping the Girard Avenue corridor between Broad Street and the Schuylkill. Nearly 300 new units have either delivered or are in the pipeline within a half-mile radius, including a 49-unit building at 918 N Broad and a handful of 11- to 17-unit low-rises along Ridge Avenue. Most of those are opportunistic infill; this one is a genuine neighborhood anchor, the kind of project that can nudge landlords and owners of adjacent underperforming parcels to reassess their hold strategies.

The real test will be whether the ground-floor commercial finds takers once the building delivers. Fairmount has proven it can absorb new apartments, but activating street-level retail in a corridor still finding its rhythm is harder. If 1600 W Girard succeeds, expect more assemblages and mid-rise proposals on the surrounding blocks—especially along Girard's south side, where low-slung commercial strips and surface lots still dominate.