High-end, short-term rental apartments planned for Chinatown parking lot
“We cater to the new class of professionals who are not tied down, who don’t look to buy houses with the white picket fence.”
Gowtham Reddy has big plans for Philadelphia, and the latest is an 81-unit short-term rental apartment building in Chinatown.
The seven-story building is planned to rise from what is now a parking lot at 13th and Summer Streets and includes a restaurant on the ground floor, a double-decker roof deck, and an option to stay for weeks, months, or years.
“I build these as upscale luxury apartments, but we run them more or less like hotel, corporate-stay accommodation,” said Reddy, CEO of Genesis Capital. “We cater to the new class of professionals who are not tied down, who don’t look to buy houses with the white picket fence.”
This isn’t just a concept for the era of remote work, Reddy says. The corporate housing industry, which rents apartments furnished for months at a time, has long catered to business executives, consultants, and traveling medical professionals.
Reddy says his company provides high-end amenities — like the dog run on one of the roof decks — and a personalized customer experience. That allows tenants to create a profile that will allow the company to, say, stock their fridge with their favorite food and drinks after they book a room. Genesis will both develop and own the building, which a third party will manage.
This kind of concept isn’t unknown in Philadelphia, but it isn’t a huge segment of the market either.
“[Corporate housing] is more common in very expensive cities like New York or D.C. I don’t see it as much here,” said Kevin Gillen, an economist at Drexel University’s Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation. “Business travel can be prohibitively expensive if you’re staying in a hotel that long. They’re often used for executives visiting town for a project for a few months or something.”
Genesis Capital is at work on a series of such buildings, branded Jaan, in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and a few cities in New Jersey. Another is already under construction at 141 N. Fourth St., which will host 36 units. That will be called Jaan at Old City, while the one in Chinatown will be called Jaan at Center City.
Jaan is a Hindi word meaning “my life.” Reddy is Indian American and says his utilization of the term has a double meaning: It’s a term of endearment he uses with his wife and it’s meant to indicate the sense of belonging the company is hoping to inculcate in their tenants.
The project does not require zoning relief, so any critics do not have a wide avenue to contest Genesis Capital’s plans. The developer is presenting to the nonbinding Civic Design Review board in early March.
“This is not consistent with our vision for the neighborhood,” said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. (PCDC). “Our vision for the area is really to have more permanent housing for families.”
At the mandatory community meeting, before they go before the Civic Design Review board, Reddy said they received little feedback and no criticism. Afterward, he says PCDC requested that Genesis incorporate the neighborhood’s character into the design of the building. The nonprofit also asked that the company talk to local restaurants and bars in the neighborhood about renting the ground-floor commercial space.
The project is located in the northwest corner of Chinatown and would replace a parking lot. It is surrounded on most sides by additional surface parking lots. A large Hampton Inn lies immediately to the south, just before the Convention Center. Around the corner on Race Street, there are a couple of homeless shelters and a Day’s Inn.
“It is close to Vine Street expressway, it’s almost a full block from the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission homeless shelter,” said Chin. “These are challenges for any hospitality development to be built around there. The Hampton Inn has been here forever, but they even face challenges around the homeless population.”
But Reddy says that building near diverse kinds of uses is just a part of developing in a city. The nature of the building, meanwhile, allows it to be converted to traditional apartment units if the market proves inhospitable or there is an extraordinary event like COVID in 2020.
As for the abundant parking lots, that’s precisely what caught his eye about the location.
“That area is a sea of parking lots,” said Reddy. “You can’t really find another tier one city in the country where the center of the city is like that. We’ve always looked to redevelop areas like this and put in something beautiful that will last.”
The project will be presented to the Civic Design Review board on Tuesday, March 7.