140-unit apartment building for young professionals in health care is planned for Mantua

A 140-unit apartment building is planned for 3935-47 Ogden St., arising on the site of former horse stables in West Philadelphia’s Mantua neighborhood.

The development will offer a mix of studios, and one- and two-bedroom apartments targeted toward young professionals who work in nearby University City, especially those who are employed in health care.

“Residents and nurses work like 20 hours a day, really long shifts, and they won’t want to drive too far to work,” said German Yakubov, president at Haverford Square Properties. “I would say it’s workforce housing, but instead of having it on a single-family level, this is more of an apartment-building level.”

Twelve of the units will be available at below market rate for residents making between 60% and 80% of the area’s median income, which is over $63,000 for a family of four.

The seven-story building will feature a roof deck and 1,800 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor. There will also be parking spots for 38 vehicles and 80 bikes.

The project will need approval from the Zoning Board of Adjustment to move forward because the land it will occupy is zoned for either single-family housing or industrial development. A hearing is scheduled for the fall, and the Mantua Civic Association supported the project at a recent meeting.

The building does not have many neighbors. A massive Peco installation is to the east of the site, the railroad is to the north, another Haverford Square Properties apartment development is to the west, and a huge, mostly vacant lot sprinkled with a few remaining houses is to the south.

“That project is a little weird because not too many people live around there,” said De’Wayne Drummond, president of the Mantua Civic Association. “Who are they supposed to mail the zoning notices to? The squirrels, raccoons, and possums?”

Yakubov has been building housing in this section of West Philadelphia for 15 years. He said the company likes to focus on these neighborhoods because there’s less competition with other developers, especially because they don’t build homes for students. There’s also plenty of vacant land and an appetite for housing for young professionals that isn’t the kind of luxury development seen in Center City or the river wards.

Yakubov said the current development environment, with high construction costs and rising interest rates, won’t affect this plan.

“We’re big enough to have more cost control,” said Yakubov. “And our relationship with our lenders allows the banks to be more flexible. So because of that, we’re able to build and execute pretty quickly.”

But Yakubov got permits before Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s affordable housing overlay law went into effect last July. The law requires new buildings over 10 units to include 20% of their offerings at below market rate, but Yakubov says the project wouldn’t have been feasible under those conditions.

His company doesn’t currently have any new projects planned in the boundaries of Gauthier’s overlay. But he believes their developments — they were at one point the largest landowner in Mantua — have made a positive difference in the neighborhood.

“Development has now gone all the way up to where we’re building 120 units, where before you wouldn’t think about driving over there [by the Peco facility] let alone walking,” said Yakubov. “The area is much safer than it was before. We’ve cleaned up a lot of the vacant lots and a lot of the homes that were vacant were knocked down.”