Huge new residential development, heavy on apartments, is slated for Delaware Riverfront near Fishtown

Another 441 units could be added to the Delaware River waterfront as Concordia Group and D3 Real Estate Development look to expand on their North Bank project between The Battery and Graffiti Pier.

The original North Bank project comprises 475 single-family townhouses at 2001 Beach St. Parts of that earlier project are still under construction, but many homes are already occupied, and sales have been brisk in recent months.

The development team’s new project is slated for 2001 Richmond St., the adjoining parcel to the northwest. It represents a change of plans to focus on more rentals and retail and fewer for-sale townhouses.

The latest design includes 307 apartments, up from 86, and reduces the new townhouse count from 184 to 134.

“We already have a pretty good spread in our townhome prices, and being able to offer a variety of rental options will just make for a more well-rounded community,” said Greg Hill, a principal with D3. “The first iteration of this project wasn’t taking full advantage of the potential of this site.”

The developers also plan to expand the retail offerings in the enlarged apartment building.

“We probably have over 300 families living at North Bank now, and the demand for retail amenities is increasing,” Hill said. “This larger building is now giving us over 8,000 square foot of commercial retail space on the ground floor, which will be a nice benefit to the community.”

Hill emphasized that this expansion of the North Bank would include plenty of access to the waterfront for the public, not just residents of their development. (“There will be no gates,” Hill noted.) That will include a pedestrian connection to the expanded Delaware River trail to the south and an access point to the park slated for Graffiti Pier to the north.

Neighborhood groups and community advocates applauded the new design of this expansion of the North Bank project. Earlier townhouse-centric developments along the river received some pushback for a lack of density — what some argued was antisocial design — and not enough public access to the waterfront.

“After the recovery from the 2008 crash and before the pandemic, we saw a spate of waterfront development projects that were very townhome-based,” said Matt Ruben, chair of Central Delaware Advocacy Group (CDAG). “This was a concern because the way that a lot of these proposals were designed wasn’t ideal for getting the public down to the water and for having new developments that extended the street grid.”

But Ruben says this expansion of North Bank appears to have learned from those previous projects and even from the development group’s own earlier townhouse-centric first half of the site.

“It has more potential if they’re shifting emphasis toward mixed-use, mid-rise buildings and away from townhouses,” said Ruben.

The project is large enough to trigger a Civic Design Review and will be considered by the city’s advisory committee on Sept. 3.

The Fishtown Neighbors Association isn’t taking an official stance on the project because the developers don’t need zoning permissions, but the organization is concerned about the current lack of pedestrian connectivity between the site and Fishtown proper.

The Streets Department “had made a commitment, both to us and the developer, to build pedestrian connections at Berks and Palmer Streets,” said Will Dungan, zoning committee chair of the association. “This project is going to add a lot of families to Fishtown, and we want kids to be able to walk” to school.

Hill of D3 says that the timing of this new apartment project means the company won’t have to worry about the intensely competitive rental market that buildings currently leasing have to face. He anticipates construction beginning in the first quarter of next year and continuing into 2026 — roughly when experts expect the current apartment glut to have eased up.

“We’ve been envisioning this larger building for the past year and purposefully pushed our schedule back to track market conditions and try to pick an optimal start time for the project,” Hill said.

This article was updated to correct a misstatement by Will Dungan on the government agency working on pedestrian connections.