Backlash in Roxborough shows increasing opposition to new apartment buildings

On paper, the four-story apartment building planned for 6174 Ridge Ave. seems in line with what policymakers planned for Roxborough. It’s an 82-unit building, with retail offerings, plunked in the middle of a neighborhood commercial corridor that could use a boost.

When Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. changed the zoning for the neighborhood almost nine years ago, he wanted to incentivize multifamily and mixed-use development on Ridge Avenue. That would ensure single-family homeowners weren’t unhappy with larger buildings on their smaller blocks, while adding more population and consumer dollars to the neighborhood’s main drag.

But in the years since, and especially after the pandemic struck, Roxborough has seen a surge in development. The Central Roxborough Civic Association counts about 1,100 new units on Ridge since 2015, with over half of them built since the pandemic.

And that’s brought a backlash.

“This project is ghastly. … It dwarfs everything else in this section of Ridge Avenue,” said Liz Robinson, a 30-year neighborhood resident, at Tuesday’s meeting of the city’s advisory Civic Design Review (CDR) committee.

“The idea that you’re going to have 82 units and 17 parking places, at the same time that SEPTA is eliminating [bus service],” Robinson said. “I just cannot express how bad it is in terms of planning.”

It seems Councilmember Jones agreed with that assessment. Earlier this year, he tweaked the zoning overlay on Ridge Avenue to require one-for-one parking spaces for new housing units on the commercial corridor — effectively precluding future multifamily development.

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That makes 6174 Ridge Ave. one of the last new apartment buildings likely to be built on Ridge for the foreseeable future.

But that didn’t make its numerous critics at the CDR meeting any happier about the project’s design. The critiques were manifold: not enough parking, demolition of three buildings (including the Post Office), destruction of a mural, and throwing a shadow and (tons of eyes) onto a beloved pocket park.

The developer and his representatives are responsible for a lot of recent building in the area, and they have sought to address neighborhood critiques. They have met with the Roxborough Development Corp. and the Central Roxborough Civic Association to try to ameliorate concerns, promising a new mural among other things.

“We will be working very closely with them in order to make sure that we get a mural that is as substantial as what is currently there,” said Eric Marshall, principal with MGMT Residential, at the CDR meeting, “and to maintain the infrastructure and the work that has been done in the pocket park area.”

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Marshall also noted that the developer had substantially altered the facade after neighborhood feedback that the design used too much brick and presented an unbroken wall of masonry to the street. To address that they made tweaks to diversify the material palette as well as adding “prominent cornices” and balconies.

But these changes did not appear to mollify the building’s most adamant foes. Then critique also came from an unexpected source: Leo Addimando of Alterra Property Group, who is a prominent residential developer and sits on the CDR committee.

Addimando, who doesn’t usually offer harsh criticism at the meetings, said that this project left a lot to be desired.

“I feel like I’ve been transported to an alternate reality, and we’re in some sort of cartoon movie,” he said. “That facade is an attempt to make it look nonmonolithic, but it’s one that misses the mark. … The balconies are oddly placed. The [material] composition is what looks to be fake brick and stucco. I don’t think it’s going to age well.”

Like neighborhood critics, Addimando also noted that the current plan would put residential units on the pocket park at the ground floor, ensuring some potentially awkward interactions between tenants and the public. Previous proposals to put a commercial space there would make more sense and cause less conflict, he said.

The developer plans to continue meeting with community groups, despite not needing variances for the project’s current design. Marshall did not return calls or emails about possible compromises.

The CDR process does not provide a strong lever for change. The committee’s only power is to require developers to return for another meeting to discuss how or whether they incorporated the panel’s advisory criticism into their project. A 2019 report from the city planning commission found that developers followed the panel’s recommendations only a third of the time in the projects reviewed in the study.

The developer was asked to return in the new year.