New 74-unit apartment building slated for Northeast’s Wissinoming neighborhood

An 74-unit apartment building, dominated by two-bedroom units, is being proposed for the Wissinoming neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia.

The four-story structure at 5709 Cottage St. will include 43 parking spaces on its first floor, although egress for the vehicles will only be in the rear of the building.

“We are camouflaging the parking towards the back of the site,” said Kevin J. O’Neill, of KJO Architecture, which is designing the building. “It is set back a little bit from the street to align with the existing buildings.”

The 92,613-square-foot structure, developed by Huntingdon Valley-based Olympia Holdings, would replace a functioning auto garage and some storage sheds. It is largely surrounded by single-family homes, as well as religious properties including the Mount Sinai Cemetery.

“There’s a mix of single-family and multifamily in this district already so we feel that’s appropriate here,” said O’Neill.

The Wissinoming Civic Association returned to action after the COVID-19 pandemic only this month, so the neighborhood meeting for this project in advance of review by the city’s advisory-only Civic Design Review board was held by the Frankford Community Development Corp., which did not return a request for comment.

That doesn’t mean that Wissinoming residents lack opinions about Olympia Holdings’ proposal. Last month, at the neighborhood group’s first meeting in over three years, attendees noted their concerns about parking and density. But civic leaders declined to debate the topic without a developer representative present.

Some longer-term residents are often concerned that new projects “will make our whole area too busy and too built up,” said John Nolen, head of the zoning committee for the Wissinoming Civic Association. “There’s always a debate about ‘where are they going to park?’ ‘This area’s full enough.’ ‘It’ll be for very short-term renters.’”

The building is being developed for market-rate rentals, and unlike most new apartment buildings will have 43 two-bedroom units, 18 one-bedrooms and 13 studios.

No commercial space is planned for the building. In a presentation package for consideration at the Civic Design Review committee, Olympia Holdings argues that the design “allows for abundant access to daylight and fresh air.”

Developers note that the long length of the building allows density while keeping a relatively narrow frontage on Cottage Street that won’t be too out of place with the surrounding buildings, at least from the street view.

The ratio of one parking space for every two units also means that the building’s first floor won’t be completely used for car storage.

“We want to provide some parking wherever possible without making the building completely designed around the automobile,” O’Neill said. “We try to make it pedestrian-friendly, minimize the impact of the automobile wherever possible, and emphasize safety.”

Olympia Holdings faced substantial neighborhood pushback on another apartment project slated for an a different industrial site: the Nolen Building Materials lot in Germantown. But there neighbors have some leverage to push back before the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment.

The building on Cottage Street requires no zoning variances or review by the Historical Commission, so there are limited venues for concerned neighbors to push back.

“I live in the area, and I have a business in the area, and I’m all for things like this,” Nolen said. “But it’s not my place to convert the neighborhood.”

The Civic Design Review committee is considering the building on Nov. 7.