Under Construction, just a mere TWO blocks from the Flats at Girard Pointe is this awesome supermarket - the hub of an immense, 21st-century retail-and-residential hive including two high-rise apartment towers, townhouses, a hotel, a garage, and a one-acre green park on the former Schmidt's brewery site . The innovative design by New York's Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners will not only provide the neighborhood with much-needed services, but it promises to restore an urban street wall along Girard Avenue and Second Street.
When fully built, the dense development will cover the entire 8.5-acre block where C. Schmidt & Sons once fermented and bottled Philadelphia's most ubiquitous taproom lager. A new master plan, prepared by Beyer Blinder Belle and vetted by city planners, calls for a total of 600 residential units, 978 parking spaces, and 110,000 square feet of retail.
Schmidts North, as some are calling the new development, will be arranged so that all five sides of the irregularly shaped block are lined with buildings and active ground floor uses. The edges will start low, in deference to neighboring rowhouses, and build up to a height of 26 stories on the site's southern edge, next to Blatstein's Piazza at Schmidts development. A one-acre landscaped park will eventually tie Blatstein's Liberty Walk, and his egg-shaped office tower at Germantown Avenue, into the future development.
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