Last spring, we told you about plans to build an addition on the top of 1025 Arch St., just down the street from Reading Terminal Market and the unfortunate Home2 Suites hotel. As you can see in the photo below, this addition has, in fact, taken place, though work probably isn’t yet completed.

Three new stories

As if to not get left out of the fun, owners of a building just a few doors away appear to be planning a similar expansion. The owners of 1019 Arch St., who in 2011 unsuccessfully attempted to sell this property for $2M, will present to the ZBA next week a proposal to build a four story addition onto their building.

It's the one on the right, next door to the building with the fenced-in entrance

According to the application, the plan is for a retail store in the basement, offices on the first floor, and ten residential units in the upstairs floors. While the zoning request makes no mention of any changes to the facade, we can only hope that the renovation might involve returning the look of the existing building to a semblance of what it looked like in 1975.

Back in 1975

While we’re unsure of whether the PCDC supported this development, it seems like a very wise move by our estimation. A two story building in a dense neighborhood like Chinatown is simply an underuse, and considering that the building goes back over one-hundred-fifty feet, there’s just too much wasted space for such a short building, if you ask us. We’ll see what the ZBA has to say about it, but hopefully this project and others like it will continue to proliferate in this neighborhood, allowing it to expand upward at the same time as it expands northward, over the Vine Street Expressway.