An eight-story, 188-unit mixed-use building is planned for a parking lot at the northeast corner of Callowhill and North 16th streets in Franklintown, according to a submission to the city’s Civic Design Review committee.
The project at 1527 Callowhill Street would replace a surface lot once tied to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s former campus with a 208,000-square-foot structure featuring rental apartments, ground-level retail, basement parking for 24 cars and 63 bicycles, and a green roof. The developer is Omega Home Builders, led by Roman Ovrutsky, with Designblendz Architecture as the designer.
A former Inquirer lot changes hands
The 40,767-square-foot lot sits adjacent to the former Inquirer Building at 400 North Broad Street, a 1924 structure designed by the firms Rankin, Kellogg & Crane and Roydhouse, Arey, Co. That building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, reopened in 2022 as the city’s new police headquarters.
Developer Bart Blatstein purchased the Inquirer campus around 2010 and sold the parking lot to Omega Home Builders for $5.6 million in late 2025, according to the Civic Design Review submission.
No zoning variances needed for the eight-story project
The property is zoned CMX-4, a designation generally intended for mixed-use development. The project does not require any zoning variances, though its scale automatically triggered a review by the advisory Civic Design Review committee, according to the submission…