The Post Brothers are planning another residential building in Northern Liberties, offering 241 one-bedroom and studio apartments at 1021 Hancock St.
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The six-story building, dubbed the Mercato, is substantially smaller than the earlier plans for the site, which featured a 13-story building with 280 units that would have offered furnished apartments and commercial space.
The property is a part of a large array of sites the company purchased in the neighborhood in 2018 and 2019, along with the Piazza across the street at 1001 N. Second St. and the site that would become the luxury Piazza Alta development at 1099 Germantown Ave.
“We’ve reconceptualized it [the Mercato] for today’s market and just made it regular apartments, the idea being that it becomes the more affordable entry point at the Piazza,” said Michael Pestronk, CEO of the Post Brothers, which he runs with his brother, Matthew.
The Post Brothers have built and acquired a sprawling portfolio in Northern Liberties over the last eight years, which includes townhouses and larger two-to-three bedroom apartments.
In 2023, they completed the 695-unit first phase of the Piazza Alta, a fancier complement to the original apartment project built by Bart Blatstein in 2009, which defined an earlier era of Northern Liberties.
Pestronk says the first phase of Piazza Alta is now 98% leased. Last year, the company announced it had taken a $170 million construction loan for the 431-unit second phase.
The Post Brothers decided to build this new, smaller version of the Mercato partly to ensure it better matches its surroundings and partly to keep costs down, which will then allow them to keep prices lower.
“The smaller scale is in response to fitting in with what’s around it and wanting to achieve a more accessible price point,” Pestronk said. “By building six stories instead of 13, we’re able to offer more accessible rents.”
Mid-rise buildings are cheaper to construct than high rises both because they require less raw steel and concrete and because building systems like the HVAC are more complicated and expensive in larger buildings.
The project does not require zoning changes to move forward, but it will be considered by the advisory-only Civic Design Review board on Aug. 4.
As a result, Post Brothers met with the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association about the Mercato plans. Although members of the group praised its brick building materials, they lamented the lack of commercial space on the ground floor.
“The main loss from the neighbors’ perspective is the activated street edge that was present previously,” reads the community group’s zoning committee minutes from its May meeting. “The new project lacks engagement.”
Pestronk says the project is surrounded by small, narrow older streets that create problems for retailers and make loading zones a challenge.
“We spent a lot of time talking to retailers, and it was infeasible to get anything that really makes sense there,” Pestronk said.
Parking for the new apartments will be available in an existing detached parking garage across Wildey Street. The Post Brothers said they have found that the parking offered at their previous Northern Liberties multifamily properties has been underused, with only about five spaces required for every 10 apartments.
In recent years, neighborhoods like Northern Liberties and Fishtown have been experiencing a glut of apartments as thousands of new units opened and had to compete with each other for tenants, which drove down prices.
While that condition persists in some parts of the city, including just to the east along the Delaware River, Pestronk says it has eased in Northern Liberties along with other high demand areas like Center City.
“The [multifamily] market has really recovered very strongly since the second half last year,” Pestronk said. “What we’re seeing in core Northern Liberties is what you’re seeing across the better properties in the market, like the Rittenhouse area, that are basically fully recovered.”
The company expects to begin construction in the fourth quarter of 2026 and that the building will be finished two years later.
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