After years of plans and promises, the big Frankford project at the end of the El is finally underway. Demolition began July 6 at 5113 Frankford Avenue, and the Frankford Community Development Corporation says construction has started on the Frankford Transportation Center development at Frankford and Pratt, a project that would bring new homes, a supermarket, and a City health center to one of the Northeast’s busiest corners.
The building going up is a five-story, 196,600 square foot modular building, with shops and health care on the ground floor and apartments above. The ground floor will hold a supermarket of about 20,000 square feet and a 40,000 square foot City health center, according to the Frankford CDC. The upper floors are homes, ranging from studios to three-bedroom apartments, with a roof deck for residents. The project sits directly across Frankford Avenue from the Frankford Transportation Center, the last stop on the Market-Frankford Line, which the Inquirer has called the city’s second busiest transit center.
How many of those homes will be affordable is not settled in the public record, and readers should know the numbers do not match. Permits issued in January 2026 list 132 homes in the building, with 80 of them designated affordable. The Frankford CDC’s own newsletter describes 114 affordable apartments, and a March funding request from U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle describes 114 affordable homes for households earning 20 percent to 80 percent of area median income. An earlier proposal from 2024 called for 134 homes, with 60 set aside as low income housing. The state grant for the project describes 132 new rental units. The counts shifted as the project moved from proposal to permits, and the CDC’s current figure differs from the permit record, so the exact number of affordable homes is still an open question.
The money behind the project comes from several directions. Construction is listed at about $35.6 million in the permit records. City Council approved up to $21 million toward the health center on June 5, 2025, in a bill sponsored by Councilmember Quetcy Lozada. The state added a $1,116,438 grant to help the Frankford CDC buy the land, clear the site, and build. The project is a partnership between the Frankford CDC and Mosaic Development Partners, with Wulff Architects designing the building and Domus Inc. as the general contractor.
The site has waited a long time for this. It was once a Penn Fruit supermarket, then a Thriftway, and the building sat vacant for more than 15 years before demolition, according to the Frankford CDC. The CDC has called Frankford one of the most challenged communities in Philadelphia, and the project is meant to answer that directly, with housing, groceries, and health care steps from the El in a neighborhood where all three have been hard to come by. The plan also fits the city’s own goal of building homes near transit, a goal written into the Philadelphia 2035 comprehensive plan.
There is still plenty the public does not know. No grocery tenant has been named, no rents have been published, and no completion date has been announced. Reaction from neighbors has been mixed, with some welcoming the investment after years of looking at a vacant building and others asking whether the affordable rents will actually reach working families, and what happens to parking. Those are the questions to watch as the building goes up, along with when the doors open and how Frankford residents can apply for a home there.
