Riverwards Just Lined Up $35.8 Million for a Second Port Richmond Apartment Building

Riverwards Group lined up $35.8 million to build Somerset Station Phase 2, a 170 unit apartment building at 2202 East Somerset Street in Port Richmond, Commercial Observer reported. Silver Heights Capital is providing a roughly $20 million senior construction loan and Nuveen Green Capital is providing about $16 million in C-PACE financing, both nonrecourse, arranged by D2 Capital Advisors. Riverwards is putting in about $10 million of its own equity against a $46 million budget.

The building will run 146,000 square feet with an on site parking garage, split across 76 studios, 38 one bedrooms and 56 two bedrooms, and carries a grandfathered 10 year tax abatement that expired citywide in 2022, Bisnow reported. Delivery is expected in early 2028. Phase 1, a 220 unit building next door, sold to the Philadelphia Housing Authority for $58.1 million last year, and the lenders on this deal pointed to that sale as the reason they were comfortable underwriting phase 2.

Port Richmond keeps pulling this kind of capital because land costs less there than almost anywhere else close to the river, and a developer who already proved out phase 1 gets an easier phase 2. Every unit that delivers here adds rooftops within walking distance of Aramingo Avenue retail, and that's foot traffic landlords on that strip should be pricing in now, before 170 more leases sign.