First look: Korman does 'something special' with its $285M AVE Navy Yard apartments

By Paul Schwedelson I Reporter I Philadelphia Business Journal I Feb 15, 2026

The development team constructing the first residential buildings at the Philadelphia Navy Yard know they only have one shot at a first impression.

So instead of opening the two buildings to residents earlier this winter, Ensemble/Mosaic and Korman Communities waited to complete almost the entire 30,000 square feet of amenity space before residents moved in.

“We had to do something special,” said Jeff Brown, director of development for Korman’s AVE brand, during a tour of the buildings. “It’s the first one.”

After breaking ground in October 2023, Ensemble/Mosaic and Korman are nearly finished with the $285 million development of the two buildings, which have 614 apartments between them. The project, named AVE Navy Yard, represents the evolution of the former military site. The buildings have a combined 25,000 square feet of retail space, which is expected to lease up later this year.

It’s a major step for Ensemble Investments and Mosaic Development Partners' $6 billion master plan to redevelop 109 acres at the Navy Yard. Ensemble/Mosaic brought on Korman Communities as a development partner for the residential component.

“We said that when we set out to build the first neighborhood in the Navy Yard that we have to create a destination,” Brown said.

At least a dozen residents have already moved into the first building, named Constitution, at 1225 Constitution Ave. The second building, named Normandy, at 1200 Normandy Place, is scheduled to open March 1.

The majority of the amenity space is in Normandy, which has a 7,000-square-foot fitness center that will be open to residents of both buildings.

The 267-unit Normandy has amenities “on steroids,” Brown said. A second-floor café has glass doors to a pool that's expected to be completed in the spring. The fitness center has individual workout spaces with televisions so residents can follow a workout video while training alone. Korman took the idea of individual work stations for remote workers and adapted it to the fitness center.

A ground-floor lounge has a shuffleboard table, pool table and golf simulator. Instead of being tucked away in a dark room, Korman intentionally set up the golf simulator in the middle of the ground floor so it could become a gathering space. At the company's AVE building in Blue Bell, the golf simulator has become so popular that residents often need to book their times a week in advance, Korman COO Lea Anne Welsh said.

“This is the culmination of all the amenities that we found that are most successful,” Brown said.

The ground-floor lounge has co-working space, 12 individual work pods and conference rooms.

“We want this to feel like a college library,” Brown said.

The property is positioned to capture demand from business travelers, with 100 furnished apartments for short-term rentals, but the Navy Yard’s existing employment base is the key to the project, Brown said.

The AVE development gives the 16,000 employees who work from the Navy Yard the option to live within walking distance of their job, an opportunity that didn't previously exist.

Welsh said demand could come from renters well beyond the scope of Navy Yard employees, offering an alternative to living in dense parts of Philadelphia. Renters who might have previously turned to suburban areas like Conshohocken, Bala Cynwyd or South Jersey for a more spacious environment now have a new location to consider.

She compared the Navy Yard project to Korman's AVE building in King of Prussia. The development was only the second residential building in the King of Prussia Town Center when it was constructed in 2018. Now the site is one of the most popular residential areas in the region.

“We had serious real estate minds say, ‘I don’t see this vision,’” Welsh recalled. “We’re like, ‘Well, we do and we know this area.’ Look at the success of that town center. That’s how we view this.”

The Normandy building has units ranging from one bedroom to three bedrooms, averaging 980 square feet. Monthly rents start at $2,460 for one-bedroom apartments, $3,783 for a two-bedroom and $7,369 for a three-bedroom.

The Constitution building has studios starting at $1,928 a month, one-bedroom units at $2,030 and two-bedrooms at $2,679. The Constitution also has 92 units dedicated for mixed-income housing which charge rent based on household income.

In addition to residential leasing, the next phase of the project is retail leasing. Brown said they have at least one lease signed for the retail space, but he declined to disclose the tenant. The developers are in negotiations with several additional retail tenants, he said.

The 10,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space in the Normandy building has been designed for two "destination food and beverage users,” Brown said. The 15,000 square feet of retail space in the Constitution building is targeting both food and beverage and service-oriented users.

As the two buildings begin to welcome their first tenants, Korman and Ensemble/Mosaic are already having early discussions about the next phases of residential at the Navy Yard, Brown said.

“We’re using the live feedback that the team gets … for what we should be doing the next time,” Brown said.

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