So Many Cranes in the Sky!

If you enjoyed last week's weather by wandering outside, you might have noticed quite a few construction cranes in the sky. That's because Philadelphia is currently experience a building boom, one that stands to put 2005 to shame. The city's skyline is about to change forever, and the growth isn't just taking place where you'd expect it. Developers are building high in the sky in University City and for the first time ever, one of our tallest skyscrapers will soon be west of the Schuylkill River.

Large-scale residential and retail projects are developing along Market East and north of Vine Street and, like the dense development taking place in West Philadelphia, challenging our notion of "downtown." 

Here's a quick rundown of what's taking place, and what we have to look forward to.

Under Construction

Comcast Innovation and Technology Center
1121 feet
A few years ago Comcast altered the skyline with Comcast Center, its national headquarters. The wildly growing company hadn't had enough, and employed the world renowned starchitects at Norman + Foster to deliver some serious panache. Once completed, the CITC will be the tallest skyscraper in the United States outside New York and Chicago. 

FMC Tower at Cira Centre South
730 feet
When Cesar Pelli's design for the first phase of the Cira Centre made headlines, some were appalled, some cheered, but many were certain it would never be built. Once we got used to its crystalline and asymmetrical presence along the Schuylkill River, we were sure the master plan had been abandoned. Then Campus Crest and Erdy-McHenry delivered the Evo, the tallest student housing in the country. Before Campus Crest could fill its infinity pool with sweeping views of the Center City skyline, the unthinkable happened: Brandywine Realty Trust found a tenant right here in the city, allowing them to complete Cira Centre South. Will we soon see a proposed Cira Centre North? There's certainly room to keep building.

500 Walnut
380 feet
Building in Society Hill is tricky, just ask John Turchi. At the height of the last building boom he attempted to convert the debatably historic Dilworth House into his private residence before being shot down by stubborn community associations. The mansion remains vacant. But building tall within earshot of some of the nation's most sacred history has been unheard-of for a long time. 500 Walnut is bringing the amenities, and the height, of Rittenhouse Square back to the city's first premier address and will forever alter photographs of Independence Hall.

1601 Vine Street
370 feet
The Mormons don't mess around. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' has the money to build big, build fast, and build quality. For decades, Vine Street has been a wasteland of surface parking lots discouraging developers from bridging the gap between Center City and neighborhoods eager to thrive just north of the Expressway. The city's first Mormon Temple is nearing completion and will handsomely compliment the city's Basilica, Free Library, and cultural institutions. Risking logic - or perhaps understanding how ridiculous the Expressway is as a barrier - the Mormons have hired Robert A. M. Stern to build a high-rise befitting Rittenhouse Square just north of the highway canyon. 

Welcome to Little Salt Lake City.

1919 Market Street
337 feet
Who ever thought this would happen? Once intended for a carbon copy of the skyscraper just to its east, this lot has been vacant for as long as many can remember. For decades it's been the site of proposals destined to flop. Nearby residential development has begged us to ask if Philadelphia's West Market Street is a neighborhood that shuts down at five on Friday, or something that deserves more. 1919 Market might just be giving us more Murano, but that means more feet on the ground. Philadelphia has forever been a densely packed and pedestrian friendly city, and our cornerstone of skyscrapers has been our ironically situated black-eye since the demolition of Broad Street Station. The final realization of 1919 Market Street is proof that West Market Street is finally ready to be more than a one-trick pony.

The Summit
279 feet
Go look at this building in person. It is far more astonishing, and tall, than it looks in renderings. In fact, from some angles, it looks like something straight out of a Middle Eastern power city. It's pretty wild and it's redefining what we think of the University City skyline. 

3737 Chestnut
278 feet
It's not nearly as exciting as the Summit, but it is challenging the University City skyline. 

What we have to look forward to...
If the construction cranes aren't enough to satisfy your thirst for a new Philadelphia, get ready for more, because they're coming. Below are some of the most likely skyline altering proposals in and around Center City. 

SLS International Hotel and Residences
590 feet

W Hotel and Residences
582 feet

MIC Tower
429 feet

CHoP on Schuylkill Avenue
375 feet

1900 Chestnut Street
295 feet

East Market
281 feet

One Riverside
260 feet

A New Building Boom

Is it 2005 again? We haven't seen any proposal as whacky as Winka Dubbeldam's Unknot Tower, but corporations are reaching new heights, and developers are treading into new neighborhoods.

Three are sure bets: Comcast's Innovation and Technology Center, University City's FMC Tower, and 1919 Market Street are all under construction. 

Comcast Innovation and Technology Center

But there are even more that seem on the brink of becoming reality. It appears that prep work has begun on the W Hotel at 15th and Chestnut, a hotel likely wishing it had started a bit sooner considering the upcoming Papal visit in 2015 and the 2016 Democratic National Convention. With that said, we can probably expect some more hotel proposals on par with the Hilton Home2 (prefabricated and quickly constructed) cropping up around the city.

Nonetheless, ample construction in the background of international news coverage will make Philadelphia look alive and every bit as relevant as any major American city. 

SLS International Hotel and Residences

NREA's East Market on the Girard Trust Block has cleared all but the world's largest 80s-era McDonald's roof for its mixed use complex that stands to redefine Market East. 

Along the Vine Street Expressway, private developers are bridging the gap between Center City and neighborhoods north in ways that caps and parks never could: by building tall and monumental. Chinatown's Eastern Tower is rumored to be ready for prep work within two months. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been working steadily on its Mormon Temple, begun work on its community center, and seems ready and able to begin their apartment tower at 1601 Vine Street any day. 

CHoP expansion

And those are just the buildings we know we'll probably see. There are a slew of others in various planning stages, some of them approved for construction. 

Carl Dranoff's SLS International Hotel and Residences would take South Broad Street to new heights and set a new bar for luxury living in Center City. Tom Scannapieco's luxury condo tower at 5th and Walnut would provide Independence Hall with an additional backdrop. Both have been approved.

Stantec's MIC Tower could be topping Lit Brother's new digital signage. CHoP has been clearing land along Schuylkill Avenue for its Grey's Ferry expansion next to the South Street Bridge.

1601 Vine Street

And all of that is roughly in and around Center City. University City itself is experiencing a renaissance it hasn't really seen since Penn and Drexel's westward expansion. This time they're building up and the result is starting to look a lot like Center City's twin. To a lesser extent the same can be said of North Broad and Temple University's vertical projects. Anchoring the opposite side of Broad Street, Bart Blatstein has some plans for Broad and Washington that could turn this long-vacant and should-be prominent intersection into a destination.

When I moved to Philadelphia more than ten years ago, it was the Philadelphia I remembered from my teens, one I hadn't seen since 1994. It was gritty, surreal, weird, and all those wonderful things that make the northeast a bizarrely epic place to live. It still is gritty, surreal, and weird. But coming from DC, watching the building boom of the early 21st Century was something I'd never seen before. DC is impressive, but stumpy. Philadelphia was visually exciting. And our recent boom seems like it's about to get even more exciting. 

FMC Tower

And luckily for us, new residents flocking to our city seem to be embracing Philadelphia for what it is, with or without shiny new skyscrapers. We haven't been terraformed as Brooklyn 2.0, we haven't been (completely) overrun with "Basics" sucking down bottomless mimosas on Sunday afternoon. Philadelphia is still weird, and not in the "Keep Portland Weird" campaign kind of weird. We're weird in the way Philadelphia was weird when a bunch of treasonous atheists declared independence from the most powerful nation in the western world 238 years ago. 

Eastern Tower

The 2015 building boom isn't the result of transplants transforming our city, it's the result of a city attracting transplants that are helping Philadelphia realize what it's always been: a Great City. And unlike the building boom a decade ago that aesthetically redefined the skylines of cities from Miami to Seattle, Philadelphia is doing it with purpose and homegrown spirit. 

2014's Best Proposal

Welcome to the New Year, and a new Philadelphia. 2014 gave us marriage equality and decriminalized marijuana. And while our skyline was forever altered prior to the Great Recession, the city is poised for another architectural renaissance that won't just change the way we look at Philadelphia, but how we interact with it.

Sure, Comcast is building the tallest American building outside New York and Chicago. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and FMC are breaking convention by building tall north of Vine Street and west of the Schuylkill River. Whatever you think of Comcast Center, these other projects are true game changers. They will bridge gaps, extending what we think of Center City beyond its psychological barriers. 

But altering the way we see a city from the interstate is only part of what makes a city. Tall buildings can be purely aesthetic. Ask Los Angeles or Dallas. 

Philadelphia knows better.

Despite new heights being reached north, south, east, and west, the most influential project under development right now is taking place on Market East. NREA's East Market is clearing and rehabbing the Girard Trust Block for a massive mixed use complex bound by 11th and 12th. The project includes shopping, entertainment, restaurants, and a mid rise apartment tower, perhaps two.

In University City this might not seem so exciting. Hell, it wouldn't be unheard of in Conshohocken. But in Center City, developers tend to build up. East Market isn't necessarily tall, at least night in a city where we tend to look vertically. But Center City hasn't attempted a mixed use project on this scale since the Gallery at Market East. And unlike the Gallery, East Market isn't an attempt to offer urbanites suburban woes, it's offering city residents a slice of modern urbanism.

Its storefronts face the sidewalks, and it sacrifices land for even more pedestrianization by slicing the block in half. It's ambitious, but not blindly. It's finally giving Philadelphians what they want on Market East, what they've wanted for fifty years, and what it was a century ago: a shopping hub. 

It's called "Market Street" for a reason.

Sure, I may be gushingly deviating from truly Philadelphian pessimism, but it comes from a realistic place. East Market isn't another Gallery, it's the Gallery-done-right. The only reason it seems risky is because the Gallery is its only analogy. Architecturally, East Market is nothing special. Its modernity is carbon-copy, its tower looks like many built in the early 21st Century. The excitement of its renderings stems from plasma screens and flashy advertisements. But where East Market deviates from large projects past is its sustainability. 

It's engaging, it's smart, and it answers to what residents have been long asking for. It makes Market East feel less an island of poor urban planning and more like an integrated part of Philadelphia. Smart architecture doesn't just exist like Comcast Center or Centre Square, it engages the community and encourages future growth like Dilworth Park or the Piazza. It recognizes the fact that cities aren't just isolated buckets, but pieces of a larger whole. East Market isn't just good urbanism, it begs developers for more.

Game Changer

Game Changer

1601 Vine Street has spent decades as a surface parking lot, one of many that line the Vine Street Expressway. Despite numerous proposals - some more realistic than others - it seemed that it would forever exist as a reminder of what the expressway's construction did to the surrounding blocks. 

Despite its proximity to Center City, developers are leery of taking a chance on Vine Street.

It's full of traffic. It's loud. It's devoid of pedestrians. It's risky.

The Loft District just north of Vine Street has seen a marginally successful renaissance but it still feels like another town, one a short walk from the center of the city. 

The canyon that separates the north and south is more of a mental barrier than a physical one. Other cities have highways cutting through densely populated areas but they succeed because the surrounding infrastructure allows them to be densely populated. When high-rises and skyscrapers embrace a highway, walking across it is less daunting.

That isn't the case in Philadelphia. Vine Street is lined with surface parking lots and a few structures lingering from the neighborhood's era as a slum. 

But that's changing in a big way. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is building a residential high-rise next to its new temple at 16th and Vine, and it appears prep work has begun. 

So what's the big deal? The vicinity known as Franklintown is chock full of apartment buildings. It's on the better, west-of-broad stretch of Vine. 

Well, it's a big deal because this may be one of the most undesirable lots in Center City. It doesn't just sit above the Vine Street Expressway, it sits next to the highway's exit ramp. It's also a big deal because the Mormon church has the money to build quality, and they usually do. This is a building designed by Robert A. M. Stern's renowned firm, one that could easy find a home on cushy Rittenhouse Square. 

It's changing the game, not just for Franklintown, but also for Vine Street. If it succeeds it tells developers and residents that the Vine Street Expressway isn't the barrier they thought it was, just a short, boring block to walk past. It will also bring more residents, more pedestrians to Vine Street, which means the city will be pressured to address the street's piss-poor pedestrianization, the kind of headaches finally being tackled on Washington Avenue.

In a few years, Vine Street and the neighborhoods just north might be the integrated part of the Center City they should be. 

A New Vine Street

With the new Mormon Temple taking shape on Vine Street and the LDS Church's apartment building proposed for the lot next door, Vine Street may soon look a little more like a street and less like a parking lot periodically interspersed with drab walkups and suburban infill. 

Mayor Nutter actually said that the Temple's addition will make the Benjamin Franklin Parkway “one of the most incredible boulevards anywhere in the world.” I appreciate his enthusiasm, but the claim is a stretch. Still, the potential is fabulous and the Mormon's are ferrying the grandeur of the Parkway onto Vine Street.

The LDS Church's 1601 Vine Street

For all that's been said of the mistake that is the Vine Street Expressway, it's more of a mental barrier than a physical one. Portland, OR is home to its own highway canyon, one barely noticeable because of the successful development flanking the east and west sides. 

Chinatown is inching closer to bookending Franklin Town's "Little Salt Lake City" with its own Eastern Tower which would contain a community center and apartments, and solidify Chinatown's presence in the emerging Callowhill neighborhood. 

The original design was fantastically wild and echoed modern architecture scraping the skies of Shanghai, albeit quite bit shorter. Nonetheless, the urban addition would be a breakaway from the sprawling parking lots, vacant lots, and dull infill that Vine Street is known for. While the urban concept remains, Eastern Tower's latest redesign has erased its edge. 

Take a look. What do you think? 

Is the new design good? Ugly? Or simply too boring to be bad?

Original design

Redesign

If Eastern Tower needed to be downsized, a few floors could have been removed without stripping it of its uniqueness. 

Raelen's Vine Street Tower

Raelen

GroJLart's choice words are always welcome in Philadelphia's bizarre and frustrating world of architectural progress. I'm amazed as some of the lost proposals he manages to dig up for Philaphilia, and the most recent is one of my favorites, for two reasons:

One, because I love tall buildings. And two, because I jog past the site every day and always wondered what exactly happened to this block and why it was so awful.

Between 15th and 16th, behind Hahnemann Hospital, is a sidewalk that runs between a parking garage and the Vine Street Expressway's 15th Street (Broad Street) exit ramp. It does nothing but carry me to more scenic jogging routes, but were there more than a parking garage and a surface lot, the space could be an inviting outdoor space for an office complex.

It turns out, that's what it was supposed to be. Unfortunately the small, narrow park space horrifyingly sidles up to the parking garage and a few trees used to stash homeless bindles. If you jog through there after dark, jog fast.

But as GroJLart's crafty paleointernetology managed to unearth, a skyscraping office complex would have, like the Latter Day Saint's recent apartment building proposal, helped bridge the divide of the Vine Street Canyon.

Perhaps the Mormons will help bring the life to Vine Street it needs. Interstate caps and parks are nice thoughts, but nothing helps camouflage dramatic eyesores such as the Vine Street Expressway like equally imposing architecture right next door. The Expressway is no wider than the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Flanked with skyscrapers and high rises, the Canyon would be just another wide boulevard. Although Raelen's design is dated, plenty of skyscrapers date from the 90s and blend in just fine.

Family Court's Kimpton Hotel

Caught up in the exciting skyscraping proposals along Vine Street, the Schuylkill River, and other nonsense, I completely missed Kimpton's plan to renovate Philadelphia's Family Court building as a boutique hotel, solidifying an iconic corner of our landmark Logan Square.

With plans for a highrise apartment at 1601 Vine and Chinatown's Eastern Tower nearing reality, and the LDS's Mormon Temple and Goldtext Apartments under construction, dreams of capping the Vine Street Expressway as a means to entice investors seem to be stepping aside for developers who don't see the canyon as an obstacle.

Truthfully it isn't. From Portland to New York, many cities have highway crevasses cutting through dense neighborhoods that have succeeded without a Big Dig. If skyscrapers flanked the banks of the VSE, crossing it would be akin to walking across an inner city boulevard. It's no wider than the Ben Franklin Parkway.

While Vine Street seems to be organically evolving into such a grand boulevard, one headache still stands in front of Kimpton's Hotel Family Court, right in front of it. For years, Food Not Bombs has provided free food for the homeless atop one of the VSE's caps, a should-be handsome park facing Logan Square and the Basilica of Saint Peter and Paul.

Things are about to change.

Food Not Bombs has to apply for a daily permit from the city to provide the picnics. If they've been going rogue and evading the city, Kimpton will make a case of it. If the picnics are on the up and up, permits in place, Kimpton can apply for the same permit. If they beat Food Not Bombs to the punch for a month or two they'll frustrate them into relocating.

Of course that may not even be necessary. If Kimpton invests in renovating the park, and being the hotel's "front yard" they'd be eagerly willing, the city may give them preferential treatment. That route isn't entirely ethical, but neither is Food Not Bombs' admission of using the hungry homeless to advance causes that have nothing to do with hunger or homelessness in Philadelphia.