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The large armory at Broad and Wharton, vacant since 2003, will likely be demolished to make way for developer Michael Carosella's six story apartment building, designed by Vincent Mancini of Landmark Architectural Design. With its 50 units and Broad Street entrance leading to a surface parking lot of 52 spaces, it sounds a lot like Carl Dranoff's 777 South Broad.
The armory is currently owned by Tolentine Community Center and Development Corporation which has allowed the property to fall into a state of purported disrepair, a claim made all too often in Philadelphia.
What's interesting in a neighborhood that frequently objects to developments along its major corridor, those at a zoning meeting held by the South Broad Street Neighborhood Association seemed to welcome the demolition and redevelopment.
With obvious vested interests in the building's demolition, Mancini and Carosella pitched their proposal to the crowd, citing logistical problems with the building's relationship with the street and impossible restoration. Both the developer and the architect ceded that the only way to redevelop the property would be to bring the building down.
But where was the objective party? And more perplexing, where were the vocal NIMBY members that routinely question the motivation behind any project pitched for their neighborhood?
It's easy to argue that the armory's relationship with the street can be cold, but not only is this the case of any successful warehouse conversion in Callowhill and Northern Liberties, it's Carosella's job as an architect to fix that.
Mancini and Carosella stand to profit more from the demolition of the armory than its renovation and conversion, and there may be nothing wrong with that. But as bias partners claiming that the building must come down - which may very well be true - why has no one questioned that claim?
The answer is likely: Parking.
Unfortunately residents of this densely populated part of town are, through no fault of their own, very dependent on their cars.
It's easy to stereotype Passyunk Square and South Broad as chock full of fixie riding hipsters, but it's even easier to forget how massive South Philly actually is. Even in this particular part of South Philadelphia, there are many more households dependent on their cars than not. And honestly you can't blame the residents, even those that live near the Broad Street Line.
While bike lanes, buses, and the subway are convenient to those working in Center City or University City, the public transportation available to South Philly is not at all convenient to New Jersey, the suburbs, or the farther reaches of the city. The fact that the PPA is forced to ignore thousands of illegally parked cars on the Broad Street and Oregon Avenue medians, and even more parked cars blocking intersections, indicates any project that would add residents will need to provide parking.
If the armory does need to come down to provide this necessary evil, Mancini and Carosella should responsibly provide smart parking. Surface lots stain this city, but residents at the armory site will need to park somewhere. Instead of isolating the residents cars in another asphalt prairie, provide parking underground, or better, in a large garage respectfully designed to interact with the sidewalk and provide additional parking for not just residents, but the cars littering the Broad Street median.
In spite of a bad economy, it's evident that Center City is still looking for tenants. And while Carl Dranoff's soap opera sets won't earn a place next to the PSFS tower, he's filling the voids on South Broad Street, a place with no right to the vacant lots it owns.
While critics painted his Symphony House a Nightmare on Broad Street and others had little praise for 777 South Broad, the man knows how to get things built. In a city that contracts those defiant of development, Carl Dranoff knows how to dance.
South Street is Philadelphia's "strip," so it's a mystery why this iconic intersection is home to a community garden. This will soon end. Dranoff outbid P&A's superior design for Broad and South and will soon be erecting 777-light.
Its faux art deco facade isn't bad, at least on paper. But given Symphony House's misleading brick renderings and 777's plastic and cardboard construction, any critique should be reserved for its opening.
In what wasn't one of his ugliest projects, Carl Dranoff's 777 South Broad is finally open on South Broad Street. Anyone who has driven up South Broad over the past year might wonder, with the low quality mashed potato board construction used to erect the quasi-Deco apartment building, what really took so long? And even more importantly, what's this mid-century, Miami-esque recreation going to look like in a decade.
Perhaps Dranoff hasn't been at this game long enough to learn from his mistakes, but even after the harsh criticism he received after piecing together Symphony House, he still focuses on a laundry list of amenities rather than quality or style. To him excess is everything no matter how short its lifespan, how soon it will need to be replaced, or how cheap it may look. He builds disposable buildings.
Symphony House and 777 are urban McMansions. Before long the low quality materials used on both these buildings will be lining Broad Street's sidewalks.
For those of you who don't remember Inga Saffron's 2007 critique of Symphony House, she basically said that Carl Dranoff took and otherwise bland Bower Lewis Thrower design and put it in drag. After his unsportsmanlike reactionary article published by the Inquirer, and several comments by Inquirer staff that Ms. Saffron had essentially castrated the man, I have been eagerly anticipating her review of the humbled man's latest incarnation: 777 South Broad, an apartment rental community with ground floor retail. Tonight's ribbon cutting, including Carl Dranoff and a "flash-mob" frazzled Mayor Nutter, will hopefully mean that we can expect her review of the apartment complex by this weekend.
Not really, but unlike the ghost neighborhoods in Miami and Phoenix, Philadelphia never got too carried away to finish what it started.
10 Rittenhouse Square - which could more accurately be called 1800 Sansom Street as it rises above the square from a half a block north - and 1706 Rittenhouse Square Street - which also takes some liberties with how it addresses itself - are nearing completion. 10 Rittenhouse awkwardly rises from behind a reclaimed historic facade on Rittenhouse Square, while 1706 Rittenhouse Square Street gracefully rises from it's tiny lot above a robotic parking garage as an urban oasis from the super rich.
777 South Broad Street, developed by South Broad's own snap-together plastiscraper (Symphony House for those who haven't noticed the Lego Blocks at Broad and Spruce) developer Carl Dranoff, is starting to look a less like the soap opera set his previous incarnation evolved into. It's hard to tell if the rear will play out as a humble, tree lined courtyard, or as a parking eyesore for the townhouses behind it. My guess is a little bit of both. While it might not possess the melodramatic luxuries of it's sister to the north, you won't have to worry about it being your problem when the plastic panels start falling off the facade, this newbie's going apartment. Finally, a few apartments for the growing mob of disgruntled renters being out priced by condo conversions going nowhere - cough, Arts Tower (but that's another story).
