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Carl Dranoff's One Riverside has a undergone a redesign for the better, in so many ways. For one, it simply looks better. I
Its formerly bland glass infill has been redesigned as an iconic and towering showcase for the Schuylkill River's emerging skyline. But even more astounding, Dranoff managed to appease neighbors previously opposed to the project by putting its parking underground and setting the tower back from the community garden.
Read Inga Saffron's story here.
Personally, I may have been one of the few not opposed to Dranoff's previous design. I see community gardens as temporary infill, even those as pleasant as the one along 25th Street. Like even the most beautiful murals, they satisfy a vacant place until something better comes along. By better, I mean tenants. But Fitler Square's community garden may have proven itself a worthy permanence. And admittedly, it is quite beautiful and designed for such permanence.
Likewise, Carl Dranoff has proven himself a developer truly vested in not only appealing to Philadelphia, but being a Philadelphian himself. Through the architects at Cecil Baker + Partners, he willingly worked with concerned neighbors to develop his site with their concerns in mind, and in the end created a better building.
In recent years the success of the Schuylkill Banks and plans for additional improvements have inadvertently called residential developers into action. The Banks is an urban Cinderella Story. Historically industrial railroad space, few ever thought the flood plain two stories below Center City would ever find itself as a role model for urban parks.
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But architecturally, the Banks poses a challenge. Through most of Center City, the Schuylkill River isn't graded with the city's built environment, it's recessed well below. Particularly between JFK and Walnut, it's recessed more like the Chicago River than a place ever meant for cyclists and joggers. In fact many early master plans for JFK, West Market Street, and 30th Street Station envisioned the river's east bank looking a lot more like its west. Rightly, developers are eager to offer residents a piece of the river, but it's not as simple as building condos on Miami Beach.
How do developers best ferry their elevated tenants to the park below without alienating recreationalists and hurting the peaceful setting the Banks provides?
Recently, three towering proposals have called this into question. In the heart of the city surrounded by skyscrapers, towering apartment buildings along the river won't diminish the park's experience in their own right. However being on a flood plain, these projects must be elevated to the streets above. Each of these proposals has remedied that obstacle by putting their tenants atop a parking podium. Unfortunately, that puts the least desirable element, a parking stump, face to face with the Schuylkill Banks.
Many have come out against these projects, namely due to the vast concrete walls that will face the river. Are foes of these projects simply echoing the the media, or should these developers be sent back to their drawing boards?
Is it possible to address the architectural need to elevate these towers without distracting from the pleasures of the park? Is there an alternative? If there is no alternative, is sending developers elsewhere for the sake of a park worth abandoning the benefits these projects offer the city above?
But really, are these parking garages that different than the built space that already faces the Banks? The park still sits on an industrial artery, beside and below railroad tracks. Anyone who's spent time on the river knows that the Central Banks often peer into the dark recesses of the city's underground.
2400 Chestnut and the PECO Tower already sidle up to the Banks, offering as much or less to the river than the recent proposals. Neither diminish the park's experience, but simply remind recreationalists that the Banks is a very urban park. Where were those agitated by the inevitable residential interest in the river when critics were gushing over the proposed Mandeville Place? The vistas offered along the Schuylkill River are directed at University City's growing crystalline skyline, but Center City's presence is incidental and always will be.
The Schuylkill Banks will not be abandoned because of a series of parking podiums, only find an increased demand by the tenants in the towers above. Perhaps more importantly, these projects will help bridge the cognitive divide between Center City and University City, creating a much greater urban core.
Southstar Lofts at Broad and South is nearing completion and it looks okay. In fact, okay is exactly how it looks.
It's not a head turner, but it may be a turning point in one of Philadelphia's most passionate developer's portfolio. Despite harsh criticism for Carl Dranoff's ambitious Symphony House and 777 South Broad, he probably won't hear a lot about Southstar. For one thing, it's too simple and bland to really warrant critique, but he also transformed a troublesome corner, a community "garden" on a prime corner that many in the community didn't want.
It's unfortunate that Southstar didn't bring the same edgy design as its neighbor, 1352 Lofts, but once it opens with panoramic views of the Avenue of the Arts, Dranoff is set to bring his A-game with the SLS Hotel on the site of Philadelphia International Records.
Southstar Lofts helps fill South Broad's patchwork of vacant lots and suburban chains, carrying passengers towards 777 South Broad. If Bart Blatstein finally transforms the massive lot at Broad and Washington, we may finally see a cohesive stretch of urbanism connecting Center City and South Philadelphia.
News broke today that Carl Dranoff's SLS International Hotel and Condo at Broad and Spruce is all but a done deal. And at 47 stories and 562 feet, it's tall. Like taller than William Penn, tall.
Dranoff Properties released Kohn Pedersen Fox architects' initial renderings of the sleek tower and it's an exciting departure from Dranoff's other properties. Construction is planned to start in 2014.
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| Kohn Pedersen Fox |
Kenny Gamble, of the legendary Gamble and Huff and Philadelphia International Records, sold the current building to Carl Dranoff.
Despite the loss of the landmark building, South Broad Street will also be losing a vacant gravel lot.
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| Kohn Pedersen Fox |
The hotel's name pays homage to Philadelphia International Records and vested parties have hinted that more than the namesake will pay tribute to Gamble and Huff, Philadelphia International Records, and Mayor Wilson Goode, whose offices were once in the current building.
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| Bradley Maule |
The announcement of Carl Dranoff's forty story hotel at the site of Philadelphia International Records has caused a stir amongst both American music lovers and national historians. The small but pronounced building at Broad and Spruce, partially destroyed by a fire in 2010, is the location that Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff helped launch the careers of Motown and Disco legends.
With Philadelphia International Records and its neighbor, Utrecht Art Supplies closed, the building is currently vacant. Still, the building stands in the Broad Street Historic District so it's the prime location for Philadelphia's first museum dedicated to the Philadelphia Sound, right?
Well there's just one catch. Kenny Gamble, largely responsible for the building's iconic history, is still very much alive. In fact it is his holding division, the Great Philadelphia Trading Company that is orchestrating the building's sale to Carl Dranoff.
It's a unique situation. The building is clearly historic, but historically significant thanks to Kenny Gamble. Can the city really say, "You did a great job making history, but we're going to tell you what to do with the building that made it. But hey, thanks for the music"?
Given the impending outcome at the Boyd Theater, the city's Historical Commission has rendered itself useless, just an item on any developer's shopping list. But our private historic organizations, those truly dedicated to the salvation of our region's landmarks don't operate without their own missteps.
The simple fact is this is Kenny Gamble's building. If the city forces it from the source of the building's history, in the name of history, the city comes across as a great big ass. That doesn't mean there should be no effort to save it. But that's where Philadelphia's historic organizations need to be a little less...Philadelphian.
Gamble needs a reason to save the building, or at least its legacy. Is the building itself significant or just the music it helped create? At the very least the discussion has proposed the need for a museum dedicated to the sound brought to us by Gamble and Huff. Would a museum anchoring Dranoff's new hotel significantly honor that, or is there true history in the current building's architecture.
Do those rallying to save the building really understand why it's significant? Do they listen to records bought at Philadelphia International Records and connect it to the architecture.
Historic preservation is rarely about buildings, but historians can be somewhat ragmatic when it comes to restoration. Even at the Boyd Theater, what are historians trying to preserve? A building or an experience? An experience that few still appreciate?
At Broad and Spruce, that experience is the music, and most of that history was lost to the fire in 2010. What's left may truly be an insignificant building.
These are all things that preservationists need to consider as they campaign to save a defunct record store. Is the architecture of a building, one built decades before Philadelphia International Records, relevant to its history? Would it be relevant to anyone seeking a museum dedicated to its namesake?
South Broad has its share of underutilized property more appropriate for a new skyscraper, but as we've seen countless times, the market and zoning dictates those decisions. If Dranoff can pull off a skyscraper even more exciting than Gamble's building on Broad and Spruce, one housing a museum dedicated to the legacy of Gamble and Huff, has anything really been lost?
Carl Dranoff is no stranger to scrutiny. It's not surprising. While his designs are often unassuming and sometimes ridiculed, his firm is also synonymous with Philadelphia residential development.
While many have criticized the bland tower that rose from the site of the Sidney Hillman Medical Center, few have dropped the name of its developer, the John Buck Company, because it isn't a household name.
But both developers share the same struggle: appeasing lots and lots of tenants.
Dranoff's proposed One Riverside Park won't win any awards. Even in the design phase, we know it never will. Dranoff's bland designs are deliberate. Symphony House and 777 South Broad are his most unique, but they still echo tested design.
He's not a visionary, he's a businessman. Instead of hiring award winning firms that design iconic buildings, he hires ones that design buildings that rent quickly.
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Heaving the weight of this reality on Dranoff's firm isn't entirely fair. There are plenty of developers in Philadelphia scarring our city with lesser architecture, or worse, bulldozing our history for parking lots from their mansions in New Jersey.
Dranoff is just the most visible because, perhaps, he's the most ambitious.
He's leaving a legacy on the city he loves. Respectably, he stands behind his properties in the face of criticism, deserved or not, and most of his buildings aren't significant enough to be ugly.
Dranoff is no Frank Furness, and perhaps that's where people get confused. He isn't an architect. He's a developer catering to families and suburban refugees looking for comfort and amenities, the kind of people we see jogging the Schuylkill Trail at 5am as we weirdos return from the all night clothing optional rave in Baltimore.
His demographic might cock their heads quizzically at the unique architecture popping up around University City, along New York's High Line, or even the Murano or the Residences at the Ritz. They're easy to appease, but easily turned off by the unfamiliar.
Basically, his market has a conservative eye. But that's where the money is. Dranoff knows this, and instead of trading potential tenants for unique design, he plays it safe and caters to the broadest market possible. Right now in Philadelphia that's the upper middle class ex-suburbanite who wants a home near the park, ample parking, and to live in something that blends into the background.
It's easy to call out other cities in comparison, but even New York is still churning out plenty of boring rectangular cubes to accommodate the status quo. New York and Chicago simply build so much that they have more gems to stand out.
Still, Dranoff's projects and weak design aren't entirely excused by this vast demand for the ordinary. Hilton Home2's developer citied construction costs to excuse his architectural disaster and he couldn't have been more knee-deep in bull ****.
It's true, it costs a lot to build in Philadelphia, but turning a building on an odd angle, adding unorthodox materials, or selecting a unique color palette doesn't up the construction costs.
Philadelphia is saddled with cost prohibitive situations, but that lies in construction, not design. There is no architecture union in Philadelphia that I'm aware of, and if there is, H2L2 and Erdy-McHenry aren't working against each other to produce the lowest common denominator.
Edgy and interesting design doesn't have to be cost prohibitive when it comes time to build, and Dranoff has the money to hire an architect with an eye for the unique. We know this because Post Brothers hired a firm to design a much more interested renovation at 12th and Wood and proved that Philadelphia's costly prohibitions aren't in themselves requirements, just a daily headache.
However Dranoff seems uninterested in ruffling the feathers of the city's unions. Post Brothers' renovations at the Goldtex, while visually unique, aren't structurally unique.
Dranoff could easily employ an edgy design firm to help him adorn the Schuylkill River, but that isn't what he does. Dranoff's reluctance to build an iconic high rise on the Schuylkill Banks is marketing, and a business move to sell his beds as fast as possible.
Carl Dranoff is eyeing a property adjacent to his own for a 21 story high rise set on the Schuylkill Banks at 25th and Locust. While the preliminary rendering is little more than massing, some have already challenged the location as the worthy site for a high rise.
Here's why it's great. The Schuylkill River Trail, particularly the Schuylkill Banks, has become wildly successful. After a decade in the making, countless grants, donations, and volunteers have finally managed to bring people to the waterfront, offering their bikes and legs a quick route to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Boat House Row, and beyond.
Why limit that to the few who already live there, and those who drive there?
Those criticizing the prospect of a new high rise on the river claim that it will disturb the setting, a setting that lies on the CSX rail line and is shadowed by 2100 Chestnut and the PECO tower. It's Center City. It's wear high rises belong. Those who adore the Schuylkill Banks stare up I awe at our skyline and enjoy the grit and relationship between the city and our river. Those seeking reprieve need only walk north, or soon, south.
Cities as environmentally integrated as Portland and Vancouver, BC have already lined there waterfront with slender, sleek high rises offering more urban residents a slice of the water and view. It's where we should build tall buildings.
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.
After years of contentious - and ridiculous - arguments over a prime piece of real estate at South and Broad, Dranoff's Southstar Lofts appears to becoming a reality.
For decades, the Garden of the Arts occupied the northeast corner of the intersection, overgrown with weeds, inaccessible to the public, and loosely controlled by unnamed neighbors who waged an online war to preserve this little bit of Old Philadelphia nonsense.
Reason finally won out.
It may not be the most exciting design, particularly for such a prominent corner, but it's friendly relationship with the street will mark a vast improvement over its predecessor.
At its worst, Southstar is a generic condo building, supplemental infill, complementing the award winning theaters sharing its street. At best it will increase the value of South Broad's many parking lots, meadows, and suburbanized strip malls, fostering the density that should occupy our city's core, sending a message to developers that South Broad is ready for more life.
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).
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