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. 

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. 

Chinatown, City Hall, and Neglect

In discussions surrounding Philadelphia's growth and development, Chinatown is largely ignored. It's considered dirty, poor, and crowded. However much of the statistical research that paints Chinatown as an impoverished ghetto ignores the fact that much of its largely immigrant population are elderly or self employed.

Philadelphia claims to embrace immigrants, but when they don't fit into what we think Center City should be, many would rather relocate them if they don't come to the city with loads of investments.

Americans approach culture enclaves in a uniquely specific way. Outside looking in, we often find them interesting, but when they deviate from our isolated comfort zones some begin to view them as too Chinese, too Italian, or too gay. Of course xenophobia only exposes itself behind the anonymity of message boards, so people vocally express their discomfort with neighborhoods like Chinatown by calling it out as dirty or citing bias statistics to justify their anxiety.

The truth is Chinatown is bighted. But the city views Chinatown as an onlooker. Household trash is dumped around public trashcans, unpermitted street vendors go unchecked, and illegal parking is ignored throughout Chinatown North. This would run rampant and does in any neighborhood ignored by the city.

Despite being boxed in by the Convention Center, The Gallery, Market East Station, and the Vine Street Expressway, Chinatown's population continues to be one of fastest growing in Center City. As more residents move into Chinatown it's reputation won't get any better until the city begins to work with the neighborhood, truly accepting it as a part of Philadelphia.

The city that once attempted to drive an expressway off-ramp through the heart of the neighborhood and drop a baseball stadium just north of Vine Street seems to hold onto the notion that Chinatown has no place in Center City. The city eviscerated the Furnished Room District, Franklin Square, and the Tenderloin in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Chinatown is the sole survivor of a Philadelphia that City Hall once wanted to forget.

Fortunately the Chinatown Development Corporation has a hold on what's left between 9th Street and 11th Street, much to the chagrin of city planners who don't understand how an ethnic enclave should be addressed by a modern city.

While the city continues to push growth and private development, wildly advertising subsidies for sites like Cira Centre South and potential investments in the Delaware Waterfront, the city has mentioned nothing of the PCDC's Eastern Tower and Community Center at 10th and Vine.

The tower stands to alter the skyline of the city and bring more residents and businesses to the struggling Callowhill neighborhood. Although the city has supported residential developments on the Parkway, Franklintown, and the Schuylkill River, neighborhoods that succeed on their own, they've expressed no interest in the ETCC which is poised to bridge multiple neighborhoods, dilute the visual impact of the Vine Street Canyon, and improve a Chinatown long neglected by City Hall.