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 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. 

Can Classic Design Ever be "Good" Design?

Inga Saffron, Philadephia's architecture czar and one of my favorite journalists, has some choice words for the Mormon's developing Vine Street, and she's not holding back. 

Starting with "It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings," I can't help but wonder if she's just having a bad day. This is the critic who can't get enough of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's Cheesecake Cube at 15th and Walnut. If you wince at any building that is more stimulating - for better or worse - than a glass box, should you be critiquing architecture?

I don't know anyone who winced.

The projects along Vine Street being developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints include the Mormon Temple currently under construction, a small community center, and a highrise apartment building. Saffron referred to the collection as "one of the weirder ensembles produced in 21st-century America outside of Las Vegas."

That just seems uncharacteristically harsh. 

She claimed the meeting house looked like it was "dragged across town" from Society Hill, despite the similarly scaled Quaker Meeting House just three blocks away. She went on to call the church itself is "a snow-white, double-spired, French classical Mormon temple." 

Okay, now I don't think she's having a bad day. I think shes drunk.

Gracefully respecting its surroundings, Philadelphia's Mormon Temple reflects the classical architecture of its neighbors. Should every new building be innovative, groundbreaking, or an "exciting" glass curtain, even our most sacred places?

The apartment tower and community center are designed by Robert A. M. Stern. I appreciate her frustration with Stern's safe designs, but he designs handsome buildings. Saffron cites his Museum of the American Revolution a an example of his flaccid designs. The museum is no exception and it's not an exceptional building, but despite its odd cupola it's a fine building befitting its neighborhood and its collection. 

Saffron almost seems relieved that the Art Commission has criticized the design, yet she has said little of the museum since her first critique in 2012. It's almost as if the commission's decision was her cue to say, "look, I'm not crazy."

Saffron did take time to speak to Tom King who manages real estate investment for the LDS Church, appreciating the urban design of the space and the church's investment in an undesirable part of near-Center City. Parking will be underground and no walls will be blank, even those facing Vine Street and the expressway's cloverleaf.

But when it comes to the design, Saffron has no patience for what she says "belongs in the past." While developers with the LDS Church will likely move forward with the proposed design, it exists solely in two dimensional renderings, yet Philadelphia's top architecture critic has already relegated it to the bowels of the city's worst, with Dranoff's "Nightmare on Broad Street."

The LDS Church's apartment building doesn't just offer all residents unique views of the city, it's widest wall faces Vine Street's unsightly cloverleaf, blocking it from those who'd rather forget it's there. Unlike Cira Centre that flanks its western banks with modern design that defines University City's identity as unique, Stern's tower reaches across Vine Street and shakes hands with Center City's history, integrating Vine Street with the rest of the city as if it had always been there.

Its apartment tower offers more than nostalgia. Instead of facing Center City flatly, giving half of its residents a skyscraping view and the others a view of North Philadelphia, its narrow edge faces the city, offering all residents a compromising, angled view of the skyline with half facing the Parkway and the others facing the Ben Franklin Bridge. 

Beyond all the artistic rhetoric and intellectualism that only the schooled understand, it's not a dull building. It's not groundbreaking, but it doesn't need to be. It's crowned with upper floors gracefully tiered like The Drake or Rockefeller Center. Assuming developers don't skimp on materials it will be appreciated by those passing by and the general public, those that really matter.

As for the Mormon Temple and community center, they may appear to echo fanciful fairy tales or princess palaces, but they're not bland historic interpretations that attempt to fade into the shadows. Like the Basillica of Saints Peter and Paul across the street, the temple is bold. What makes the Mormon Temple look like a scene from Wizard of Oz is our local unfamiliarity with Mormon architecture. To an equally unfamiliar eye, Catholic architecture is just as bizarre. 

Developers with the LDS may not be attempting to elevate architectural design or art theory, but unlike Mac cubes and glass curtains that art critics continue to applaud for their absent presence, these projects along Vine Street offer something pleasant, classic, and lasting.

teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#jfWC6T7wBxtT7HUA.99

teensy redbrick meetinghouse that looks as if it was dragged across town
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#jfWC6T7wBxtT7HUA.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#5TRhdxvGuFUrMWub.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

It's hard not to wince when you first look at the renderings
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140221_Changing_Skyline__Mormon_development_combines_civic-mindedness__architectural_hodgepodge.html#sAzDRxAmoduWOqKY.99

Mormon On Up

With new proposals north, south, east, and west, Philadelphia is experience a new building boom. And given the economy of 2014, the exciting renderings being passed around the blogosphere seem far more realistic than they did a decade ago.

Move On Up

Today, Mayor Nutter announced two new projects for the 1600 block of Vine Street including a 32 story apartment tower designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects and a Mormon Family History and Community Center. Next to the upcoming Mormon Temple at 17th and Vine, this stretch could easily find itself dubbed Mormon Row. Mormontown? Call it what you want, Property Reserve Inc.'s development stands (tall) to anchor a renewed grand boulevard on Vine Street which, despite the Vine Street Expressway, remains relatively underutilized.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has no shortage of funds and have proven to work extremely well with the city's notoriously difficult unions, so assuming the market for 258 luxury rental units with unparalleled views of the city's skyline remains in tact, this could easily happen. With Tower Place, a potential hotel or residential project at the Inquirer Building, Chinatown's Eastern Tower, and Callowhill's burgeoning Loft District, the urban space north of Vine is going to look dramatically different in the next ten years.

Philadelphia's Mormon Temple

Logan Square's Mormon Temple is beginning to take shape. And while many may not quite understand the group Homer Simpson once referred to as "America's most powerful weirdos," Philadelphia's trade unions and even our City Hall could take a page from the discipline employed at the site.

No smoking. No coffee. No cursing.

That might sound silly. It certainly sounds silly to me, particularly since I indulge in each with great reverence.

But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has its own notion of reverence, one that includes strict discipline embraced to evoke an optimism and excitement uncharacteristic of an ordinary Negadelphian.

I don't have to be religious to appreciate what the Mormons are bringing to Logan Square. The new temple is utterly beautiful. America's own incarnation of Christianity sharing the street with Christianity's oldest denomination is also uniquely symbolic.

While most of us will never be allowed inside the Mormon Temple after its completion, its architecture is worthy of the address of the Catholic Basilica of Saint Peter and Paul, and guided by more rigid design and construction standards.

Pat Gillespie's union routinely fusses with conventioneers who want to plug in their laptops, but the Philadelphia Building Trades Council has accommodated the church's unique requirements. Daily work begins with a review of the itinerary and an optional prayer, and cookies. Perhaps it's the cookies that quell the typical union nonsense. Perhaps it's the optimism. Perhaps it's the blind faith and boatloads of cash afforded by the Latter Day Saints.

Whatever it is, the construction site is easily the cleanest, friendliest, and most productive Philadelphia's seen since the Great Depression.

The new Mormon Temple will be located at the corner of 18th and Vine, next to the soon to be defunct Family Court building. Scaled and styles appreciative to the neighboring Franklin Institute and Free Library of Philadelphia, the temple is a welcome replacement for the surface parking lot it replaced.

Latter Days

The RDA is pushing back against the proposed Mormon temple on Vine Street. Not because of any prejudice against the Latter Day Saints, but because of a bureaucratic loophole that allows the RDA to pass undeveloped surface lots from potential developer to potential developer, collecting a handsome sum with each transaction. Yet another clue into the blighting surface parking lots that littler Center City and Vine Street in particular. Once a lot becomes a lot, it's doomed to stay one as long as the RDA has its say-so.

Theoretically there is a time limit in which owners must develop these lots, but the RDA routinely denies these requests for one reason or another, ultimately cracking down on these time limits when they need to dip into the kitty, or as in the case of the Mormon temple, when a developer steps forward with cash and neighborhood support in hand. In the latter case, the RDA must hurry to find an excuse, any excuse, to make sure they get their hands on that land again, otherwise there are a few less cookie crumbs to pick up. It's deviously hypocritical because the point of this RDA program is to make sure things actually get built on these parking lots.

And then of course you have your chronic protesters who preach tolerance from a soap box plastered with anti-religious bumper stickers. Say what you want about the Mormon church, but it will bring tourists and even potentially a few residents. Although the church itself might not pay taxes, the residents and tourists it attracts do. I personally don't care for the the narrow-minded teachings of the Mormon church, and that's why I'm not one. However I don't find them any less prejudice than what can be taught by Catholicism or Judaism. Much of any religion is based on intolerant xenophobia based on poorly written fairy tales, but in protesting a religion out of town how is one not worse? Particularly in the city that drafted the idea of religious tolerance. And in that uniquely American creation, is it not fitting to have a home for a uniquely American religion?

Besides, I'm certainly don't want to discriminate against someone who wants to replace an eyesore of a parking lot with a beautiful building that attracts business and people. And to those who want to see a "science center" or a "high-rise condo" on this lot, are you kidding me? Really? There's a reason this lot has sat vacant for so long - the RDA - so unless you want to wait another few decades to see if maybe someone wants to build something, our best shot is to go with the Mormons, and hope it slaps the RDA in the face, and City Council and the Mayors Office will crack down on them the next time they try to pull off this shady move.