Marketplace Design Center

With the Schuylkill River transforming into "Downtown Philadelphia" before our eyes, PMC Property Group planning to transform the Marketplace Design Center into a 22 story office and residential complex. If you're not sure where that is, look for the whale mural facing the river. 

Given Cira Centre, One Riverside, and CHoP's Schuylkill Avenue expansion, it isn't the most ambitious design. On its own, it's not bad. But pictured from another angle, one from the south in which the PECO Building would be in view, that's an awful lot of black paneling and dark windows. Paired with the river's emerging crystalline skyline, Market Street might feel like Happy Hour on the Death Star. 

That's not to say a break wouldn't be bad. 

Every new building blooming from the banks of the Schuylkill looks like a shard of quartz. Handsome buildings on their own, but grouped together they look like the Starfleet Academy. Currently complemented by the Art Deco 30th Street Station and IRS Headuarters, even PECO's foreboding facade, they could use a bit more to dull the monotony, and 2400 Chestnut isn't cutting it.

In fact, giving the boomtown the riverfront is becoming, it might be time for 2400 Chestnut to think about skinning its facade in something a little more interesting. Flanked by soon-to-be Darth Vadar's condo and my pipe dream that Mandeville Place will ever return, 2400 Chestnut is the riverfront's lone pimple. It might soon be time to OxyCute it. 

Philadelphia's City on the River

If you've walked around Philadelphia's Central Business District lately, you've likely noticed something: Cranes and Construction.

Comcast's Innovation and Technology Center is already a skyscraper of concrete, and around the corner, 1919 Market is starting to take shape. 

Excavation is well underway for Chestnut Street's W Hotel, a luxurious companion to the Ritz Residences. Closer to Rittenhouse Square, the former site of the historic Boyd Theater will - like it or not - host its own tower. And just recently, Brandywine Realty Trust announced they'd be expanding 2100 Market - the Stock Exchange Building - for more offices and apartments. 

Once sparsely littered with the city's skyline defining skyscrapers, Philadelphia's Central Business District - our "downtown" if we had one - was the northeast's answer to downtown Los Angeles. It graced our postcards, but shut down promptly at 5pm on Friday.

New residents are changing that and they're bringing with them restaurants. Even more residents will spur shopping and entertainment venues that will make Philadelphia's "downtown" a true downtown, even if it took six decades to terraform the land. 

The wildest proposal is one that's been dreamt about since the demolition of Broad Street Station and its "Chinese Wall," one that would help bridge the gaps created by the station's remaining rail structures. 

Heading west along JFK Boulevard is a grand experience leading you towards our fabulous Art Deco 30th Street Station, or at least it should be. Unfortunately the experience abruptly ends when JFK turns into a highway at the corner of the Kennedy House. Developers and Philly-philes have long fantasized about capping the last remains of the Chinese Wall, rail lines that carry commuters between Suburban Station and 30th Street.

Philadelphia River City was one of the most ambitious proposals. However its 80s-era design was proposed in 2006, and all but the most hopeful were pretty certain it wouldn't go anywhere. In all likelihood it's good it didn't. We didn't need the space (and still don't, yet), and it's unusually isolated and dated design would have only served to further segregate the Central Business District by providing Philadelphia with it's own Detroit Renaissance Center.

Since 2006, no one has dared to propose bridging Logan and JFK with skyscrapers by straddling the SEPTA lines, but plans for something never died. About a year ago, PMC Property Group proposed a high-rise apartment building hugging JFK at the river, and two mid-rises on the other side of the tracks. 

While the proposal doesn't hide the rail lines, it does dilute the barrier and promise foot traffic on JFK. It also visually eliminates the disconnect between Logan and JFK by making the tracks incidental, and not the focus, at least at the river.

It's a good thing, and it might just happen. Earlier this month, PMC Property Group completed the purchase of four blocks between 20th Street and the river, four blocks that - if developed - would fill in part of the gaps between "downtown" and the river, and thusly 30th Street Station. 

With PMC's River Walk and other projects inching their way towards the Schuylkill from Center City, as well as University City's own booming skyline, Philadelphia is well on its way to being an architecturally dynamic city on the banks of the nation's #1 urban trail.

Marketplace Design Center

Right now Center City's Schuylkill Banks are flanked by a touch of the city's skyline: 2400 Chestnut, PECO, and the under-construction Grove.

But the Philadelphia of tomorrow might see the Schuylkill become our own Chicago River, one graced with a riverfront park. And why shouldn't it? Developers are finally realizing that people like to be on the river. In ten years, the Schuylkill Banks could be lined with the FMC Tower, One Riverside, and several other high rise apartments and office buildings.

It could get even better. PMC Property Group (FMC Tower) and Lupert-Alder just purchased the Marketplace Design Center at 2400 Market, otherwise known as the whale-mural building.

Alder views the building as the "gateway to Philadelphia," a building that was built to withstand a few more than its six stories.

New Life on West Market Street

2400 Market Street is under construction at the former AAA mid-Atlantic headquarters. The 1968 office building is getting eight new floors and 282 apartments. This will give the residents of the Murano some company on this otherwise 9 to 5 stretch of Market Street. It is being developed by PMC Property Group.

Chesnut Street's Scientology Headquarters

From the sidewalk, the PMC Group building at 1314 Chestnut looks like just another vacant storefront on Chestnut's walk of shame. But look up. Designed by A.J. Sauer and Co. in 1923, the former Cunningham Piano Company isn't your ordinary Chestnut Street stump.

In fact, the narrow tower gives most of the occupied Walnut Street facades an architectural run for their money. While many of its counterparts have been chopped off or boarded up, the tower stands largely in tact, and in surprisingly good condition.

Currently owned by the Church of Scientology, the vertical lines of the windows on a towering facade barely the width of two townhouses carry your eyes to a rooftop fit for an alien spacecraft's landing pad.

But in all seriousness, while the controversial church will undoubtedly face neighborly opposition, the organization has money and is known for meticulously restoring their historic buildings around the world. If L. Ron Hubbard's followers want to contribute to Chestnut's renaissance - and Philadelphia's weirdness - I won't stand in their way.

Check Philadelphia Freedom Org for renderings.