Hyde Hotel

If you've been buried under a rock like myself, you might have missed a few things. I know I did. I thought that Dranoff's SLS Hotel proposal was dead. Apparently I'm not right, just impatient. But I'm also still skeptical. 

It's apparently happening, and its footprint is growing. Like all hotel conglomerates, SBE Entertainment Group understands you can't just cater to one demographic if you want to breed moguls. I mean what is this, the Roaring 20s? SBE wants to put another one of its' brands, the less pricy Hyde, on the same block of Broad at Pine Street.

If you don't know what is at Broad and Pine, don't worry. It's a parking garage that houses a Starbucks, and neither will be missed by this guy (go to Cafe 12, please). A preliminary rendering shows the Hyde as a handsome if dull 22 story hotel - think Boston in the '90s - with some apartments (because everyone's doing that now), and a seemingly stunted SLS International. Let's hope the latter is just a drafting glitch because that corner deserves some height. 

Dranoff, the developer behind both hotels, hopes to start construction on the Hyde in 2017, so, you know, we've got a while. Projects this large take time to get off the ground and go through dozens of redesigns in the process. We'll likely never see the SLS International we've seen in renderings, and the Hyde's introduction may be a litmus for vested parties to gauge the market. Swapping a parking garage at Broad and Pine for a new one at the should-be site of the SLS International wouldn't be unheard-of. 

But Philadelphia's so hot right now (say that in Mugatu's voice) we could see both sooner than we expect. Philadelphia's recent success is locally unprecedented, at least in any of our lifetimes. Just look at what's happening on Market East and the Schuylkill River. SLS and Hyde aren't household names to most Americans, not like Marriott and Hilton. But their interest in Philadelphia says a lot what's happening in Center City. 

Sigma Sound Studios

The Sound of Philadelphia is coming down to make way for Carl Dranoff's towering SLS International Hotel and Residences on South Broad Street. Philadelphia International Records was definitely a Philadelphia institutions, and an American one. But uptown in a forgotten pocket of Center City, perhaps the last pocket to be terraformed by new condos and hotels, Sigma Sound Studios is also no-more. 

BizJournals has the skinny.

The small building that gave us Macho Man and Disco Inferno, the latter a song that never seems to end, has been sold and will be converted into apartments. It isn't clear yet whether the building will simply be renovated, grow, or like the Sound of Philadelphia, demolished for something larger. Sigma Sound Studios isn't a huge building, and in an emerging neighborhood literally steps from City Hall, its redevelopment would likely profit from additional space.

This neighborhood - the place I've called home for almost eight years - is a unique one. It's long-gone warehouses once housed films from studios like Warner Brothers and MGM throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s. But throughout much of the 20th Century, it was also a notorious red light district. Rumor has it, in the early 20th Century, sailors docked on Delaware Avenue were forbidden from walking the streets of what was often called the Furnished Room District, so named for its abundance of flop houses, brothels, and drug dens. 

As late as the early 2000s, XXX book stores occupied Arch Street and loosely named "massage parlors" still play a part in what's left of a neighborhood clinging to its seedy past. Likely because of its history, the district bound by Broad, 11th, Market, and Vine was targeted for reconstruction in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Unfortunately its history - the good, the weird, and the untoward - has been scraped from the historical narrative of Philadelphia with very little record. 

While I'll miss my cheap rent and a garden a stone's throw from City Hall, it will be exciting to see how the neighborhood evolves and how its unique inhabitants choose to remember it. Wedged between the Convention Center and the growing Loft District, change was inevitable. Hopefully it won't soullessly embrace the convention center but also retain a little bit of its heart, however jaded. Things in Philadelphia tend to do just that.

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. 

SLS International Hotel

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.

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.

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.