We CAN Demand Better

Remember when we were supposed to get this...

...or this...

...and got this?

What happened? Well, the first two renderings were for a proposed W Hotel and Residences at 12th and Arch, now underway at 15th and Chestnut. The third is the Hilton Home2 Suites, a commercially branded turd of corporate anti-design meant to offer guests a sense of familiarity...like a Turnpike Pizza Hut-turned-Chinese buffet that everyone still recognizes as a Pizza Hut, and probably still smells like one.

Once the epitome of grandeur and high society, the problem with today's rent-by-the-week architecture is that it's designed for those who see a city for only a week. They offer a comfortable bed, free WiFi, continental breakfast, and a gateway to the action. But what they leave for locals is a concrete shell cased in trademarked colors and adorned with plastic signage that has nothing to do with a city.

And they honestly have no reason to care. Their investment isn't in Philadelphians, it's in schlepping rooms at a competitive price from architecture that requires the littlest overhead.

In fact, with the exception of a few chain hotels operating out of buildings that were too historic to demolish, we have no iconic, big chain hotels that were built in the last twenty years. We have the Courtyard Marriott, the Residence Inn, the Ritz-Carlton, and of course the Loews Hotel at the PSFS Building. But when it comes to new construction, even Marriott settles. 

The outliers of branded design are high-end hotels, and in Philadelphia, only when accompanied by condos. The Ritz Residences, the W Hotel and Divine Lorraine under construction, and the proposed SLS International all offer units for both visitors, and locals who have to look at Philadelphia every day. If you need proof that corporate hotel design is a product of its tenants, there you have it. 

Pearl Properties is about to drop the first meaningful deuce on South Broad since the '70s, the prestigious Avenue of the Arts. Where a grimy parking garage still barely stands, Pearl will build the Cambria Hotel and Suites. Cambria is owned by Choice Hotels, the company behind brands like Econo Lodge and Roadway Inn, and its design isn't surprising. 

Few renderings show the entire building because it's just that boring.

Fabrezing the site's former parking garage could have at least earned it the title of polished shit, but the Cambria Hotel isn't even interesting enough to criticize. Its boring facade is deliberately designed to fade into the background on an Avenue where everything else was born to shine.

Like them or not, everything built on the Avenue since the 1980s - the Doubletree, Kimmel Center, Symphony House, 777 - was built to impress; to reflect, compliment, or contrast the Avenue's historic beauties. Heinous as some may be to the modern eye, they were all built with a message in mind.

What's ironic is that while we're embroiled in battles over local projects like Blatstein's contentious monolith at Broad and Washington, bickering over towers near Rittenhouse Square, the powers-that-be behind this commercialized brand of corporate architecture know exactly how to play the game. They know the zoning rules, and they don't challenge them. 

Whereas Starwood's plans for a well designed tower at 12th and Arch once drew a bit of anxiety from neighbors because of its height, Hilton's Home2 didn't because it couldn't. It didn't challenge the rules, it played by them. There was, and still is, nothing in place to challenge truly hideous, or just plain boring design, as long as it jives with the zoning in place. The city's Civic Design Review can hold a meeting, but it's ultimate verdict is only a recommendation. And it rarely gets involved in projects that don't challenge the city's zoning ordinances. 

Pearl's Cambria Hotel probably won't have any adverse impacts on the Avenue of the Arts, at least not in terms of the street's vibrancy. The building is too boring to stand out as an eyesore, and in Philadelphia we're still of the mindset that something is better than nothing. The Cambria will put more feet on the ground and more people on the Avenue, and it will provide the litmus test Pearl thinks it needs to move forward with its stunning SLS International Hotel and Residences nearby. 

"Boring" hotels used to look like this.

But it does set a new precedent at an address where every developer has at least tried since the early '80s, a precedent that says commercially branded design is okay at one of the city's most coveted addresses. If we're smart, we'll look at this as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes, what the city allows, and decide whether the Civic Design Review should be granted true authority over what gets built. And personally, with the right people involved, I think it should.

There is a lot of developable land on South Broad and even more on North Broad, and unless we change our attitude and begin to demand better design, we can expect a lot more Cambrias and Hilton Home2s on our premier avenues. They're the ones with the money to make it happen, but they're also the ones with the means to offer Philadelphia the designs it truly deserves. And we do deserve better. We're Philadelphia, for crying out loud, and we need to wake up and realize what that means. 

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. 

New W Hotel Rendering

A new rendering of the W Hotel proposed for 15th and Chestnut found its way to SkyscraperPage.com. It's...interesting.

W's Fifth Element

Our foul mouthed hero at Philaphilia posted an...interesting...rendering of W's Element Hotel proposed for 15th and Chestnut. It's a simple massing of the site, but it appears to have combined elements of the previously proposed Waldorf Astoria with a previous massing of the proposed W. Being developed by Brook Lenfest, securing funds shouldn't be an issue if the market permits. In other words, this could happen.

And it should.

It's a crazy looking building, but let's face it, a cool one. Let's not stop with standard materials, and as GroJLart suggested, blue glass. It's been dubbed the Element, and is well on its way to looking oddly futuristic. Let's hope the design evolves in an even crazier direction, so I can start calling it the Fifth Element.

Of course, this would be even better.

Is this the W Hotel?

With all the construction buzz around town - the FMC tower and the Grove completing Cira Centre's original plan and carrying the skyline across the Schuylkill River, Dranoff's SLS International Hotel, talk of high rise or two at the Girard Trust Block - Inquirer Architecture Critic Inga Saffron might be faced with more subject matter than she's seen since 2005, and it's wonderful.


W Element Hotel? Maybe.

Still, little has been said of the still-vacant lot at 15th and Chestnut, once the proposed location for a Waldorf-Astoria and now a W Hotel. Rumors of talks and tax incentives have found their way online, but little has been officially released.

A cute and very preliminary rendering showed up on SkyscraperCity a few days ago showing a glass tower roughly the same height as City Hall. Dubbed the W Element Hotel, the rendering is very simple, but worth a look.

W Hotel

Tentative plans for a skyline altering hotel near City Hall may have encountered a slight hiccup. Hotel owners sick of competition have created their own NIMBY, "Concerned Hotel Owners of Philadelphia." Of course the difference between a NIMBY and a corporate action group is all in motivation.

NIMBYs, however ridiculous as they may be, are concerned citizens with what they perceive to be legitimate quality of life concerns. Corporate action groups are all about lobbying for profit.

CHOP penned a letter to Philly.com, then edited it, then edited it again, calling for the city to withhold any subsidies in the construction of a W Hotel at 15th and Chestnut, subsidies most CHOP members received themselves.

The erratic letter focused primarily on the Pennsylvania Convention Center, suggesting any subsidies are a governmental attempt to offset the cost behind the disastrous expansion of the center, more subtly suggesting that the only people who rent hotel rooms in Center City are conventioneers.

Of course this ridiculous assertion ends when the W Hotel is complete. W wouldn't be investing in Philadelphia if it didn't see a market here. Subsidies may help build the skyscraper but its tenant knows it needs customers to profit.

Those profits are what these concerned hotel owners are interested in. If any one of them was so strapped for cash they'd be cashing out on their real estate and leaving town. They aren't. They're frustrated with the fact that their lackluster hotels might loose a few customers to something as lavish as a W skyscraper in Center City.

Marriott Downtown is a member of CHOP. It's interesting that a hotel chain with three franchises on one block is campaigning against purported industry saturation.

It's business, people. If you aren't good at it you die. You don't start a lobby group to muscle out the kinds of businesses that make Philadelphia a better city.

If the city decides to cede to CHOP's demands, W will be free to hire market rate labor to offset Philadelphia's notoriously costly trade unions. If W decides to go ahead without subsidies it will be interesting to see if the city support their construction crew.

Hilton Home2 Suites

Perhaps one of the worst architectural trends to emerge from the second half of the 20th Century is corporate branded design. Not only is it a cheap way to reuse blue prints, but the design is underwhelming, not just because it's cost effective, but because consumers remember simplistic design easier than good architecture, and recycled facades serve as their own advertisements.

To add insult to injury, corporate design is impossible to reuse. When my hometown decided to expand its county offices, a vacant Safeway was chosen as the site. Even though it was rebuilt complete with a clock tower, Safeway's signature Quonset Hut roof can't be ignored. And who hasn't seen at least one 80's era Bonanza serving as a Chinese buffet? 

While many upscale hotels, at least in large urban cores, have chosen to occupy historic office buildings, many others have carried their corporate branding far beyond signage, sharing the same approach as roadside Super 8's. Hilton Home2 Suites at 12th and Arch is no exception.

Not only is Home2's design scene only design in the most technical sense of the word, worse, it doesn't care. It's ugly, deliberately ugly. And why shouldn't it be? People are brand loyal, and for anyone loyal to the Home2 brand, these abominations are impossible to miss. Surrounded by gracefully reused Marriott properties and the respectfully preserved Loew's PSFS Building, Hilton isn't even pretending to care about Philadelphia.

It's irresponsible. To those residing at Home2, it's conveniently located across the street from the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Reading Terminal Market. But those residing at Home2 aren't Philadelphians and will rarely consider that this building is nothing but a middle finger to our portfolio of historic and modern architecture.

The choice of Hilton's executives to use branded design becomes even more insulting when you consider the fact that this was the site of a proposed W Hotel that was (and I never use this world lightly) fabulous. You have to wonder if Hilton's corporate architects even visited the site. But again, this building wasn't designed for Philadelphians, or even with Philadelphians in mind, so why bother? In almost any case, anything is better than a surface parking lot, but perhaps not here.

The W Hotel, once proposed for 12th and Arch.

Community activists routinely protest handsome residential developments, pushing local developers out of town. Yet when a billion dollar corporation decided to drop this bomb at a major intersection, a corporation that can afford to employ better design, our voices were silent. The fact that a parking garage that recently opened chose to grace its façade with an ounce of pizazz is all you need to know to recognize that this hotel is an absolute disaster.

High in the Sky

Once home to Frank Furness's Morris Building, 1441 Chestnut Street has been the site of broken promises since it was demolished following the devastating fire that ultimately destroyed One Meridian Plaza fire across the street from City Hall. Yesterday, a plan was proposed to finally develop the lot.

Previously the site of a Waldorf Astoria proposal, its potential became a dream come true for architecture and skyscraper nerds, myself included. While the city won't earn a Waldord brand, the latest proposal seems promising and equally exciting.

The proposal calls for a $280M hotel, LEED certifications, and fifty stories on the site. In case you're not keeping track, that would make it the fifth tallest building in Philadelphia. In other words, tall.

The building would house two unique Starwoods brands, one possibly a W Hotel. Vine Street Ventures of Dallas plans to develop the property, owned by Brook Lenfest of Philadelphia.

Better Than Nothing?

Hilton Home2 Suites released its rendering for the corporation's second spot on the Pennsylvania Convention Center's Arch Street strip and it begs the question, is something better than nothing?

As the Roaring 2000's brought us back to an era of opulence few remember and architectural experimentation headlined our newspapers, the answer was certainly a resounding "NO". Only in recent history have few chains of hotels attempted to rival the decadence and luxury of the Gilded Age, but for the most part, even historically, hotels do little to serve those who make their homes in the shadows of these businesses.

It makes sense, at least business sense, especially around convention centers, arenas, and corporate hubs. Hotels are in the business of serving those who don't live here, and unless you're one of the few who can't travel without courtesy robes and a plasma screen TV displaying a crackling fire, your hotel room is going to be remembered as little more than a comfortable bed and a convenient location. That's where Hilton Home2 Suites is better than nothing.

In all reality, most cities are filled with nondescript boxes that can be easily sold and rebranded when they change hands. Only in our rosie memories of the past 10 years are buildings like this less than par. While one would undoubtedly prefer the W Hotel's previous proposal for 12th and Arch, one can't guarantee that this robust economy will return anytime soon. One also can't guarantee that a W Hotel at 12th and Arch would be more than an empty edifice in this economy had it been built without a business savvy consideration for its future.

As the decade continues, middle class families are cashing in their frequent flier miles for road trips to the Poconos in the Family Truckster. The trips we remember from our childhood weren't bad, but it wasn't a time that warranted boutique hotels in every neighborhood.

Hotels like Hilton Home2 Suites serve a market, and the fact that the market is there is a very good thing. While you won't be overwhelmed by a new skyscraper across from Reading Terminal, the new hotel will put a few hundred beds in proximity of dozens of local businesses.

Infill isn't evil. Passerbys will still be greeted with groundfloor retail, and when they look up, they will still see the beautiful Reading Terminal Headhouse and the PSFS Tower.

Philadelphia and cities across America were offered a reprise from the architecturally mundane for one of the brief periods that only come along when investors are reckless and banks fail to watch their reserves.

These short timelines of opulence leave us with dazzling wonders of engineering muscle, but they're financed by the dreams of those asleep at the wheel.

Could Hilton Home2 Suites be better? Of course it could. But now that we've awoken from the dream, practical infill will increasingly become the best case scenario. This doesn't mean we should stop campaigning against the status quo, but it does mean that the resources of those who campaign for a better city should go where they are needed.