Center City West Lands at the 21st Place on Philly YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown

Yesterday, Philadelphia YIMBY’s First Anniversary Countdown, which looks at the most frequently mentioned article categories over the course of the past year, looked at Market East, which scored 35 category mentions. Today we visit a Market Street-anchored neighborhood on the opposite side of Center City, where Center City West noted 36 category mentions and as such arrived at number 21 in the countdown rankings. The forlorn neighborhood, a domain of block-spanning parking lots, garages, and otherwise underutilized properties, is the remaining development frontier of Center City, and is finally witnessing a major development surge, albeit one on a smaller scale than it deserves. Today we look at a few of the projects transforming its rather inhospitable streetscape into Philadelphia’s newest neighborhood.

The traditional definition of Center City West is rather elusive. It has occasionally been applied to the district’s entire portion west of City Hall and Broad Street, or, alternately, the central business core with the city’s densest concentration of high-rise office buildings, between roughly 15th and 20th streets. We at YIMBY use a wholly different definition, one that encompasses the no-man’s-land in the district’s western reaches along Market Street.

To us, the best way to define Center City West as it exists now is to paint a void, via the means of outlining where adjacent neighborhoods effectively end as they run up against the wild wild west of parking lots et cetera. To the east, we draw the line at 20th Street, where the regional rail branch emerges above ground, while the adjacent John F. Kennedy Boulevard rises above average street grade.

The western boundary is clearly demarcated via the Schuylkill River, where some of the most salient new projects are rising along the waterfront. The southern boundary runs up roughly against Chestnut Street or Walnut Street, where the streetscape gradually densifies and merges with the Rittenhouse Square and Fitler Square neighborhoods. The northern boundary is best drawn at Arch Street or Cherry Street, beyond which lies the undisputed domain of Logan Square.

Center City West. Looking north. Credit: Google Maps

Since Market East anchors upon Market Street east of City Hall, it is perhaps fitting to call its western counterpart Market West, for symmetrical and laconic purposes if nothing else. However, time will tell what Philadelphians will choose to call this emerging neighborhood in the years to come.

New proposals between 21st and 23rd Street in Center City West. Looking south. Model by Thomas Koloski

Riverwalk, 60 North 23rd Street

Riverwalk, looking southeast. Credit: PMC Property Group

33 North 22nd Street

33 North 22nd Street. Credit: Solomon Cordwell Buenz / PMC Property Group via the Civic Design Review

2301 John F. Kennedy Boulevard. Looking northeast. Credit: Solomon Cordwell Buenz

2301 John F. Kennedy Boulevard via Civic Design Review

2222 Market Street

2222 Market Street rendering via Gensler

20th+Arch

20th + Arch via L2P

2300-24 Market Street

Rendering of 2300-24 Market Street via Tantillo Architecture.

Center City West is perfectly poised for major development. The neighborhood sits between the Center City business core to the east and University City to the west, two of the city’s key business, education, cultural, and transportation hubs. Underground light rail below Market Street provides direct mass transit access. Enormous development-ready sites provide ample fertile ground for developers to leaven with massive edifices that may supply acres of retail, thousands of jobs, and thousands of apartments, many with sweeping views of the scenic Schuylkill River.

This unique situation begs the question: why does most development currently in progress in the neighborhood cap out at such low heights? Even the loftiest projects currently in the works top out at slightly over 300 feet. Is this in deference to the PECO Building, the lone beacon that has towered above the neighborhood for nearly half a century? If that is the case, then it should not be so, as the 1970s office slab is utterly unremarkable except for its light display at the top.

Is the city afraid to upset NIMBY neighbors because they’re afraid to – oh the humanity! – build tall buildings in an area that already has tall buildings? That hardly seems to be case, either, as this is the only precinct of Center City with hardly any neighbors to speak of,, except for those at the area’s fringes.

Otherwise, the district has all the ingredients to become Philadelphia’s newest hub for dense skyscraper development. We urge the city to dramatically upzone Center City West before we squander this unique opportunity by limiting ourselves to arbitrarily low benchmarks for vibrant urban growth.

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