A recent site visit by Philadelphia YIMBY has observed that neither demolition nor construction work has started at the 11-story Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center proposed at 214 South 9th Street in Washington Square West in Center City. The structure will replace a multi-story garage on the northwest corner of South 9th and Locust streets. Designed by Payette, the structure will feature common areas on the lower levels and research labs on the floors above. A multi-story garage remains at the sit at the moment.
214 South 9th Street. Photo by Jamie Meller. January 2025
214 South 9th Street. Photo by Jamie Meller. January 2025
According to the Sidney Kimmel Foundation, which pledged $70 million to Thomas Jefferson University for construction, the facility is named in honor of Mr. Kimmel’s and “will anchor the university’s Locust Street research corridor, markedly expand Jefferson’s research capacity, and facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations within the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and the Jefferson research community at large.” The Foundation also states that the “state-of-the-art labs will accommodate 56 additional principal investigator teams and will be invaluable in recruiting and retaining the brightest scientific minds in cancer and myriad diseases.”
Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center. Rendering credit: Payette
Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center. Rendering credit: Payette
Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center. Rendering credit: Payette
Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center. Rendering credit: Payette
Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center. Rendering credit: Payette
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Gorgeous building which replaces a parking garage in a prominent area of the city with uderground parking. Seems like funding’s in place. What more can you ask for? What’s the issue with the delay??
Proposed in 2019 with philanthropist Sidney Kimmel donated $70 million seed money, the 900 Walnut St., 12-floor, Payette-designed, 220,000 square foot, $340 million biomedical research building on Jefferson’s campus sought to replace an extant, hideous, six-story, blue-painted concrete first floor and unpainted cement upper floors parking garage for Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience. In September 2021, the garage permanently closed.
However, Jefferson’s planned Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center and growth in research capacity currently is on indefinite pause. It’s the money, always the money.
In August 2024, Jefferson Health and Lehigh Valley Health Network completed merger and created a single health system with 32 hospitals and more than 700 sites of care. Unfortunately, Jeff’s multiyear operating loss has not improved post-merger. For example, in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, Jefferson Health had a $90.5 million operating deficit.
In October 2024, CEO Joseph Cacchione explained: It is “not in the best interest of Jefferson to pursue that research building [Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center] today. That’s not to say down the road in the future we won’t do something. We had to take a pause on that. It was a very expensive building.” Current priorities include “closing the gaps” in its expanded post-merger footprint. Other concerns involve deferred facility maintenance, “culture and cultural alignment between the two organizations… and growing the space between the two. We really have identified some key strategic pillars around the growth of our health plan, growth of the spaces between us and Lehigh Valley, and also leveraging our university and expanding our university offerings up into the Lehigh Valley as well.”
When asked to define “growing the space between the two” organizations, Cacchione responded that that meant building new facilities and creating physician practices in locations in those un-serviced gaps “in areas across Bucks and Montgomery counties. In the past, that may have meant building a hospital. Today, it may mean building an ambulatory center or an ambulatory surgery center. It may be a small hospital. Now we are looking at repurposing some of our existing assets to support the academic and research mission of the organization.”
My take: Thirty-two hospitals may be 31 too many when merger means taking on a huge amount of debt and when attention, money and time are diverted from core activities such as building maintenance. Indefinite postponement of the research center is a significant loss for the city, with 56 work-in-lab, highly compensated and skilled principal investigators and support staff no longer coming to Philadelphia.
I wondered why they never started work right away in 2019. I thought the city was holding up the project as I wondered who to would object to such a great project. I thought it was the historical commission as the silent objector holding up the project. Jefferson owned Wills Eye Hospital and was long envious into tearing down the remaining small buildings to build a tall tower for the eye hospital’s needs.
Need I say that Wills Eye Hospital moved from their old building in the city to build a new state of the art eye hospital. The old building was not torn down and converted to apartments. What the city should have done was to give Wills Eye credit for preserving the old eye hospital by letting them demolish additional small houses not demolished at all. This was not done by the city and a lot of wasted time resulted in nothing being done to enable a philanthropist to complete her project only to it be pulled out.
This seems like a decent project.
The land across the street seems like it’s prime space for development too.
Thank God for Wills Eye
Saved my vision, eye , and life!