A recent site visit by Philadelphia YIMBY has observed sustained construction progress at 2300 Market, a nine-story laboratory building at 2300 Market Street in Center City West. Developed by Breakthrough Properties, the development will feature 225,000 square feet of life science research and development space, 15- to 17-foot floor-to-floor heights, and various tenant amenities.
Philadelphia YIMBY’s recent site visit has observed that construction work is nearing completion at the 295-foot-tall, 19-story office development at 2222 Market Street in Center City West. Designed by Gensler and developed by the Parkway Corporation (alternately Parkway Commercial Properties), with IMC Construction as the contractor, the development will feature 329,100 square feet of tenant floor area, with 324,826 square feet of Class A office space and 4,274 square feet of retail, as well as a 47-car underground garage. The structure is being built as the new headquarters for Morgan Lewis, a major law firm. Building features will include ten-foot-high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, several landscaped outdoor decks, flexible workspace plans, a conference center, a fitness center, Zoom conference rooms, expanded areas for servicing out-of-office visitors, and rooms with advanced audio technology to facilitate virtual court hearings.
Center City West is a section of Center City located roughly between 21st, Chestnut, and Arch streets and the Schuylkill River. For decades, the neighborhood was comprised primarily of parking lots, yet in recent years the area has been on the rise with a large number of projects that have recently been completed, underway, and proposed. The largest developments that have originally been completed in the neighborhood are the PECO Building, completed in 1970, and the Aramark Headquarters which renovated the structure of an existing building at 2400 Market Street in 2019. With Aramark relocating its headquarters to the neighborhood, the company saw the potential of the area’s growth. 2222 Market Street, the first development of the new construction wave was revealed in 2019, and is currently underway.
A surge of development in Center City West is poised to change the neighborhood in the near future. One of these additions is the recently redesigned proposal at 2300-24 Market Street. The original plan was more massive and held residential space, and would have risen 202 feet and 14 stories high. The original iteration was designed by Tantillo Architecture and developed by Lubert-Alder, but now KieranTimberlake and Breakthrough Properties have collaborated to bring the new iteration. The building will now stand at a noticeably shorter height, with a confirmed floor count of nine floors, along with the buildings purpose shifting to office and lab space. Today we share YIMBY’s own skyline massings of the development.
Center City West is seeing a surge in construction, where one of the more notable developments is an overbuild proposed at 2300-24 Market Street. The original iteration was designed by Tantillo Architecture, with Lubert-Adler as the developer. The architect behind the latest design is KieranTimberlake, and Breakthrough Properties is the developer. The building was originally planned at 202 feet and 14 stories tall, but now the plans show a slightly shorter, nine-story structure. In a city meeting, four slides were presented showcasing diagrams and three new renderings of the new, distinctive design.
