In October 2018, the 1,121-foot-tall, 60-story Comcast Technology Center at 1800 Arch Street opened as Philadelphia’s tallest building, with office space and a Four Seasons hotel on the upper floors opening in August 2019. In…
The Penn’s Landing redevelopment plan, revealed last month ago as a winner of a major planning competition, will bring dramatic change to the Delaware River waterfront with a total of 3.6 million square feet of floor space. Developed by The Durst Organization, the project is also slated to bring a 11.5-acre park that will connect the I-95 Park to Penn’s Landing, with green space built atop new platforms over the Delaware Expressway. Two large lots of land will be redeveloped to bring a total of 15 buildings, with the southern portion featuring high-rises up to around 300 feet in height and the towers in the northern portion rising up to around 700 feet. The project will bring 1,834 residential units to the eastern edge of Center City. Philadelphia YIMBY’s exclusive set of concept massings display the impact the development will have on the skyline about eight years from now when the project anticipates completion.
The Philadelphia skyline continues its two-decade-long process of extending southward, with two 500-foot-plus towers proposed to be south of Chestnut Street in the past few years. At 311 South Broad Street in the Avenue of the Arts district, across from the Kimmel Center, Arthaus is rapidly rising with installation of rebar and concrete pours. Since the last YIMBY update in August the tower has risen over 20 stories, currently standing at 28 stories and nearly 400 feet to the top of the core, more than halfway to its eventual 542-foot, 47-story height. The blocky tower with a glass curtain wall was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by Dranoff Properties, which revived the taller hotel proposal, cancelled after SLS International Hotel pulled out, as a 108-unit condominium.
Philadelphia’s tallest currently under-construction building continues to rise at 1911 Walnut Street, where the Southern Land Company is erecting The Laurel Rittenhouse Square, a 599-foot-tall tower that will dramatically transform the neighborhood skyline. The 48-story tower, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, will add 185 rental apartments and 60 condo units. Since the last YIMBY update in early August, the skyscraper has only climbed only three levels, now reaching six stories, but progress should move faster now that the structurally challenging portion at the cantilever is nearing completion.
In Center City West, the two-tower Riverwalk development next to the Schuylkill River is steadily progressing with the 315-foot-tall, 28-story north tower topped out, and the core of the south tower rising around a quarter of its future 362-foot, 32-story height. The nearly identical towers, developed by PMC Properties and designed by Gensler, the development will bring a total of 711 residential units, with 331 residential units in the north tower and 380 units in the south tower. The pair will bring a total of over 100,000 square feet of floor space in a rapidly growing section of Center City.
