A 14-story, 487-unit mixed-use development is mostly complete at 1300 Fairmount Avenue in Poplar, North Philadelphia. Designed by Cope-Linder Architects and developed by RAL Development, the building rises 185 feet, standing prominently over the predominantly residential neighborhood. Two of the floors house retail space, occupied by an ALDI supermarket, and a parking garage in the structure’s eastern section.
Philly YIMBY’s recent site visit at 2100 Hamilton Street, located in the Franklintown section of Spring Garden, North Philadelphia, has revealed that the 115-foot, 10-story-tall residential tower’s cladding having climbed more than halfway up along the concrete structure. The project was designed by Cecil Baker, which is also behind two condo developments that have risen within the past four years, and developed by Brock Development Group. The development, located just to the north of Center City and three blocks to the southeast of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, rises from a masonry-walled pit where a freight train line once ran and was taken out in the 1970’s, with a tunnel remaining under several other blocks.
One Liberty Place at 1650 Market Street is an intricately designed skyscraper has dominated the skyline of Center City for over three decades. Designed by Murphy/Jahn and developed by Rouse and Associates, the tower is clad in a pattern of stone, metal, and glass that rises up to the angled crown and the thin spire. The tower first rose to its final 61-story height in the beginning of 1987, when the top floor was assembled beneath the future spire. Philly YIMBY looks back at the design process by architect Helmut Jahn via drawings from 1984, which show multiple design iterations.
The seven buildings that comprise the uCity Square project in University City, West Philadelphia, are under various stages of progress, with three currently under construction and four more still under planning, to be built in the next phase. The proposed towers will effectively surround One uCity Square, flanking the building to the south and to the west and creating an extraordinarily dense cluster of buildings. Designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects and developed by Ventas Incorporated, uCity Square will bring 6.5 million square feet of mixed-use space spread across the 14-acre site. The three buildings will stand on North 38th Street, with the hotel proposed at the corner of North 37th Street and Filbert Street, and will rise 23, 18, 15, and 14 stories.
The five-story parking garage at 900 Locust Street in Market East, one of many parking garages in Center City slated for redevelopment, remains active as per Philly YIMBY’ recent site visit. Jefferson Health plans to replace the garage with the Jefferson University Caroline Kimmel Biomedical Research Center, which will stand 170 feet and 12 stories tall. The structure will be located on the between Walnut Street and Locust Street and will add 220,000 square feet of space medical center’s campus, which takes up a major portion of the neighborhood. Designed by Payette, the glass-walled facility will bring a unique design to the neighborhood.
