Toll Brothers reveal shorter, mostly glass tower for Jewelers Row: With 85 condos, 4,500 square feet of retail

Ahead of an official Civic Design Review meeting next month, Toll Brothers has revealed its new design plans for a 135,000-square-foot condo tower on Jewelers Row after nearly a year of tweaks and revisions. 

The new designs, which call for a 24-story tower with 85 condo units, has changed significantly since the developer’s original iteration, shrinking in size from 338 feet to 308 feet. The amount of retail has nearly doubled since last year’s original plans. 

The plan still calls for the demolition of four buildings on Jewelers Row—702-710 Sansom Street—and another on S. 7th Street. 

“I think that based on the great feedback we’ve gotten from a lot of people here we’re creating something that everybody can be proud of and happy with,” Toll Brothers’ David Von Spreckelsen said in an interview with Curbed Philly ahead of a Tuesday night zoning meeting with the Washington Square West Civic Association. 

Here’s how the new design proposal compares to the original: 

Toll Brothers Jewelers Row Tower

Legend	2017 version	2018 version
Height (ft.)	338	308
Stories	29	24
# of condo units	109	85
Retail (sq. ft.)	2,600	4,500

The new permit for the building is also no longer under unity of use, according to Von Spreckelsen. Instead, it’s being developed pursuant to lot consolidation, which resulted in the shorter tower with less floor area. In addition, the tower no longer spans the alley way to the south of Jewelers Row. 

The updates come nearly a year after the original renderings were revealed in 2017. Since 2016, however, the proposal has come under fire from the historic preservation community and residents who are against the demolition of a series of buildings on Jewelers Row that would make way for the tower.

One of the most significant cosmetic changes includes the removal of the two-faced facades. Originally, the design called for a masonry facade along Sansom Street that rose to the top of the building, while the Washington Square-facing facade was clad in glass.

Old, 29-story tower.

New, 24-story tower.

“What led to it was feedback we got from the constituents who wanted the building to read as one, not having two separate personalities,” said Von Spreckelsen. “So we went with the glass so that it can sort of [...] disappear into the sky and be as un-obstructive as possible but also be elegant and stately.”

In addition, the retail square footage has expanded to 4,500 square feet, which will potentially allow for at least three retail tenants to set up shop on the ground floor. Von Spreckelsen said Toll Brothers received positive feedback from Jewelers Row tenants who have seen the most recent iterations of the retail space. 

“They were encouraged by the addition of retail space,” he said, “and the fact that it would be modern retail space.” 

The well-attended Washington Square West Civic Association zoning meeting Tuesday night was meant to specifically address the design of the proposed tower. Some attendees again expressed their desire to have the facades of the current structures be preserved instead of entirely demolished. 

The designers SLCE Architects and developer reiterated that they had considered it, but have “gone in another direction,” adding that the facades have been changed over the years that they found no way to “truly unify” the development with varying exteriors. 

Architect Jim Davidson said the high-performance glass facade and setbacks are meant to make the building stand out less and have a more “delicate footprint.” 

Davidson said, “It’s very much treated as a background building.” 

The design proposal will be presented to the advisory Civic Design Review committee on February 6, 2018. 

 Jewelers' Row

 

South 7th Street, , PA 19106 Visit Website

Source: Philly Curbed

 

214-townhome development planned along Delaware River in Pennsport: The two-phase project sits on eight acres

Shortly after developer Bart Blatstein sold a portion of his Delaware River waterfront property earlier this month for some $20 million, the new owner’s plans for the site are now clear. 

US Construction plans to build 214 townhouses designed by Atrium Design Group at 1499 S. Columbus Boulevard, according to plans posted to the Civic Design Review’s website ahead of the February meeting. 

SEPTA approves final route for proposed King of Prussia extension: Extension of the Norristown High-Speed Line will include two stops at the mall

SEPTA's board on Thursday approved a final route for the Norristown High-Speed Line extension that will provide direct service to the King of Prussia Mall.

The 4.5-mile, elevated high-speed rail extension would give riders a faster connection among King of Prussia, Center City and University City, the region's three largest economic hubs. It is projected to cost between $1-1.2 billion and will include two stops at the mall among others in the King of Prussia vicinity.

With $56M loan, Philadelphia Metropolitan Opera House eyes December 2018 return: The historic theater will reopen as Live Nation venue on December 13

The Philadelphia Metropolitan Opera House on North Broad was just handed a $56 million loan, pushing the restoration project forward to its December 2018 opening date as a Live Nation venue.

Developer Eric Blumenfeld announced Thursday that the project received a $56 million loan from Billy Procida, Fulton Bank, PIDC, and New Orleans-based Enhanced Capital. Blumenfeld said in a statement, “Without [their] support, this building would have been lost forever. My prediction is that the North Broad Street Corridor will just get better on December 13 of this year when we open and continue to attract the best and the brightest from all sectors of the economy.”

Why is Toll Bros. designing a "background" building for an iconic Philly neighborhood?

After a couple of false starts, Toll Bros. is advancing a scaled-back proposal for a condo building, replacing five buildings at the edge of Jewelers’ Row. Toll unveiled its latest iteration of the contentious project at a Washington Square West Civic Association’s zoning committee Tuesday evening. As Jake Blumgart reported, the Horsham-based developer is now planning to build a 24-story, 307-foot tall building to replace 702, 704, 706, and 708-710 Sansom Street. The neighborhood’s review was strictly design-focused, to inform the project’s Civic Design Review meeting on February 6.

The course of this project has been fraught, drawing a fight from preservationists and some neighbors, permit challenges, and delay. But Toll is persistent, and there are, realistically very few things neighbors or the city can control about this project at this point. It is largely proceeding by right, and Civic Design Review is a nonbinding process that, at best, could persuade the developers into improving the project’s design.

For those who object to Toll’s incursion into the delicate ecosystem of Philadelphia’s historic jewelry district, any tall building feels like it is bigfooting onto such a human-scale setting. But if Toll’s project is already a tough pill to swallow, it’s made more difficult by a design that is not ambitious enough. In exchange for the historic integrity of Jewelers’ Row, we should expect truly interesting architecture in its place. Instead, the new design aims to disappear into the sky and blend into the streetscape.

Toll’s first proposal was rightly critiqued as a building with an identity crisis – its south side a plain wall of glass facing Washington Square and its Sansom side a heavy nod to the street’s red brick buildings. This time, the designers applied a classic tall building formula that adapts the parts of a column, with a distinct base, shaft, and cap, each with a different character.

The most successful part of the design is the base, the first three stories facing Jewelers’ Row. Here the building is clad in brick and glass, in a good-faith attempt at contextual design that takes its cues from the scale of the historic streetscape and traditional materials. The base is broken up into four sections, evoking the rhythm of the small buildings it replaces and the existing density of the street. Brick piers separate each of the large window sections; one section to the east is for the lobby and the other three are for commercial use. The base rises three stories to match the cornice of 700 Sansom, a petite historically protected building, and it is capped with a pergola intended to soften the setback to the glass tower above. The top of that trellis structure meets the four-story roofline of the building to the west.

 

 

702 Sansom rendering of Toll Bros. project, from 7th and Sansom | January 2018

 

The glass shaft rising above the base is where the design starts to fall flat. It is boxy, likely to maximize floor space on what is a relatively small parcel for a building of this scale. What variation it has comes from a few setbacks as the building rises, like thin blocks of ice fused together.

“This is not just a box that’s extruded up,” Toll’s architect, Jim Davidson, a partner at New York-based SLCE Architects, told the crowd Tuesday. Toward Sansom Street, the building is a progression of four alternating setbacks, which is more generous than the south side gets. Facing Washington Square the building has fewer setbacks, giving this side a more monolithic presence. (The designers indicated they would be open to giving further definition to this side of the building.) Moving east, the side of the building facing out to 7th Street is flat, save a single loading bay, topped with two floors of outdoor space that reach toward the sidewalk. Here too will be on-call valet service for residents’ cars. (That is likely to frustrate anyone who gets snarled on this block, often bottlenecked with delivery trucks.)

Capping the building is a smaller glass box housing mechanical systems, sheathed in faceted glass panels that zigzag like a paper crown. The design team presented this concept as a nod to Art Deco building forms, but it reminded me of a slice of Pittsburgh’s 1980s-era PPG Place.

“This is very much treated as a background building. It doesn’t call attention to itself,” Davidson told the crowd. The glassy upper stories are intended to disappear into the sky.
“We felt that taking the one façade of glass all around would be the best thing for a background building as it impacts Washington Square,” Davidson told PlanPhilly.

But why should this be a background building? “Because it is a background building,” he said flatly. In no small part that’s a departure from first design’s combination of brick and glass, which garnered such a “uniformly negative response.” They aimed for subtle instead.

But it’s hard to be so tall and remain unobtrusive. Toll's proposed building is no architectural wallflower, surrounded by similar buildings. It stands with very few other big and tall neighbors. It will be viewed in the round, but Toll’s architects do not do enough to take advantage of this unique opportunity to punctuate the skyline. There is no tension in this design, no odd angles or curves to create a more interesting form, just staid quietude. It’s got the personality of an office park.
It is challenging to design a building that successfully relates to its surroundings when it’s 75 percent bigger than its near-neighbors. Toll’s building is no exception. The design comes off like a tall teenager shyly trying to blend in, but she can’t help but stand out. If similar neighbors surrounded Toll’s building, and our eyes stayed down toward the street, it would be possible not to worry much about the bland presentation above. But why should the deep-pocketed developer of a luxury condo aim for a mute glass form that recedes? It’s going to stand out, so why not give us something worth seeing when we look up?

The last best hope for a stronger design is going to come from the court of public opinion and successfully persuasive Civic Design Review meetings that result in some serious modifications. Otherwise, this design is a cubic zirconia where we deserve a diamond.

702 Sansom rendering, north and east sides | January 2018

Source: Plan Philly

Non-union workers deserve chance to build Easton Da Vinci project

I was initially excited to read the Jan. 2 Your View about the Easton Da Vinci project. I had recently reviewed the scope of the project and agree it will be a centerpiece for the community. Easton deserves to see Da Vinci Science City delivered with the highest quality, as designed, at or below budget. To meet this end, I feel all options should available for its construction. 

As president and CEO of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Eastern Pennsylvania, I witness our members completing large-scale projects by utilizing all the qualified contractors available to them. Stating union construction jobs will be created, as the article mentioned, immediately infers exclusion of highly qualified contractors that choose not to be signatory to a trade union.

As this project is brought to fruition, my hope is that a merit shop solution is utilized — a solution based on a philosophy that encourages open competition and a free-enterprise approach that awards contracts based solely on merit, regardless of labor affiliation. Merit shop is not union vs. nonunion. It's simply a way of doing business, built on free enterprise.

Joseph Perpiglia

The writer is president and CEO
of Associated Builders and
Contractors of Eastern Pennsylvania

Source: The Morning Call