Deal reached to end Jersey City teacher strike

A deal was reached Sunday night on a new contract for Jersey City's teachers, paving the way for them to return to classrooms Monday morning after striking on Friday.

The tentative contract agreement would end an eight-month dispute between the 29,000-student district and its 3,100 teachers. It must be approved by the nine-member school board and members of the teachers union.

Virtua averts nurses' strike with new contract, increased staffing

About 1,500 registered nurses have voted to accept a new contract with Virtua, calling off a threatened strike that would have affected the health system's locations in Voorhees, Marlton, Berlin and Camden, as well as its visiting home care nurses.

The new three-year agreement addresses many of the nurses' concerns about staffing, time off, wage increases and pension contributions, according to the union representing the nurses at the negotiating table.

A state mediator assisted during negotiations after the nurses' contract expired Feb. 28, but union members authorized a strike vote on March 6.

Both parties reached a tentative agreement at 4 a.m. Wednesday, and the nurses' bargaining unit voted to approve the contract late Thursday. 

The nurses' primary concern centered on staffing needs. Virtua recently hired 65 additional nurses and is actively recruiting to hire 100 more nurses, said Virginia Treacy, a registered nurse and lead negotiator for the union, JNESO District Council 1, IUOE-AFL-CIO.

Pitt to challenge grad student union election petition

Pitt administrators have told the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board they plan challenge the graduate student petition to hold a union election, organizers said Wednesday.

Pitt will look to convince the board that graduate students aren’t employees. The labor board in February ruled that graduate students at Penn State were considered employees and could unionize.
In a post on Facebook, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee called the move an “attempt to drag out the process in hopes of busting our union.” 

New lawsuits could delay Mariner East 2 pipeline project

PHILADELPHIA >> On Wednesday, Clean Air Council, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Mountain Watershed Association, Inc. filed two new lawsuits against the Department of Environmental Protection and Sunoco Pipeline L.P. for what these organizations say is unlawful conduct related to Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 pipelines.

On Feb. 8, DEP and Sunoco entered into a consent order and Agreement that allowed Sunoco to resume construction activities that had been shut down by DEP on Jan. 3 because of what these organizations say is a mounting list of Sunoco’s willful and egregious permit violations.

Blatstein returns focus to Northern Liberties with plan for remaining brewery parcel

Developer Bart Blatstein wants to build a complex of nearly 1,200 rental apartments in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood in what would be his final project on a cluster of properties he began assembling in the early 2000s centered on the former Schmidt’s brewery site.

Blatstein’s plan for a long vacant lot at Second Street and Germantown Avenue calls for six connected buildings with 45,000 square feet of lower-story shops and restaurants around a central plaza. The project would occupy the 4.4-acre lot south of the Shops at Schmidt’s retail building and across the street from the Piazza at Schmidts — now Schmidt’s Commons — apartment and shopping complex, both of which he developed and later sold.

12 new Philly high-rises opening in 2018: Including Philly’s first supertall!

   

Photo by Melissa Romero

It doesn’t take much more than a short walk around the city to see that Philly is on the rise—literally. At Curbed Philly’s last count, 27 high-rises were under construction, and many more are in the pipeline.

But after a year of navigating construction sites and peering up toward soaring construction cranes, we’ll all be able to breath a sigh of relief when at least 10 of the new high-rises finally finish construction in 2018. In fact, 8 million square feet of construction is expected to deliver next year, including Philly’s first supertall tower, the 60-story Comcast Technology Center.

There are a lot of high-rises that are currently undergoing major renovations and overhauls, but for the purposes of this map, the following 10 points only include new towers built from the ground up that will open their doors in 2018.

Did we miss a new tower set to deliver in next year? Let us know in the comm

Rittenhouse Square tower plan tweaked to add hotel-length stays and $2.5M-and-up condos

 Nashville-based developer Southern Land Co. has tweaked its plan for a condo and apartment tower on the last major building site around Rittenhouse Square to add short-term stays on the floors set aside for rental units.

Administrators, Trustees Talk Grad Student Unionization

Penn State Provost Nick Jones on Thursday updated the Board of Trustees Committee on Academic Affairs and Student Life about the process graduate students are currently going through for potential unionization.

Pennsylvania’s Labor Relations Board ruled earlier this month that Penn State’s graduate students are considered employees and are therefore entitled to unionize if they so choose. No election date has yet been set.

DC 47 City Contract Update

Contract talks between the City of Philadelphia and AFCME DC 47 representatives have continued weekly (generally more than once a week). The existing contract has continued to be extended.
We just received, within the past few weeks, information the Union requested from the City of Philadelphia concerning the economic impact of changes that the City wants to make regarding the defined pension plan. In consultation with your leadership, we have made several counterproposals regarding pensions, in an effort to reach a settlement.

Montco real estate company buys Pa. shopping complex for $55.3M

A New York-based real estate investment trust disclosed the $55.3 million sale of an Allentown shopping center in its latest earnings report released Wednesday. 

Urban Edge Properties's portfolio includes 16.7 million square feet in 90 properties that are scattered along the East Coast from New Hampshire to South Carolina, and are also in California, Illinois, Missouri and Puerto Rico.

New Jersey Construction Company Cited After Wall Collapse Leads to Workplace Fatality and Injuries

Onekey, LLC, was cited for exposing employees to crushing hazards after a concrete retaining wall collapsed at a Poughkeepsie, N.J., worksite. The collapse led to the death of a subcontractor’s employee, and injured another employee. OSHA inspectors determined that the retaining wall was not designed or approved by a registered engineer. The company was cited for failing to train employees to keep a safe distance from the wall and soil pile, and failing to provide adequate fall protection. OSHA proposed penalties totaling $281,583. Read the news release for more information.

Acadia to start work on $110M Philadelphia psych hospital this week

Acadia Healthcare is breaking ground Thursday for its new $110 million psychiatric care hospital, which is being built next to the existing Belmont Behavioral Hospital in the Wynnfield section of Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Business Journal first reported in 2105 on Acadia's long-term plans to build a replacement hospital at the site, as part of a campus revitalization project.

Opening the Delaware waterfront to the city

Two proposed developments along the Delaware invite pedestrians and play, promising (finally) a living, breathing urban space on river, Inga Saffron writes. At Piers 34-35, across from the I-95 exit, Digsau architects took cues from Standard Hotel by the Highline and lifted their 22-story apartment building above the piers supported by concrete stilts. The stilts open views of the water, offer places for visitors to enjoy the breeze, and also serve as a flood mitigation tool. Up the Delaware, Atrium Design Group's design for the proposed 169 rowhouses at the Foxwoods site breaks up the site by organizing the homes around garden blocks akin to those on St. Albans Street in Graduate Hospital (made famous in the Sixth Sense). The design provides walkways to the river and the architects elevated the living rooms to the second floor to deal with flooding issues. Notably, both projects include parking without letting cars own the precious waterfront real estate. Both projects still need government approvals.

Right-to-work holdouts face new efforts to change labor laws

Backers of so-called right-to-work laws are focusing on changing labor laws in a handful of holdout states in the Midwest.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Hemmed in by a growing number of states that block mandatory union fees in workplaces, holdout states in the Midwest are facing renewed attempts to enact so-called right-to-work laws.


Missouri's new law will go to a statewide referendum in November, while a pair of Republican lawmakers in Ohio announced last month they want to put the issue before voters in two years.

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