The Southern Land Company’s final plan for the
development at 1911 Walnut Street came into clear focus at Tuesday’s meeting of
the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.
The project will fill in the only major undeveloped
parcel of land in the vicinity of Rittenhouse Square, one of the most desirable
corners of the city. The new proposal comes a year and a half after Southern
Land’s last presentation before the commission, and was
attended by two bills for the body’s consideration. One would tweak several
aspects of the city’s zoning code, as well as the Center City Overlay, and one
would give control of tiny Moravian Street to the company, which will be
maintenance.
After Southern Land released an earlier version of the
proposal in 2015, it faced vigorous pushback from a variety of stakeholders.
These included local neighbors concerned about the size of the building and
preservationists who feared for the fate of three historic buildings along
Sansom Street slated for demolition.
After years of negotiations, Southern Land will not only preserve two of the three historic buildings but
has scaled back the size of the tower and offered to provide dozens of
affordable housing units.
“After three years of working with the community on this,
I’m really proud of the consensus,” said Tim Downey, CEO of the Southern Land
Company. “I’m not sure in my career if I’ve ever been able to put together
anything like this. I think the affordable housing at this location is really
neat. My personal belief is that sometimes dollars can’t be measured in terms
of putting affordable in a nice part of town.”
The project’s current form and the zoning and streets
bills the commission reviewed Tuesday were forged in a two-year negotiation
process between Southern Land, near neighbors advised by architect Cecil Baker,
non-profit stakeholders like the Preservation Alliance, the Planning
Commission, and City Council President Darrell Clarke’s office.
Some changes hammered out in negotiations are addressed
in a zoning bill, which tweaks the mixed-income housing bonus to include
categories for developers who wish to offer moderate-income and/or low-income
housing. The bonuses for moderate-income units would be the same as the current
mixed-income housing bonus, while those for low-income housing would be more
generous.
Both the zoning bill and a streets bill related to the project passed the
Rules Committee Tuesday while Planning Commission was in session.
The project includes three historic buildings, two of
which—the Warwick Apartments and the Rittenhouse Coffee Shop—are being adapted
into affordable housing. For many months, Project HOME has been in discussions
with the developer to run these units for individuals transitioning out of
homelessness.
“Regardless of whether that partnership ends up working
we are going to commit ourselves to provide that affordable housing,” said Neil
Sklaroff, a veteran zoning lawyer who represents the Southern Land Company in
this case. “Even if we have to do it ourselves, which we are certainly willing
to do. A tremendous commitment has been made to Project Home but there’s no
final agreement at this time.”
Southern Land also revealed that it would be offering at
least eight units of below-market-rate housing in the tower itself.
The location of the affordable units caused slight
controversy. The historic buildings are meant to contain 28 units that will be
100 percent affordable, while the other non-market rate units will be among the
new high-end units. Commissioner Maria Gonzalez argued that true mixed-income
housing entails people of different incomes living among each other, not in two
separate buildings. She recommended they be proportionally spread between the
buildings, or that there should at least be more affordable units in the tower.
Sklaroff noted that the developer is required to include
at least 10 percent of its units as affordable to access the zoning bonuses. He
said that they have done so in the 28 units slated for the historic buildings
and the eight, if not more, to be spread among the first ten floors of the
tower 48-story tower.
“We have made promises that at least eight units will be
in the tower, whether moderate or low income,” said Sklaroff. “We could end up
with more than 36 units of affordable. We are likely to have more than just
that 10 percent, but that’s our minimum.”
Tiny Moravian Street, which is basically an alley behind
the Warwick Apartments and the Rittenhouse Coffee Shop, will be struck from the
city plan and no longer will be the city’s responsibility. But only under the
condition that Southern Land agree to clean and maintain it.
The zoning bill makes a few citywide changes to the code
and a few within the Center City Overlay.
Developers who want to take advantage of the mixed-income
housing bonuses for Floor Area Ratio (FAR) and height will now have two
categories to choose from: low-income and moderate income.
Moderate income will be defined as units that are 80
percent of Area Median Income (AMI) for renters or 100 percent of owners.
Developers offering moderate-income units will receive the same incentives that
the overall mixed income category enables now, but those who offer low-income
housing--defined as 60 percent AMI for rental units and 80 percent for
ownership--will be offered more generous bonuses. There are non-affordable
housing-related tweaks to the code as well. In a bid to ensure mixed-use
development, three of the densest zoning categories (RMX-3, CMX-4, and CMX-5)
don’t count retail uses against a development’s gross floor area calculation.
The bill will extend that benefit to personal services, like the fancy gym
Southern Land wants for Sansom Street. Body art and fortune telling services
will not be counted as personal services, however, and to achieve this benefit
the businesses must be open to the public and managed by a third party. Also,
the FAR bonus for underground parking will be doubled in CMX-4 zones.
Ian Litwin of the Planning Commission’s staff said that a
rezoning of the parcel as CMX-5, the category that allows the densest
development, would have been preferable to the complexities of all these zoning
alterations. But the staff nonetheless recommended both bills and the
commission voted to recommend them unanimously.
“We understand it’s very difficult to make all sorts of
different groups happy and when certain groups lay lines in the sand you do all
sorts of maneuvers,” said Anne Fadullon, director of Planning and Development
for Philadelphia. “We wish we could have just gone the straight and narrow path
to CMX-5, but we understand that in this case the ends justify the means.”
Source: Plan
Philly
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