Development Archives

The Philadelphia Association of Community Development has reportedly joined dozens of community groups, builders, realtors, and environmental and anti-blight organizations to form the Philly Land Bank Alliance and launch a website. The purpose of the collaboration is to form a land bank to deal with the approximately 40,000 vacant or abandoned properties around Philadelphia.

The former GlaxoSmithKline North American headquarters in Philadelphia will soon become the site of a new performing arts charter high school. DeMedici Corporation II, a non-profit organization connected with the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School has agreed to purchase the eight-story building for $29 million to establish the String Theory High School for the Arts and Sciences, the first charter high school in the city to focus on the performing arts. Liberty Property Trust is the current owner and operator of the building.

Real estate developer Bruce Loch has proposed building a 33-story tower at North Ninth and West Walnut streets in Allentown. The building will offer retail space, office space, and restaurant space, as well as catering and conference space. The proposal is reportedly a renewed plan Loch first envisioned in 1985, but which was put off because of unfavorable economic conditions. The plan is being proposed now in hopes that economic improvement will allow the project to go forward

Two historic townhouses on the corner of 38th and Chestnut streets are soon to be replaced by a new high-rise development that will turn the brownstones in modern commercial space. The 25-story tower will reportedly include apartments, church offices and retail space.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput recently announced plans to consolidate operations at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, close the building currently used for its College Division and lease or sell a large section of the 75-acre campus for development.

According to a recent publication ranking regions and metropolitan areas annually on how many new companies and jobs they attract, Pittsburgh beat the Philadelphia region. With a total of 126 projects in 2012 compared with the 124 in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro area, Pittsburgh was slightly ahead.

Philadelphia’s historic Navy Yard recently marked its 10,000-employee milestone by unveiling an updated master development plan. That plan predicts 1,000 new apartments, additional parks and open space, and more construction and adaptive reuse of industrial building from the Navy-era.

As our readers know, the city has updated its zoning code and is now working to develop 18 district-level plans. So far, three of the 18 district plans are now complete. The whole plan is expected to come to completion in 2035

Officials from Temple University are reportedly working on plans to build a 23,000 square-foot boathouse on a parcel of parkland on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill. The project is unique for several reasons, but especially because it will reportedly make use of a new legal process for reviewing the use of park and recreational land in Philadelphia. Because of the change in city law, members of the public will play a more prominent role in the review process.

In our last post, we began to speak about the variety of planning and development activity that has taken place in Philadelphia in the last year. As we noted last time, it was a busy year, particularly with respect to the Delaware Riverfront and district level planning.