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PHILAPHILIA Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week: Philadelphia CityCenter
Ever wonder why there's a big empty hole at 13th and Market? Less than a block away from City Hall? Well, this is it.
PHILAPHILIA Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week: Philadelphia CityCenter
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
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The only picture of it is from this model of an unrelated Dead-Ass Proposal. Its the one with the two goofy rectangles at the top. |
Ever wonder why there's a big empty hole at 13th and Market? Less than a block away from City Hall? Prime real estate that can't get moving on ANYTHING and has been empty for nearly 20 years? Well, this is it. This is the reason that piece of fuck just sits there parking cars night and day, embarrassing the fuck out of the city. It all started in the late 1980s.
Coming off the Reading Company's success with the mostly taxpayer-funded Aramark Tower (aka One Reading Plaza) and foreknowledge surrounding the coming Convention Center, the northwest corner of 13th and Market was primed for a signature skyscraper that could bring the new life to an undead area. The block was still carrying short, beat-up, underutilized buildings constructed around the same time as the historic Wanamaker's across the street. At the corner, a shitbag mid-century retail box stank up the area. In order to bring Market East into the next century, this little spot would have to modernize.
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The 1301 block of Market in the 1980s. The Gibson Building was pretty cool. Image from the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project. |
Enter Superdeveloper Oliver Tyrone Pulver Company. At the time, these guys were on a roll in the region. Their Tower Bridge office complex in Conshohocken had already begun construction and they were ready to extend their tentacles into the Center City office market. In the first half of 1988, Oliver Tyrone Pulver entered into a joint plan with the Reading Company and proposed a 970,000 square foot, 42-story office tower called the Philadelphia CityCenter. The infamous Sam Rappaport, whose company owned three of the four parcels making up this site, started dealing with Oliver Tyrone Pulver to get them the land they would need.
By September of that year, the developer was awarded a $6.5 million Urban Development Action Grant (some of the last dollars of this type available) and claimed that the money would attract $26 of investment for every dollar granted. Fifteen hundred construction jobs were promised. Excitement continued to build when it became public that Conrail was interested in being the headline tenant. People were calling it "the final keystone in the development of Market Street East." HA!
Later that year, the Philadelphia Planning Commission had some public discussions about the CityCenter, but no tenant or construction date was yet set. After that, nine months went by with no progress. By July 1989, the $170 million project was pared down to an 817,000-square-foot, 35-story office tower. A design was created by the architectural mega-firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who would later go on to design the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the new World Trade Center in NYC, among other famous shit. All Philly ever got out of this firm was the Spectrum, part of Temple University Hospital, and 1600 Market (now PNC Bank Building). The plan included a 14-story glass atrium that would connect to the old Market Street National Bank Building (now Marriott Residence Inn) next door, which back then was known as One East Penn Center.
In February 1990, the press was already declaring the project dead as fuck. The Oliver Tyrone Pulver Company had until that April to get the ball rolling on this motherfucker or they would lose their development grant. The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which was handling the grant, hadn't seen shit from the developer, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was waiting for a building permit, proof of financing, ANYTHING that might indicate construction would start some time soon.
After that, it all went to shit. The developer never even purchased the site from Rappaport, whose corpse still owns the most of the property to this day. In the mid 1990s, the old buildings between 1301 and 1317 Market were removed, presumably with the hopes that someone else would come along to build something there. All these years later, nothing: 34,160 square feet of fuck, and one of the worst surface lots in the city's history. The parcels still haven't even been combined. It would have been better off to rehab and re-use the 1910-built structures that were there. I walk by the site of the unbuilt CityCenter almost every day and it angers my blood! Now it will anger yours.
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| The site of the CityCenter. Not pictured: CityCenter. |
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