It's been a whole year since we last checked in on 1911 Walnut St., the embarrassingly vacant lot across the street from Rittenhouse Square. For those that don't remember the history of this parcel, it was previously home to some historic brownstones and a movie theater which were all lost after a fire in the mid-1990s. And so the property has sat vacant ever since, with various plans coming along and falling through over the years. When Southern Land Company put the property under agreement almost two years ago, we were optimistic that it would finally get redeveloped. And when renderings came around about a year ago, we were further encouraged that we'd soon see shovels in the ground.
Alas, the property still looks like this:
When we last reported on the property, we told you that the developers were looking to build a large mixed-use building, a trophy project befitting its ritzy location. The project was a 51 floor, 600' building with a mix of rental apartments, condos, office space, and retail. We were, however, a little bummed that the project would entail the demolition of three historic buildings on the 1900 block of Sansom Street. Solomon Cordwell Buenz did the design work and we showed you these renderings.
Earlier this month, Philadelphia Business Journal gave an update on the project, albeit behind a pay wall. Without reading the story, this is great news, as it's a strong indication that the wheels are still turning on the project. However, the content of the article, summarized on Skyscraper page, is not exactly what we were hoping for. In short, the developer has been negotiating the project with the community and stemming from those negotiations, they're scaling back the building considerably. The building size will be reduced from 750K sqft to 465K sqft. The condos and office space have been eliminated, leaving rental apartments and retail as the only uses in the building. Most upsetting was the quote from the developer that the revised project was “still relatively tall but it’s become less modern and more fitting with Philadelphia.” Dude. Low blow.
Obviously, the renderings above are no longer relevant, as the "less modern" building will surely use different materials. The size will also (clearly) be smaller. We have no idea how this revised project will impact the historic buildings on Sansom Street, but if the tradeoff is a much smaller building to maintain those buildings, we're not sure it's worth it. Frankly, we'd probably be much less upset about the whole thing without the pejorative quote, but hey, these community negotiations seem to be reinforcing the reputation we've been trying to shake for the last thirty years or so. We'll reserve final judgement until we see revised renderings, but based on the limited information we have now, it seems this project has taken a step in the wrong direction. Then again, given the track record for this property, there's no guarantee it'll even get built.