The Mormon temple on the 1700 block of Vine Street has progressed considerably in the last eighteen months, so we figured it would be a good call to provide an update. At last glance, the structure had just begun to rise to the point that it could be seen above the construction fence. Today, you can get a pretty good idea of what the building will look like when it's finished. Quite a bit of work remains though, and we don't imagine the project will be done before 2016.
The project next door won't strike nearly as interesting a figure on the skyline, but it will have considerably more impact on Philadelphia's non-Mormon population. Remember, we told you back in the winter of 2014 of plans from the LDS church to build a mixed-use project on the lot immediately to the east of the temple. That project will entail a 32-story residential tower containing 258 market-rate apartments along with a handful of townhomes. It will also include a public meetinghouse and ground-floor retail. As we said before, we would be surprised if any of the commercial tenants serve coffee or alcohol.
As you can see, the mixed-use project is well behind the temple in terms of construction schedule. We could fathom the project wrapping up by the end of next year but realistically we're thinking 2017. When you consider though, how long this particular parcel waited for redevelopment, an extra year is just a proverbial drop in the bucket.