The skinny apartment building at 12th & Vine, is going up.

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Choi Funeral Home, 12th & Vine Sts by xnedski, on Flickr

Here's a rendering: https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...pg?format=750w

Here's a Naked Philly article http://www.ocfrealty.com/naked-phill...y-at-12th-vine

So earlier today I took a long walk through Brewerytown and Sharswood. Things I noticed:

- Last summer I commented on how new development had gotten up to Master in the Brewerytown area. Well, it's moved a block further north, with new construction now on three sides of Athletic Square and up to Jefferson west of 26th.
- Plenty of PHA action around Ridge, where they've cleared the old Blum site of everything except for that one tower they're intending to keep as senior housing and are now building rowhomes all along Jefferson and punching 23rd and an interstitial street through the site. There's also a zoning notice suggesting PHA is planning on turning the school across the street into more senior housing. The new PHA HQ is now a big steel frame along Ridge.
- The usual new apartment buildings popping up around Templetown.
- Cecil B. Moore west of Broad is evolving into quite the commercial corridor, despite the unfriendly architecture for it, with retail tenants jamming into first floors up and down the street. I contended several years ago that the commercial demand along Cecil B. Moore was a lot higher than most people realized, and that looks borne out. It would not surprise me if landlords started converting more ground-floor apartments along the street to retail to get in on that particular game.
- Remember when we talked about putting paths on that silt islet over by Boathouse Row? Whelp, they're finally doing that.
- Lemon Hill is in positively atrocious condition, with stairways that are starting to sag, walking paths whose condition varies from "overgrown" to "unusable runnels" to "completely lost", lack of clear demarcation between pedestrian and auto areas in places, and other issues related to undermaintenance such as railings falling apart as the wood posts holding them together rot. But hey, they cleared out some thicket to reestablish the viewshed from the hilltop, so they've got that going for it, which is nice.
Brickstone.

Construction fence is up and mobilization began yesterday near the southeast corner of 19th and Ludlow. I thought I heard that this was supposed to be a POD hotel going up on the Parkway lot, but haven't seen much about it lately.

^Glad to hear, been waiting for that hotel project to begin.

Rittenhouse smaller projects:
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Aramark new HQs - peeking thru, 2400 Market St
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So why's the new Gallery's marketing campaign lily-white? | Mike Newall | Philly.com

So, best case scenario, this is just plain incompetence.

This, along with the concept shifts and some of the material choices they've made for the "updated" exterior don't exactly bode well for the success this project.

Brickstone Realty. Of course.

http://brickstoneco.com/history/

saw this wonder if they got the idea from the post your quoted

I believe PHA has moved out of their Chestnut Street HQ into temporary office space while they wait for the new Sharswood HQ to get built. I wonder if that means redevelopment of the Chestnut Street site is imminent....?

where on Chestnut is the PHA location?

This is the last proposal I remember for 30th Street Station apron. Is this approved? Is there a timeline for this?
This with along the new Drexel Square will really transform this area before any towers get built. Exciting.
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/811/2...d7b09482_b.jpg900x0_s3-38782-N-023_18-JR-1 by jackftl, on Flickr

22rd or 23rd, I think. There was some proposal floated by PHA before, but I can't remember what it was exactly

Yea, this is definitely happening after the renovations are finished.

oh for God's sake, can we drop the identity politics?
just because the people they chose to show in one rendering aren't "diverse" enough, it doesn't bode well for the success for the project?
Please. Iditiotic.

I had very similar thoughts when I read this post earlier :tup:

Look I'm about as liberal and left as one can be and not be called a commie, but this whole ridiculous "controversy" over a stupid random rendering not having enough focused group'd perfect token diversity is one of the more eye-rolling politically correct things I've encountered in a while. It's almost like a satirical story that makes the rightwing media go apeshit and reinforces all their prejudices about how overly sensitive and silly the left insists on being regarding racial identity politics.

The only thing missing from their renderings is a sea of parking like from a suburban shopping center where this thing is landing from. This is their demographics. As vanilla as it comes. That doesn't mean it won't be successful. If it weren't for the planned residential towers this project kind o' sucks.

Aesthetically, it is looking like shit. But that doesn't mean it is destined to fail. I'm just hoping with enough glass to open to the street, enough bright lights to distract from the shitty materials, decent tenants, and the increased residential from the good-looking East Market project (and maybe towers above this), it can be a success.