Changing Skyline | Filling a Phila. real estate void

Ever since the Cira Centre tower emerged from the ground next to 30th Street Station two years ago, the developer, Jerry Sweeney, has been looking to clone that visually thrilling office building. His chance came this summer, when he made a $28 million deal with the University of Pennsylvania for a two-block parcel south of the train station.

Penn offered Sweeney the site on the condition that he use its development to conjure a lively, walkable neighborhood from the wasted western edge of the Schuylkill. Announcing the plan for Cira Centre South, Penn president Amy Gutmann predicted Sweeney's lineup of diamond-cut buildings would help suture the historic divide between downtown and West Philadelphia, laying the foundation for the "24/7 neighborhood" that area's two big universities have long craved.

"It's an opportunity to create a city within a city," Sweeney promised.

Now, with the Planning Commission set to approve the massive office and residential project tomorrow, the contours of the design are emerging. The $800 million Cira South will be one of the biggest, most life-changing private developments here since Liberty Place. It will shift the city's center of gravity and give West Philadelphia its own branded skyline.

But can it create a destination neighborhood?

You may want to wait a few decades before heading over for a big Saturday night.

The proposal for Cira South by Sweeney and his team at Brandywine Realty Trust will certainly fill in a real estate void and provide the stirrings of a retail corridor on 30th Street.

But buildings alone can't make neighborhoods. The area's harsh terrain, scarred by railroads, highways, multi-level decks and poor sidewalks, must be repaired if Cira South is ever to feel like a real neighborhood.

Rather than wait for government to offer ideas, Sweeney hired Sasaki Associates, the land planner that prepared Penn's master plan, to develop a list of remedies. The proposals, which could cost more than $60 million, include some brilliant ideas, such as transforming the chaotic block between 30th Street station and the post office into a gracious plaza, dubbed the "Grand Waiting Room." But even if every Sasaki proposal were implemented, Cira South's front door would still open onto a gaping chasm.