Scanning the forms and styles on parade in Fiske's conference room, you suspect that the architect is really just playing around. The designs are too bulky, derivative and besotted with their own shape to rate inclusion in the delicate urban quilt that is Philadelphia. But after three months of intense negotiations between the developer, Castleway Properties, and city planners and neighborhood representatives, decision time is fast approaching.
Castleway paid $36.7 million for the Walnut Street site on the square's northwest corner, rescuing it from the low expectations of the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which aspired to fill it with concrete parking decks and a few movie screens. The startling sale price for the 0.83-acre parcel confirmed what real estate experts already knew: This is the region's most desirable residential building site.
The price also puts pressure on the developer to wrap up talks with the neighbors and get hopping on zoning approvals. But there is a civic interest, as well as a financial interest. Rittenhouse Square is the closest thing Philadelphia has to a town green, and what goes up on Castleway's property will have the eyes of the whole city on it.
Having computer-tested these eye-popping designs, Fiske and Castleway are now closing in on a massing scheme for height and bulk that is rectilinear and svelte, and more in the style of Kling's recent buildings. The L-shaped plan shows a 220-foot-high hotel fronting on Walnut Street, west of 19th Street, and a 525-foot-tall condo tower running along Sansom Street.
