In September, it looked like the authority was trying to pull a fast one on the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which handled the preservation agreement. The Convention Center claimed that the two middle buildings, which originally served as the headquarters of Philadelphia Life Insurance Co., were unsound, and that city safety inspectors insisted they come down. The historical commission was set to acquiesce until it realized it wasn't getting the full story.
The unlikely hero in this is Wayne Spilove, who leveled a different historic block (at 16th and Sansom Streets) and now, through the miracle of Philadelphia politics, is chairman of the state historical commission. It was Spilove who encouraged his staff to take a second look at the convention center authority's request, said John Gallery, who heads the watchdog Preservation Alliance.
When they did, the staffers saw that the authority's engineering report was far from sufficient, said commission director Barbara Franco. Last Friday, her staff ordered an independent engineering inspection to assess the condition of the two threatened buildings. The result will determine their fate.
Franco, who was interviewed by telephone while a state information officer monitored our conversation, acknowledged that her agency nearly rushed to judgment in September. "There was a lot of confusion about the [city] inspection and what it meant," she said. "It was conveyed to us in one way, when it might have been conveyed in another. . . . So we said we need more information."
There's something else the convention center authority hasn't told Franco and her staff.
