Changing Skyline: Salvation Army Kroc Center: A gem for North Philadelphia

In fact, the best thing about the design isn't the lavish exercise facilities, but the way the Kroc Center has been arranged on the site by MGA and the Manayunk landscape architects at Andropogon. The new building bookends a gutted, but classically muscular, factory loft where Budd sold automotive parts. At the far end, the site is bounded by another industrial-era staple, a long, sawtooth workshop, completing a cozy U-shaped block. SEPTA trains run through the site, alongside the playing fields, and they infuse the ensemble with the promise of urban energy.

While both factory buildings have been empty for years, the Kroc Center's arrival fires the imagination. The loft could easily be converted to apartments, the sawtooth building to studios for artists and fabricators. Similar factory lofts litter North Philadelphia, but too often they're stranded islands. This pair has been pulled back into the living city.

Andropogon has done a wonderful job of integrating the three buildings into the new landscape and making it feel inhabited again. It has layered the site with walking paths that lead up to sports fields and gardens, which have been designed to absorb large quantities of rain and keep it from flowing into city sewers. Sculpted stone runnels, which help channel the water, even create a network of man-made brooks around the site and will surely inspire many children's games.

The Salvation Army project isn't the kind of eye-candy design that makes it into the glossy magazines, or advances architecture, but it just might be the sort that can reshape a neighborhood.

Contact architecture critic Inga Saffron at 215-854-2213 or isaffron@phillynews.com.