"When we started the work on the master plan for the Navy Yard," says Stern, "people said 'Navy Yard?' with a kind of gigantic question mark at the end. Now it's 'the Navy Yard!' So the Navy Yard is suddenly, I would say, quite hot, and deservedly so."
Part of the draw is the yard's designation as a Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zone, which rewards companies that employ and invest there with aggressive tax breaks. In 2005, Liberty, the publicly traded real estate company based in Malvern, opened the Stern-designed One Crescent Drive, a suburban office building with a curved glass facade that delivered views across I-95 to Center City and a balcony facing the Navy's collection of mothballed ships. The building filled quickly. Then the following year Urban Outfitters moved its corporate headquarters to the Navy Yard's "historic core."
Employees quickly fell in love with the campus feeling and the background of the ships, so stark gray that only their form is apparent. Urban Outfitters' exquisite reuse of 19th-century brick and terra-cotta workshops signaled that going forward, this couldn't be just another corporate park. Moreover, as Liberty and PIDC began to install infrastructure, they paid careful attention to urban design: All buildings would have front doors that faced the street; all streets would have on-street parking; and all sidewalks would be lighted by streetlamps. "From a suburban developer's point of view," says Sanderson, "that's a pretty massive shift in paradigm."
