Symphony House

Here are some of architecture critic Inga Saffron's blog posts from the last week. You can see others at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/changing-skyline . Workplace squatters at Glaxo I went down to the Philadelphia Navy Yard yesterday [March 21] to take a look at the architecture of the new GlaxoSmithKline building, but what really caught my eye were the desks, er, workspaces. Glaxo's new offices are organized around the concept of hoteling, where employees aren't assigned their own desk or cubicle.

The owner and developer of a half-acre site in Center City plans to build a $420 million Waldorf-Astoria Hotel & Residences complex there. Think Four Seasons meets the Residences at Two Liberty, said Timothy J. Mahoney III, president and chief executive officer of Mariner Commercial Properties Inc., of Ardmore, which will codevelop the site at 1441 Chestnut St. with Gatehouse Capital Corp., a national real estate investment and development firm based in Dallas. Mahoney is banking on the continuation of well-to-do empty nesters abandoning big homes in the suburbs for high-end apartments in the city.

The owner and developer of a half-acre site in Center City plans to build a $420 million Waldorf-Astoria Hotel & Residences complex there. Think Four Seasons meets the Residences at Two Liberty, said Timothy J. Mahoney III, president and chief executive officer of Mariner Commercial Properties Inc., of Ardmore, which will codevelop the site at 1441 Chestnut St. with Gatehouse Capital Corp., a national real estate investment and development firm based in Dallas. Mahoney is banking on the continuation of well-to-do empty nesters abandoning big homes in the suburbs for high-end apartments in the city.

OK, this is really getting ridiculous. When last we polished off a plate of oxtails at the Jamaican Jerk Hut, the venerable Caribbean eatery at 15th and South, owner Lisa Wilson was still waging a David-and-Goliath battle with residents of Symphony House, a 32-story luxury condominium complex at Broad and Spruce. Never mind that the Zoning Board of Adjustment and Common Pleas Court had both ruled in the Jerk Hut's favor: Namely, that Wilson could play live reggae music for her customers on the lot next to the restaurant on weekends in spring and summer.

With construction equipment on the site, ready to begin work today, Carl E. Dranoff broke ground yesterday for his condo skyscraper, Symphony House, on the Avenue of the Arts. Gov. Rendell, speaking at the ceremony, hailed the 31-story building as fulfillment of a dream he had soon after he became mayor in 1992, of turning South Broad into a street of restaurants, performing-arts venues, and residences. The $125 million complex will include 163 units ranging from $550,000 for a one-bedroom apartment to $4 million for two-story, five-bedroom penthouses.

Federal safety investigators were twice called to the Symphony House construction site this summer after complaints were lodged against the concrete contractor. A worker fell to his death there on Wednesday. Both complaints were regarding fall safety. Attorneys for the family of the worker who was killed said yesterday that the safety cable intended to prevent falls had been cut and improperly reattached. One of the complaints to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration led to a $2,500 fine against Fabi Construction of Egg Harbor Township, N.J. Because the company is challenging the citation, details of the allegations remain secret.

The Parkway will not be the only abundantly festive spot for the Fourth of July: Red, white, and blue lighting will grace Center City facades Friday through Sunday courtesy of the Center City District, the Delaware River Port Authority, and property owners. Beginning at 7:30 p.m., a light show will run on nine South Broad Street buildings, hopping from one to the next for about five minutes and repeating every 15 minutes. The energy-efficient, color-changing LED lighting will also illuminate the Ben Franklin Bridge, the Hyatt Regency Philadelphia at Penn's Landing, One and Two Liberty Place, Symphony House, Cira Centre, 777 South Broad, and the Mellon Bank Center.

I am the architect of a prominent addition to our city, Symphony House, which has recently been both praised and vilified in The Inquirer. Symphony House, beautiful and proud, is its own best defense, but the charges made in these pages of "fakery" of various kinds raise the issue of what counts as rational criteria for the judgment of appropriate development in our city ("Nightmare on Broad Street," Oct. 26). Several points regarding truthfulness in architecture run behind most of the criticism, and all, I believe, are irrational and na?ve.

It can take time for a new building to work out all the kinks, even when the architecture is very good. In the case of Rafael Viñoly's Kimmel Center, which falls well short of that mark, the tweaking has been going on for more than a decade. In the last year, the Broad Street performing arts center has finally begun to set things right, starting with the acoustics in its Verizon Hall. The Kimmel hopes to cross another big headache off its list Tuesday, when it reopens the dramatic, but brutally hot, rooftop terrace on top of its Perelman Theater.

A chart in Sunday's Business section incorrectly characterized pet policies at some Center City condo buildings. The Philadelphian does not allow pets. Society Hill Towers permits cats but not dogs. Symphony House allows cats and dogs, but limits them to 25 pounds full-grown. A story Wednesday about transportation funding misstated the number of trains that use SEPTA's 115-year-old Crum Creek bridge. The correct number is 323 passenger trains per week. Research cited in a story Wednesday about tattoos should have been attributed to the Pew Research Center, an independent subsidiary of the Pew Charitable Trusts.