Symphony House

City Council and Mayor Nutter are about to set smarter rules of the road for bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists - making this a fine time to push ahead with plans to make Philadelphia the next great city with a bicycle-sharing program. A bill before Council could improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians alike by imposing fines of up to $75 for riding on sidewalks or running a red light. Drivers could be fined for parking in a bike lane or opening car doors into oncoming bicycle traffic.

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.

All the world may be a stage, but theaters in general, and those on the Avenue of the Arts in particular, have a bad habit of hiding one of their most exciting dramas behind the solid walls of their buildings: the preshow arrival of their well-dressed patrons. The Philadelphia Theatre Company, which tonight plans to show off the first architectural renderings of its new Broad Street home, intends to greet the world with more flash. Its entire 70-foot-long facade will be a series of large shop windows that allow voyeuristic glimpses of the gathering crowd in the lobby, and should generate a buzz of excitement that has so far been missing from the Avenue of the Arts.

Sherry Ruggieri is race-walking through Philadelphia's Marketplace Design Center. Her feet fly out of one of the seemingly endless ground-floor showrooms, straight to the elevator. Then, at the third floor, she's off and running again. It's terrain the interior designer knows well, and today she's on a mission. Her client, Mary Zidek, manages to keep up. The two have been a team long enough that Zidek knows the pace and falls into it. Their destination: the Kravet showroom.

The summer doldrums, a down real estate market. Even with 85 percent of his 167 units sold, Symphony House developer Carl Dranoff said he was looking for a surefire way to get million-dollar-condo buyers to look his way. How about a free Smart Car (retail value: $16,590) and a $75,000 parking space in the high-rise's garage to go with the next three units sold? "It was a great marketing move," said Dranoff, considering that gas prices are still high, there's a yearlong waiting list for Smart Cars, and he's also promoting his "green" development farther down the street, at 777 S. Broad St. "Our phone traffic has quadrupled over July, and we expect agreements of sale for all three in a couple of weeks," he said yesterday.

A worker cleaning up the multimillion-dollar Symphony House construction site in Center City fell through a barrier and to his death early yesterday morning, the same day developers were planning to showcase the project. Jeffrey Martin, 23, of Egg Harbor Township, N.J., was employed with Fabi Construction, a subcontractor on the condominium project and a company with a history of safety violations responsible for four highly publicized construction deaths at an Atlantic City casino in 2003, authorities said.

Clark Gilbert, whose culinary background includes Taquet, Fountain at the Four Seasons, the Saloon, and La Terrasse, has gone homey at his first solo spot, Gemelli (232 Woodbine Ave., Narberth, 610-660-0160). The space previously was Margot. It's a BYOB, open Mondays through Saturdays for dinner only. Gilbert describes his bistro-style menu as "Italian, with a few nods to France. " (See it at http://go.philly.com/gemelli .) He's keeping at least half of the entree prices, including that of the namesake dish, gemelli pasta with Bolognese sauce, in the teens.

It's a Saturday, just past 7:30 a.m., a beautiful day in early September. Quiet time in Center City, especially in Washington Square West, where you can almost hear the breeze rustling the leaves. Suddenly, the relative stillness is broken by the roar of huge trucks bound for The Ayer at 210 W. Washington Square, brimming with construction materials. The 13-story Art Deco-style limestone structure, built in 1929 for the N.W. Ayer advertising agency, is undergoing a $60 million conversion by the Goldenberg Group and Brown/Hill Development to 56 condo residences, including four penthouses, priced from $850,000 to $5 million.

If you've picked tomorrow to start house-shopping, here's a yellow flag on that play: Some real estate open houses may be canceled because of the Eagles-Arizona Cardinals playoff game. The football game, to be played near Phoenix, starts at 3 p.m. in Philadelphia - typically, in the middle of most Sunday open houses. "I left the option of holding an open house during the Sunday game with my sellers, who felt that it would be best that we didn't as we would most likely have a low turnout," said John B. Badalamenti, a Weichert agent in the Collegeville area.

The carpenters' union and the General Building Contractors Association are warning their members to prepare for a strike Monday if the sides cannot reach an agreement before labor contracts expire Sunday. A strike could affect major building projects around the city, including the Comcast Center tower, Philadelphia School District projects, and the Symphony House condominiums and theater at Broad and Pine Streets. Edward Coryell, executive secretary of the Metropolitan Regional Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity, the union's lead negotiator, could not be reached for comment yesterday.