Who’s Building the Delaware Riverfront Scheme?
The Delaware River Waterfront Corp. has unveiled its development partners for the construction of a major mixed-use project on the Spring Garden Street site in Philadelphia.
By Adriana Pop, Associate Editor
A partnership between Jefferson Apartment Group and Haverford Properties will develop an apartment and retail complex on one of the largest publicly-owned sites fronting the central Delaware River in Philadelphia.
Delaware Riverfront in Philadelphia
The 11-acre property is located at the intersection of Spring Garden Street and Delaware Avenue/Columbus Boulevard. Plans call for approximately 550 apartments, 30,000 square feet of retail and a public space portion around the extension of the Spring Garden Street corridor from Delaware Avenue through to the river’s edge.
The Delaware River Waterfront Corp. appointed the development team after a review process that lasted six months. The organization expects to sign a long-term sub-lease with the partnership by the end of this year and finalize the design once the public is afforded an opportunity to see and comment upon the proposed plan. The current use on the southern portion of the site, a concert venue managed by Live Nation, will continue through the summer season of 2016.
Other partners in the project include architect Cecil Baker + Partners and landscape architecture firm Olin.
Before construction can begin, the area will need extensive infrastructure improvements including sheet piling, importing clean fill and compacting it to create a stable development pad.
“This is going to be a waterfront success story, and a microcosm of what we intended in the master plan: taking a post-industrial brownfield and turning it into a dynamic new community with high-quality public space that is accessible, connected, and integrated into a well-designed, mixed-use development,” Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger, a member of DRWC’s executive committee and planning committee, said.
The Spring Garden Street site is the second-largest contiguous piece of land that the public sector owns along the waterfront, after Penn’s Landing, which ranks as the largest.
Image courtesy of Delaware River Waterfront Corp.
