Title: Two Cathedral Square - Cathedral Square Phase II
Project: Office, residential, retail
Architect: SCB Architects
Developer: Exeter Property Group & The Archdiocese of Philadelphia
Location: 17th and Vine Streets, Philadelphia, PA
Neighborhood: Logan Square
District: Center City
Floors: 34 floors
Height: 470 feet
Cash-strapped Archdiocese sees high-rise towers for Cathedral campus
Quote:
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia envisions hundreds of new dwellings - including one for the archbishop - around its Center City cathedral.
The new housing is part of an ambitious proposal to transform acres of underused land around the historic Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter & Paul into an inviting enclave of high-rise buildings, verdant gardens, and pedestrian walkways.
Early conceptual plans call for the demolition of the three 20th-century buildings on the proposed development site to make way for two new mostly residential high-rises along landscaped paths.
The new building to the north, which appears as a 44-story tower in renderings presented to the neighborhood group, would feature ground-floor retail and restaurant space.
The second tower to the east, presented as a 33-story building, would accommodate on its lower floors administrative offices that are currently housed in a campus headquarters building Croke said is in need of millions of dollars of maintenance.
Also in that new building, the use of which would be guaranteed to the Archdiocese as part of the ground-lease negotiations, would be the cathedral's convent and social-service annex, both now in buildings also proposed for demolition.
Another component of the plan is the re-establishment of the campus' rectory, south of the cathedral, as the archbishop's residence for the first time since 1935, when Cardinal Dennis Dougherty moved into the then-new City Avenue mansion.
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Read more here:
http://www.philly.com/philly/busines...al_campus.html