PHILADELPHIA | Avenue Of The Arts Towers | PROPOSED

[rricci]

Rimas Properties Acquires Broad & Washington Development Site

RIMAS Properties
11 - 15 No. 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA
Contact: Sammy Benakmoume (215)351-9366
sammy@rimasproperties.com or http://www.rimasproperties.com/

Image courtesy of Rimas Properties.


Rimas Properties Granted C-5 Zoning For 5.5 Acre Broad & Washington Development Parcel Mixed Use Twin Tower Complex Envisioned by Rimas Properties
Hailed As The Gateway to the Avenue of the Arts!


PHILADELPHIA, PA -- The Philadelphia based development firm Rimas Properties has been granted C-5 Zoning for its 5.5 acre Broad Street and Washington Avenue development site in South Philadelphia. This is the next major step toward the development of an iconic large scale mixed use twin tower complex envisioned by Rimas Properties.

The project is being hailed by city officials as the city's most significant development parcel and the new gateway to the Avenue of the Arts and Center City.

According to the Sammy Benakmoume, President of Rimas Properties, the project will include office space, apartments, condominiums, an expansive up-scale retail center, and parking. Plans also call for an innovative open green space that sits six stories high atop the retail mall area.

Rimas Properties has released dramatic new renderings of the Broad & Washington project offering a sense of the dynamic overall design theme of the development. (SEE ATTACHED jpg)

With approvals from the city and financing in place, Rimas Properties is working with community groups address concerns about the scale of the project and its impact on the surrounding residential and commercial neighbors.

Rimas Properties projects that construction will begin on the 5.5 acre site roughly a year from now. The developer has also confirmed that Cirque du Soleil will have one more series of shows on the site, and that early discussions with lead tenants are underway.
http://www.rimasproperties.com/photo...rt_bwb_lrg.jpg

[We Got Five]

Right next to 19th and Walnut (Castleway project), this is my favorite proposal. I'm curious to see some of the tenants. This was originally planned to center city's version of King of Prussia.

[Ninjawho]

Do we have an idea of the size of the towers? 20ish stories?

[Lincolndrive]

riccis, thanks for posting, you may want to copy this link into your intro so people can always come back to this. The image is from their website

http://www.rimasproperties.com/photo...rt_bwb_lrg.jpg

Also, i'm counting over 30 stories so this should probably be in the highrise proposal section.

[winxs]

That is actually a "classy" looking rendering. Kinda mimics CAPA next door.

[sciguy0504]

Any chance of them using real limestone or something other than painted (or unpainted) concrete?

[Don098]

Originally Posted by sciguy0504

Any chance of them using real limestone or something other than painted (or unpainted) concrete?

Probably not in this economy with construction material costs still astronomically high. However, one can only hope.

[Londonee]

Has Philly produced a large-scale mixed-use tower in the last 10-15 years? We seem to have all of these proposals out there from 1601 Vine to ACC to 1440 Chestnut to this project, as well as some old dead ones like WTC and Bridgeman's View--that are all a large mixed use combination: hotel, condo, office, or retail.

Is it me, or have none of these come to fruition? I'm beginning to wonder if the complications involved with balancing the needs and wants of completely opposite entities (like a hotel and offices) just makes it impossible to put these things together in Philly. For example, the docking bay in a mixed use tower may be sufficient for a hotel's needs, but not so for an office tower's needs. Plus financing may be harder to organize, in that there are far more details and what'ifs to account for when your money is being spread out over 4 different paying entities. Plus getting all of your eggs in a row, ie all of the tenants signed and on board within the same time frame, for investors' sake, seems like that it would be really hard. I wonder how close many of these projects have come to groundbreaking, when an anchor tenant pulled out, collapsing the deal altogether.

In an office tower, you need 1 anchor tenant and financing can be secured.

In the case of ACC, you need 1 anchor office tenant, 1 anchor hotel tenant, and 1 anchor retail tenant. In a place like 1440 Chestnut, you need a certain % of presales on the condos AND a hotel tenant. It's just adding steps to an already complicated Philadelphia process.

[cjPhilly]

Originally Posted by Londonee

Has Philly produced a large-scale mixed-use tower in the last 10-15 years?

Philly hasn't really purpose-built a large-scale mixed-use tower ever, save for Liberty Place if you even want to count that.

Mixed use towers are obviously possible, so I doubt it's a matter of technical issues (loading space, etc.) and more reflective of Philly-area developers and market fundamentals. In order to build a multi-use tower, you need to have strong enough markets for each type of use in order to attract the tenants (as you mentioned). In the era of tall towers in Philly, none of the market-segment booms (commercial, retail, hospitality, residential) have really overlapped, making it more likely we'd only see single-use towers. I think we'll see one in Philly sooner rather than later.

[hammersklavier]

Preferably sooner rather than later.

At least Rimas has an entire represson's worth of time to work through attracting potential tenants and get rid of that bad rep that came from the sidewalk steal.

Danm good-looking rendering though.

Shouldn't this be in either the Midrise or High-rise proposal thread?

[aok]

Any word on when groundbreaking may happen?

[wanderer34]

I like the rendering, but the only problem I have with the Gateway Center is that it has a 200,000+ sq. ft. upscale mall right the South Philly/CC border. If anything, the mall should be right on the Walnut/Chestnut corridor in Rittenhouse Square than on the fringes of CC. I don't hate the design, but having a mall there is too far away for it's demographic target, so I don't really support the mall being there, but the towers can stay !!!

[desolate]

Originally Posted by wanderer34

I like the rendering, but the only problem I have with the Gateway Center is that it has a 200,000+ sq. ft. upscale mall right the South Philly/CC border. If anything, the mall should be right on the Walnut/Chestnut corridor in Rittenhouse Square than on the fringes of CC. I don't hate the design, but having a mall there is too far away for it's demographic target, so I don't really support the mall being there, but the towers can stay !!!

Maybe it's demographic is the thousands in South Philly who have to go into Center City or down to the 26th street or Del Ave strips

[rricci]

Hi Lincolndrive,
I completely agree with your suggestion of moving this to the high rise section, and posting your picture in the initial post, but I don't know how to do either of those things. Will you please do it for me?

[Swinefeld]

Done.

[Plokoon11]

Looks like a great project. While it looks like its around 350 ft+.

[hammersklavier]

13 months have come and gone with no updates whatsoever.

[winxs]

We seem to have two seperate threads on this.

PHILADELPHIA | Gateway Center @ Avenue of the Arts
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...81&postcount=1

[hammersklavier]

They should be merged then. I was just following a random link in the Philly VIII OP.

[Cro Burnham]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

13 months have come and gone with no updates whatsoever.

That's because it's dead.