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Looking for Excitement
The public spaces around City Hall are rich in potential. Just look what happened in Rotterdam.
-George L. Claflen Jr FAIA

January 9-15, 2003

cityspace

High Hopes

by Deborah Bolling

Perhaps this year, maybe next, downtown Philadelphia will witness construction of a new, strikingly futuristic skyscraper made entirely of glass and stone that will rise nearly 900 feet into the air.

If the high-rise office building, a design brainchild of Hillier, an architectural firm headquartered in Princeton, is ever constructed, the 48-story tower will occupy 1.2 million square feet at Vine and 17th streets, taking its place among Philadelphia's tallest office buildings, joining One Liberty Place, Two Liberty Place and the Mellon Bank Center, respectively.

Currently, the skyscraper, known only as "High-Rise Headquarters," is still in its earliest stages of development; no definite plans have been made for breaking ground.

The elegant tower's design is credited to New Jersey architect Rick Kuhn, design director for the corporate studio of Hillier, the nation's fourth largest architectural firm, which boasts more than 3,000 projects in 41 states and 21 foreign countries.

"The strengths of the building are that it is very simple and straightforward," Kuhn says. "We're hoping that it will be easy to market. Even though it is only 48 stories, it has the feel of a very tall building. And because it would be located on the edge of the downtown high-rise core, it would have an incredible presence."

For now, though, it exists only as a rendering requested by an international client Hillier describes as "confidential." Last August, the New Jersey chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave Hillier their Design of Excellence Award, affirming the proposed building's "elegant form and shape."

James Cuorato, the city's director of commerce, says that he's not thoroughly familiar with Hillier's skyscraper project. He added that before year's end, two other expansive office buildings are slated to begin construction in the heart of the city. One at 17th Street and JFK Boulevard, by developer Willard Rouse, will occupy more than a million square feet. The other, located across from 30th Street Station, a Brandywine Realty Trust project, will comprise 700,000 square feet. Both have been in the works for over a year.

"I think it's been about 10 years since we've had any major new construction of an office tower in the city," Cuorato says. "We had a real boom in the mid-to-late '80s, resulting in Liberty Place, Mellon and Bell-Atlantic. But we got overbuilt, so by the early '90s, we had a glut of space. Now, though, it's time for new construction."

Cuorato says architectural firms often design plans for a client long before the city is made privy to those plans.

"I know that site is being spoken about as a development site, but I don't know of any development plans at this time. But just because we're not on top of it yet doesn't mean it's not going to happen."