Blatstein: I Will Build a Tower of Piazza on South Broad

It’s all going to happen here, at Broad and Washington. Image via Google Street View.

Developer Bart Blatstein, best known for the Piazza in Northern Liberties, has begun to talk about what he might do at Broad and Washington. The Business Journal’s Natalie Kostelni, who broke the story, characterizes his concept as taking “what he did at the Piazza in Northern Liberties and roll[ing] it up into a condensed, vertical version.”

He characterizes it as a little bit “Hotel California,” a little bit modern-day commune. From the Business Journal:

“I want to take everything I’ve done in Northern Liberties that is spread over several blocks and put it in one place. It’s a self-contained community where you will never want to leave. Every amenity known to mankind is here.”

That’s right. EVERY AMENITY KNOWN TO MANKIND.

That includes the regular amenities you typically find at a luxury rental community like, say, Rittenhouse Hill (pool, dog park) and adds on a few you don’t necessarily find (a “running park”). There’ll also be “tennis courts that convert into volleyball pits” — which I think means someone comes with a dump truck full of sand, but this is why I don’t write about sports.

The apartment building would be 30 stories with 800 rental units and would also include some retail, though it’s not clear how much or if it would be the same kind as he’d planned for initially, when he was considering the space for a large retail-only complex that might have included Wegmans.

For more details, see Kostelni’s exclusive.

Blatstein has bold, new development idea for Broad and Washington [Philadelphia Business Journal]