Center City : In The News

The big Comcast tower news got Philadelphia some national press, including in the New York Times.

The influx of young technology employees to a building designed by a prestigious international architect is likely to encourage boosters of a city that has long harbored an inferiority complex because it lacks either the financial power of New York or the political clout of Washington.

“This new development really speaks to a more favorable outlook for the city,” said [Michael Silverman, managing director in the Philadelphia office of Integra Realty Resources].

The $1.2 billion building will create 20,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction, adding $2.75 billion to the local economy, according to Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, who announced the project, along with Comcast officials, on Jan. 15.

Original source: The New York Times
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Opera Philadelphia has commissioned Daniel Schnyder to create a chamber opera about the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker.

The opera, “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” is set on the day Parker died — March 12, 1955 — but takes place in his imagination as he is dying. The tenor Lawrence Brownlee will play Parker; Angela Brown, the soprano, will portray his mother, Addie, and Will Liverman, the baritone, will play Dizzy Gillespie, a frequent collaborator. Casting has not been announced for the other roles, which will include Parker’s patron, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Corrado Rovaris, the company’s music director, who suggested Mr. Schnyder for the commission, is scheduled to conduct the premiere.

Original source: The New York Times
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The grand tradition of lights and booths and hot drinks has once again arrived at City Hall.

The seasonal bouquet permeates the air of the Christmas Villages in Baltimore and Philadelphia, a pair of German-inflected colonies featuring crafts, local and Deutschland foods, toe-warming beverages and decorative lights as bright as a diamond tiara. The special events, which run through Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day, respectively, transport the glee — and the glühwein — of the German Christmas markets to the East Coast.

"It’s the spirit of the traditional Christkindlesmarkt," said founder Thomas Bauer, a native of Nuremberg, which holds one of the largest and most celebrated markets in Germany.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Christkind the Christmas Angel even flew in from Nuremberg to officiate over the festivities, which are in their sixth year for Philadelphia and the first for Baltimore. Bauer chose the City of Brotherly Love as his original site because of the region’s German heritage and significant Amish population...In Philadelphia, the elfin structures occupied by more than 60 retailers encircle the 38-foot-tall Christmas tree in Love Park.

Original source: The Washington Post
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The city's iconic skyline could be getting an addition -- Comcast is considering another tower.

Details about Comcast's expansion plans are being kept under tight wraps, but the company appears to be focusing on constructing the first of several towers on a long, skinny, 1.5-acre site at 18th and Arch Streets, a block west of the Comcast Center. That building could eventually be part of a vertical campus including towers at 19th Street and Arch, and 18th and John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Federal Donuts earned a spot on Eater's list of the top 23 hottest donut shops in America.

Mike Solomonov's Federal Donuts has been inspiring doughnut shops across America for years and just this past fall opened up a second location for its magical combination of fried chicken and doughnuts. (There's also a new stall at the Phillies ballpark.) Doughnut options include strawberry-lavender, Turkish coffee, milk chocolate-peanut butter, and blueberry muffin.

Original source: Eater
Read the complete list here.

The Reading Terminal Market's third Festival of Forgotten Foods draws praise for its unusual delights.

"Some of the foods are old-fashioned kinds of foods that are part of Philadelphia’s culinary history," Levitsky said Friday, "and some we sell every day in the market ... like snapper soup and raw milk."

Pepper pot soup — a thick stew of tripe, vegetables, lots of black pepper and other spices — is sometimes called "the soup that won the Revolutionary War." According to legend, it’s credited with restoring the strength and fighting spirit to Gen. George Washington’s troops during the harsh 1777-1778 winter at Valley Forge.

Original source: Associated Press
Read the complete story here at the Washington Post.

These days, if there's a donut list, local favorite Federal Donuts will earn a spot. This Saveur run-down of the country's 50 Best Donuts is no exception.

The donuts at this ambitious newcomer include the Appollonia, served hot and rolled in cocoa and orange blossom powder. The other specialty? Fried chicken.

Original source: Saveur
Read the complete list here.

A travel writer from the Telegraph (UK) came to Philadelphia for the museums and the history, and fell instead for its walkable, understated charm.

Dizzy with images, I felt ready for more trivial pursuits. Like shopping, along elegant Walnut Street and Rittenhouse Row; exploring the independent boutiques and galleries of 3rd Street in the Old Town; trawling the renowned vintage shops of Fabric Row and shops of Antiques Row; and sampling Amish farm produce at Reading Terminal Market.

Compact and human in scale, friendly in atmosphere, Philadelphia is a city made for walkers, divided into contrasting neighbourhoods and dissected by the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, whose banks sport the boat houses of the city's six proud universities, prettily illuminated at night (a scene popularised by the paintings of Thomas Eakins).

Original Source: Telegraph (UK)
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The Washington Post's Adrian Higgins visited the Flower Show, PHS's big annual event, and came away impressed. (Check out Flying Kite's pics from the shindig here.)

Historically, big-city flower shows are like big cities themselves: They either change or decline but cannot stay the same. By all appearances, the Philadelphia show is in the midst of healthy change: Attendance climbed from 235,000 in 2010 to 270,000 last year and is on track to exceed 300,000 this year. The number of competitive entries in a feature called the horticultural court — the horticourt — is about 11,000, and the entrants’ enthusiasm has been rewarded with a new $1 million setting for the competitions that includes a fabric roof and new show benches and display backdrops.

Original source: The Washington Post
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An intriguing vision of a waterfront park obscuring I-95 has been unveiled, and could mean a major green space achievement for Philadelphia. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation is currently seeking designers and engineers.

A preliminary rendering of Penn's Landing Park extracted from the Master Plan for the Central Delaware, shows a sloping lawn, roughly the size of Rittenhouse Square, through which people could walk from Front Street down to the water's edge, or where they could linger to watch fireworks or concerts. The park would sit on a structure that expands the existing partial cap of I-95, which covers the highway from Front to Columbus, and from Chestnut  Street just about half way to Walnut Street.

Original source: PlanPhilly
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An Oscar statue's three-week pre-awards tour will make a stop in the City of Brotherly Love on February 6. Locals have extra reason to be excited for the big show this year, with Philly-centric Silver Linings Playbook garnering multiple Academy Award nods.

Follow @OscarRoadTrip on Twitter and tweet using #OscarRoadTrip to let us know where you’d like to see us bring Oscar. Or, if you’re old school, you can also shoot us an email to let us know where we should go next.

Original source: Oscar Road Trip
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Hotel development has bounced back in Philadelphia, with four new projects on the docket. The latest addition is Hotel Indigo, planned for the Bailey Building at 12th and Chestnut Streets.

If all are completed, the four hotels would add a combined 1,268 rooms to the city's inventory of 11,600 - enough to support the expanded Pennsylvania Convention Center, which officials say requires about 12,500 rooms.

In addition, a new hotel tax will kick in July 1, boosting the rate to 15.5 percent from 15.2 percent, or 50 cents per room night - additional revenue that will go toward marketing the city's tourism industry.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
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The closure of the infamous Forum Theater opens up a world of development possibilities on an underserved stretch of Market Street.

"Those [2100 and 2200] blocks of Market Street are kind of one of the last significant gaps in the quality of the streetscape," said Alan Greenberger, the city's commerce director. Drexel University's eastward expansion and the transformation of the west side of the city near the Schuylkill from industrial to commercial and recreational uses are "all suggesting that there is a wave that is going to happen to get the west side to meet the east side" of the city, Greenberger said.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Wall Street Journal highlights the Rosenbach Library & Museum, an amazing private collection of books and manuscripts located on a gorgeous, out-of-the-way street near Rittenhouse Square. Gems include the manuscript of James Joyce's Ulysses, early editions of Chaucer and a huge collection Maurice Sendak's paintings, illustrations and editions (including original drawings of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen).

To handle scholarly materials, the Rosenbach requires not the usual white gloves demanded by other libraries but a good old-fashioned hand-washing (latex can do more damage to delicate paper than clean, oil-free hands). I couldn't resist asking to see and touch one piece that stopped my heart and brought tears to my professorial eyes. It was the manuscript whose purchase got A.S.W. Rosenbach started on the final, and greatest, chapter of his buying career. In London in 1885 Sotheby's had sold at auction the manuscripts of six letters of John Keats. Oscar Wilde, enraged by the salacious intermingling of art and commerce, wrote a protest sonnet. Thirty-five years later, at Manhattan's Anderson Galleries, Rosenbach bought the poet's penultimate letter to Fanny Brawne, his fiancée, dated July 5, 1820, before his departure for Italy, where he died of tuberculosis seven months later. The great poet was also a typical, temperamental 24-year-old young man who, finding his girlfriend flirting with his roommate, wrote to her with envy, jealousy, rage and sadness, "I will resent my heart having been made a football."
Original Source: The Wall Street Journal
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