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Federal Donuts will join the new Victory Brewing Co. on Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Parkway

This will be the 10th location for the doughnut and chicken chain. It's opening on the ground floor of the former Embassy Suites.

Federal Donuts' 10th location will be at 18th Street and the Parkway in the Terrace on 18th.
Federal Donuts' 10th location will be at 18th Street and the Parkway in the Terrace on 18th.Read moreCOURTESY FEDERAL DONUTS

Restaurant plans are picking up on the Parkway. With Safran Turney’s Loveluck now under construction in the “spaceship” building in LOVE Park just off the eastern end, let us turn our attention a few blocks west, toward the Art Museum.

Federal Donuts, the fried chicken-and-doughnut specialist, will join Victory Brewing Co.’s massive, long-awaited brewpub opening late this summer at 18th Street and the Parkway.

Developer Pearl Properties says FedNuts’ 10th location will take 1,500 square feet on the ground floor in the Terrace on 18th, which is replacing the Embassy Suites hotel in the distinctive circular building at 1776 Parkway. Pearl is converting Terrace on 18th into 288 apartments, the building’s original use.

FedNuts will be on the Cherry and 18th Street sides of the building.

Victory Brewing, meanwhile, is taking the prominent Parkway side, which was a TGI Friday’s from 1990 to 2020. Its 14,000-square-foot project is due to open in late summer or early fall. Announced in October 2019, the Victory will feature three full bars (two indoor, one outdoor), a full kitchen, 3,500 square feet of outdoor space that includes street-level seating and a rooftop patio, and a 10-barrel production brewing system.

The new FedNuts, on the books for late summer or early fall, will be the chain’s most accommodating (30 seats on the inside and 25 seats on the outside on a raised patio). The configuration presented a challenge to Boxwood Architecture & Design. Although the FedNuts occupies only a wedge of the building’s overall circular plan, the space does not include perpendicular walls and the exterior glass storefront is completely curved.