Developer wants to break height limit on Philly's Delaware River waterfront
The developer behind the most ambitious proposal yet for Philadelphia's Delaware River waterfront wants to get high with a little help from City Council.
To seek support for an ordinance that would shatter the waterfront area's building-height limits, executives with developer K4 LLC visited a South Philadelphia community near its proposed complex of townhouses and residential high-rises, called Liberty on the River.
The ordinance would tweak regulations adopted three years ago that govern development along the central Delaware riverfront. Jeffery Kozero, K4's managing member, said he needs to be able to build higher than currently is permitted to generate enough floor area for the project to be financially feasible.
"There's a financial threshold that we need to meet," Kozero said in an interview Wednesday after the first of what is expected to be several presentations to Pennsport Civic Association members. "For us, going higher is better than going squatter."
K4's plan is the latest proposal to come to light since the adoption of the 2013 zoning overlay, which seeks to map out the waterfront's transition from a largely blighted strip of big-box retail and disused industrial buildings into an inviting extension of the city's urban core.
Far to the north, near Spring Garden Street, Jefferson Apartment Group and Haverford Properties plan to build about 550 units of housing and 30,000 square feet of retail on a property known as Festival Pier, where concerts now take place.
The K4 plan covers nearly all the land east of South Columbus Boulevard between Washington Avenue and Reed Street. The Rockville, Md.-based developer acquired 18 acres there last year from Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 and is negotiating with the union to purchase an additional eight-acre parcel, which is partly covered by its meeting hall, Kozero said.
The proposal calls for 10 residential high-rises and about 100 townhouses encompassing up to 2,000 units around a broad throughway that originates on Columbus Boulevard, across the street from an I-95 ramp. Two narrower east-west throughways to the north would provide more links for the public between Columbus Boulevard and the river. Shops and restaurants are planned for the ground floor of each residential tower, with several decks of parking on the floors immediately over that retail space.
Squilla said in an email that the development "would first need community support before we would consider moving forward with any plans."
During Wednesday's Pennsport meeting, which lasted well over an hour, community members seemed noncommittal about the plan, asking pointed questions about construction timing, parking quotas, traffic management, and benefits for the surrounding neighborhood.
Harris Steinberg, whose work on a planning committee nearly a decade ago helped inform the 2013 zoning overlay, said after being briefed on K4's proposal that he was unimpressed.
"It just seems grossly overscaled for that site," said Steinberg, who now directs Drexel University's Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation. "It relates to the I-95 off-ramp and not to the city of Philadelphia and the walkable urbanism that the city of Philadelphia is known for."
