There was a long article several months ago in Atlantic or New Yorker about Meier's West Street buildings and about the complete fiasco that resulted when the warring celebrity tenants fought over who would be responsible for significant design flaws (leaky roofs and the like). It was a hilarious story highlighting the stratospheric lack of perspective only the super rich can attain.

Its so nice to see everybody get along - sort of. What beautiful building - Ireally hope it gets built.

Re: Philly as an Acella suburb - its not the worst thing in the world - to a certain limited extent businesses actually do follow the most educated, skilled parts of the workforce. Still the effect is only a very minor part of the big picture.

If we make the city a better place to do business, the neighborhoods will continue to make strides. Philly still has to do this - its unavoidable and not nearly as intractable a problem as certain people make it out to be. It is nonetheless a daunting task.

Too true. Which is exactly why www.philadelphiaforward.org and a little site called www.stoppaytoplay.info exist Did you see we're one shy of 300 signatures now?

This building represents a true fresh addition to Philadelphia's built environment. It's gorgeous to look at. Not many buildings do that for me. True, it does appaer to be very tall, but it's slender elegant form overcomes any height issues. It's well placed being near the river, which means it should always be visible from that side. I live in Tampa, and there is nothing worthwhile to look at here. We have the dullest buildings imaginable. There is one big project of some note, but it has been 3 years and no ground broken yet, so it's not looking too good. For those of you in Philly, I hope you appreciate your great urban landscape. By all indications, the booming residential market seems to be adding alot of new interesting structures to the skyline. If I had the dough, I'd move to Center City.

There are a bunch of problems with access to the Schuykill Trail, mostly because of the rail lines. These lines are a huge liability to the city to have pedestrians crossing over, so at-grade crossings are not that plausible at the moment. Maybe the Mandeville folks have thought of this and will construct a pedestrian bridge?

I have to say, I'm not crazy about this development. I will qualify my opinion on this, as I live on 24th St. almost directly across from where this building would be built. Is it a beautiful design? Absolutely. My worry is that the scale is not very appropriate to the existing fabric, it even dwarfs 2400 Chestnut which is so damn ugly (maybe that's a positive?). I think in the long-term though, this is a great project considering that much development will probably occur along the Schuykill over the next 20 years. In the short-term though, I think it is rather out of place. I'd like to see it be about 2/3 of that height as a compromise, as view more as a seed for more development, not a giant tree of modernity. It will be a nice counterpoint to the Sears Center across the river however.

the sears center? perhaps you mean the cira center?

I saw in the Sunday paper they are still offering apartments at the Lanesboro so I went to the web site. There are still eight of the original eighteen units unsold after almost two years. These units are all over a million, some over two million. The lanesboro is nothing like Mandeville Place but it is a beautiful building, in the more fashionable "pre-war" style, and in a more fashionable location as well. My point is that Mandeville Place as it is now is too expensive to be a success.

there's very little accounting for taste my friend..people have been spending around a million dollars for the condos in Waterfront Square by the busload. and that's in NoLib.

i havent heard much about lanesboro, but Mandeville has had lots of hype, which is important. people want to be in the "cool" buildings. also, if built, it will arguably be Philly's finest tower. and people will want to live in it. i would worry about other things, to be honest.

With both the Lanesboro and Mandeville Place, we are not talking about "around a million", we are talking multi-million. That is what the two buildings have in common. The Lanesboro was the Philly Magazine showhouse, I think in 2003, so it had plenty of hype. I would love to see Mandeville built too. Hopfully they are tinkering with it as we speak to make it more marketable than the original concept that was announced.

Making Mandeville available to the masses would not only open up its market to a hell of a lot more people, it would make an important point about living in a Philadelphia highrise.