Life, Death, and Construction: An Urban Staple

Jonas Gruber|February 23, 2022

This construction site is on 23rd and Chestnut. It’s a part of the ongoing efforts to rehabilitate Philadelphia’s bridges that cross over the Schuylkill. No completion date has been posted at this time.
The next stop isn’t far, just across the street from school on Race street. This development is a residential building that’s slated to be finished in 2024. If you want to know more about this specific site, read an article by The Falcon’s own Ian lamont. 
This site is located at 17th and Sansom and used to be home to a 3 story parking garage. It doesn’t look like much now, but by the year 2023 or 2024 this space will be home to a 27 story tower, with residential, commercial, and restaurant spaces built-in.
This building, located at 2222 Market Street, is being built as an office building for the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius. When it’s finished, the building will stand 19 stories tall and have over 300,000 SqFt of office space. Construction began in late summer of 2020. No completion date has been posted at the time of writing. 
The Laurel can be found at 19th and Chestnut and is being built as a luxury apartment complex as well as contains some curated retailers and restaurants. When finished, the structure will be 48 stories high, with apartments ranging from 1,700 square feet to 9,700 square feet. 

Construction is widely recognized as a key part of city living, and cranes accompanying skyscrapers on the skyline is a common sight. However, construction tends to blend into the background, and the average person probably doesn’t even realize the amount of construction happening around them every day. According to Corpinsights, In 2021, Philadelphia saw an unprecedented 9.3% increase in construction, with the residential market seeing the biggest growth. Those stats, coupled with developments coming to fruition that have been in purgatory due to the pandemic, has made 2022 a very construction-heavy year. 

The city’s website cites 11 new developments, totaling $1 billion and resulting in 2.4 million square feet of real estate completed during 2020 and 2021 in Center City alone. The site goes on to say that another 15 projects were expected to be finished by the end of 2021 and 37 projects are in the process of receiving permits and planning. 

Road work, another important facet of the construction world, affects traffic and commuting, so the city has made attempts to make the process easier. For road repaving or pothole repair, there is a city-run website, which goes over the process and timeline of what road repair can look like for residents and business owners. 

Growth on this level can definitely be felt in everyday living. Street and sidewalk closures stop being just an inconvenience and start to permanently change your routine, sounds of machinery stop waking you up and start to become background noise. However data shows that this increase is the result of a city, and a wider world, coming back to life.