Philadelphia Ballet Breaking Ground On North Broad Street Expansion

From a vantage point looking northeast from Broad Street, a rendering of Philadelphia Ballet's newly expanded dance center as it will appear when finished. A dance studio is shown in the glass box atop the structure. Varenhorst Architects

Philadelphia Ballet is finally getting a long-delayed front door on the burgeoning northern leg of the Avenue of the Arts.

The company expects to hold a groundbreaking next month on an expansion of its North Broad Street headquarters that will more than triple its current space with a suite of dance studios, offices, a new black box theater, and other public areas. The $34 million project builds onto the ballet’s current low-slung building to create a five-story facade on Broad Street with glassed-in studios visible on the top floor.

A rendering of "Studio F" on the top floor of Philadelphia Ballet's future addition to its North Broad Street headquarters. Varenhorst Architects

Completion of the 43,000-square-foot addition, expected in spring 2024, caps a plan the ballet envisioned when the company acquired its site on Broad near Callowhill Street in 2007.

The expansion of facilities at the city’s major dance organization will put it on par with those of peer companies across the country, says Philadelphia Ballet executive director Shelly Power.

“We are bursting at the seams,” said Power of current facilities. Square footage will go from 15,000 to 58,000, with the number of studios nearly doubling to seven and a half.

“At least we’ll be with the national average,” says Power. “We’re the last [major] company to really have a building that lets us grow a school, do community engagement, to have a black box.”

A space in the Philadelphia Ballet's expanded facility can be used either as a small black box theater or a rehearsal studio. Varenhorst Architects

The expansion promises to add to the already blossoming street life of this stretch of Broad north of City Hall. Plans call for the ballet’s facade to be fronted with streetscape furniture and a video billboard to catch the eyes of passersby.

“We could be showing what’s going on in the studio, we could be showing a clip of Swan Lake,” says Power. “I think it’s just going to enhance North Broad.”

The building project is part of a larger plan to return the company to growth mode after a difficult period. The pandemic forced the cancellation of The Nutcracker, the ballet’s reliable cash cow, in 2020. Fund-raising for the expansion proved tougher than expected.

The building project and related strategic plan are, in many ways, a validation of recommendations made in 2013 by arts consultant Michael Kaiser, who was brought in to diagnose the company’s organizational ills.

“You don’t get healthy by shrinking,” Kaiser advised at the time. “I said to them, ‘Think big.’ "

Now, the ballet is. The strategic plan calls for increasing the number of productions and boosting the number of dancers in the company. This season there are 50 dancers, up from 43 in 2021-22 and on the way to a goal of 54. The company also expects to vastly increase the number of students in its school.

“I expect it to double if not triple,” says Power. “We expect to get up around 500.”

A gathering space is shown in a rendering of Philadelphia Ballet's expanded dance center on North Broad Street just south of Callowhill Street. Varenhorst Architects

Since 2017, the design of the facilities expansion has evolved to rebalance the public function of the building with dancer-only spaces. A public gathering area will host events like dancer meet-and-greets and book readings. An artists’ wall is expected to host exhibitions. Parents will be able to have coffee there while waiting for students to come from classes and rehearsals.

“This is quite different than the plans they were looking at in past iterations mainly because they were so focused on the dancers,” said Power. “But we really expanded because we wanted to focus on the community and become a hub for the area where people could come and see things, experience things and be a part of it.”

“It’s going to change the dynamics of the whole company,” said Philadelphia Ballet Peter Dobrin artistic director Angel Corella, citing the prospect of closer contact between the public and dancers. He also said improved facilities would strengthen the company’s ability to attract and retain dancers.

“Our dancers are getting offers all the time,” he said.

With the company's former name still on the current building in the background, Philadelphia Ballet artistic director Angel Corella and executive director Shelly Power stand on the site of the North Broad Street addition.Read more CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

In addition to the new black box theater and rehearsal studios, the project will provide administrative offices, physical therapy facilities for dancers, and a cyber school classroom.

The $34 million budget — 60% of which is already raised from private donors and state government — will also cover renovations of the existing building, which opened in 2012.

The addition has not yet been named for a donor, Power said.

Nearly all of the spaces in the new building will be multipurpose. Chief among them is the first-floor black box theater designed to be reconfigured in 30 minutes from theater to a rehearsal space of a size the ballet does not currently have.

“It’s bigger than the Academy [of Music] stage. [Now], when they’re doing Swan Lake, literally, they’re in the hallway waiting to run in as a corps. Here, they can fit the whole company in, they can actually have people seated watching the rehearsal. And then it turns into a performance space.”

Looking toward North Broad Street across the site where the Philadelphia Ballet's expanded facilities will be built. CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer

Power also sees the space’s potential for building relationships with donors and audiences.

“You can have free performances, you can have young kids come in for a 45-minute show, and then you get to be right on top of the dancers.”

When dancers call children up from the audience and demonstrate live by saying, “Let’s lift you, let’s turn you,” that’s real engagement, says Power.

“That’s where you win your fans for the future.”

Source: https://www.inquirer.com/, Peter Dobrin

Cheesesteak Shop Fire Attributed To Electrical Malfunction

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An electrical malfunction sparked a fast-moving fire that damaged one of Philadelphia’s best-known cheesesteak shops last week, authorities said.

More than 125 firefighters and other emergency responders were called to the blaze Friday morning at Jim’s Steaks on South Street and battled it for more than four hours before bringing it under control. Officials said all employees were able to safely evacuate, and no injuries were reported.

The Philadelphia Fire Department said Monday that the fire marshal’s office had “determined the cause to be electrical wiring.”

Owner Ken Silver told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the air conditioning had been malfunctioning that morning. He said city inspectors had pronounced the building structurally sound, and he vowed to rebuild, saying the damage was less than he initially feared.

Jim’s Steaks opened its original location in Philadelphia in 1939. The South Street location opened in 1976.

Jim's is one of the prefered places for Philadelphia's iconic sandwich by locals, over some of the more famous South Philadelphia shops.

Regional Rail Passes For Philadelphia's Visit By Pope Francis On September 26th And 27th Suspended Due To Technical Problems

SEPTA is not yet ready to resume sales of Regional Rail passes for the weekend of Pope Francis' visit to Philadelphia.

The transit agency said the sales will not resume this week.

Technical problems forced SEPTA to suspend online sales Monday, just hours after the passes went on sale.

In a statement issued Tuesday, SEPTA officials said "We have been working with IT consultants over the last two days, and are still considering the best option to address the high interest among customers interested in purchasing the pass, and the heavy volume on the e-commerce site."

SEPTA officials told Action News they brought in outside contractors to help with the process, and their site was tested for 1,700 hits per second.

They believe the site was receiving three times that amount of traffic on Monday morning after tickets went on sale at 9 a.m.

SEPTA is selling a total of 350,000 passes for the weekend - 175,000 for both Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27. The passes are $10.

Only 201 tickets were sold on Monday morning. SEPTA confirms that most transactions were not completed.

This glitch adds to the growing confusion in the city about what residents and workers can expect in late September.

Among the unanswered questions: Which streets will be closed to traffic? What about parking? Which bus routes will run? Will there be a security fence and, if so, where will it be?

The answers will have to come from the Secret Service and the federal government, but those answers are not expected until early September.

Jim Giblin, the general manager of the 558 unit Kennedy House says the lack of information is making it very tough to plan.

"The residents are asking how their guests will come in, and how will they be able to get supplies they may need? Will the restaurants and the food markets surrounding our buildings be closed? And if so, for what length of time?" Giblin said.

Rob Calabrese runs the Philly Team Store, where papal visit items now mingle with his sports merchandise. He's not worried about closed streets and big crowds. Instead, his worry is about getting to work via SEPTA. He lived through Monday's ticket sale meltdown.

"Very concerned about it, that I'm not going to be able to get here or how I'm going to get here. It's going to be a struggle," Calabrese said.

Officials at local hospitals and the airport are also working to figure out how to get staffers in during the pope's visit.