Work now under way on Pennsylvania Ballet's new home ...

This building at Broad and Wood streets in the Callowhill Loft District, which looks like a little brother of the Packard Motor Car Building next door, represents the return of the Pennsylvania Ballet to the Avenue of the Arts ? only this time, north of Market Street.

Actually, the Ballet has never left the thoroughfare ? its performances take place in the National Historic Landmark Academy of Music and the University of the Arts? Merriam Theater next door. But its administrative offices did once the Ballet outgrew the building at Broad Street and Washington Avenue in Passyunk Square that it had converted in 1992 to house the company and its school, now the independent Rock School for Dance Education.

Two of the three buildings that stood on this site are being repurposed for the Pennsylvania Ballet. The third has been demolished; its site will serve as an entrance courtyard to the new Louise Reed Center for Dance.

So in 2007, the Ballet purchased the plot of land at the northeast corner of Broad and Wood streets with the goal of building its new home on it. That building, the Louise Reed Center for Dance, an adaptive reuse project by Erdy McHenry Architecture, is now on its way to completion in January 2013, the start of the Ballet?s 50th anniversary year. In addition to the Ballet?s administrative offices and studios, the complex will also house the brand-new School of the Pennsylvania Ballet, a pre-professional training academy.

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Work has already progressed quite a ways on the one-story Wood Street building that will house the company's studios and dance school. It appears that work has yet to commence on the Broad Street building that will house administrative offices.

A $25 million fundraising campaign, including $17.5 million to build the center, is ongoing as construction proceeds.

The billboard at the site includes a rendering of the completed facility by Erdy McHenry Architecture. Now that Hurricane Sandy has passed through the area, the Ballet might want to consider spending a little of the money it raises in its campaign to repair the banner announcing it, which Sandy blew off its frame.

-By Sandy Smith for PhiladelphiaRealEstate.com

All photos by the author

Thanks to former contributor Joseph Brin for tipping us off to this project.

Media professional with more than 30 years' experience in journalism and public relations. Launched award-winning newspapers at the University of Pennsylvania and Widener University. Editor-in-chief of this blog since May 2012.

Source: http://blog.philadelphiarealestate.com/work-now-under-way-on-pennsylvania-ballets-new-home/

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