Under Construction in Philadelphia

No one with decent observation skills needed to read today's Inquirer story on the cooling housing market to know that there is more talk than actual construction on the streets of Philadelphia. And yet, a walk around town is a good way to take measure of which projects are moving along. Here's a random sampling of what I saw this morning:
HOME OFFICE: That sheet of plywood covering the 16th Street entrance to Two Liberty Place? A sure sign that the conversion of the upper floors to condos is underway. Convinced that Philadelphia's office market isn't going to rebound any time soon, the building's owners are making floors 37 to 57 into 140 condo apartments. To accomplish that, they need to create separate elevator lobbies for residents and office workers. Agoos/Lovera is overseeing the conversion in Liberty Place, which was the second act of the complex that broke the city's height barrier in 1990.
PHILLY MEET-UP: Meanwhile, on the other side of 16th Street, HRPT Properties is finally starting renovations of the dowdy, '70s Centre Square office towers. It's been more than a year since Daroff Design was hired to reconfigure the Clothespin plaza and spruce up the sprawling lobby and ground-floor retail spaces. HRPT bought the pair of flat-topped towers, designed in the Brutalist style by Vincent Kling's old firm, in 2002. When the company first announced changes to the front plaza - Philadelphia's signature meeting place - there was concern that the renovation was driven by a desire to reduce the corner's magnetic attraction to proselytizers and protesters - and that the result would be a lot like the recent fortification of the Urban Engineers plaza on 17th Street. While the owners plan to reverse the spiraling Septa staircase so the steps lead toward Market Street, rather than toward the building entrance, HRPT's regional manager Dave Campoli insists that Philadelphians will still be able to say, "Meet me at the Clothespin."
URBAN UNDERGROUND: As work picks up at the Murano site, at 21st and Market Street, you can make out a fascinating underground city of vestigial utilities, pipes and mysterious fortifications. The dirt-encrusted, cylindrical formations on the east side of the site look like something archaeologists might have uncovered at the Roman Forum.
COLOR CHANGE: It's funny how you get used to seeing the streets of Philadelphia fixed in amber, and then one day everything changes. So it is with the house of the late city planner, Edmund Bacon, on the 2000 block of Locust Street. For decades, the brick townhouse's black-and-yellow color scheme stood out as combatively as the man himself. Now, as part of a major renovation, the owners have stripped off the black paint. It's currently somewhere between bluish-gray and the original red. But I suspect it won't be long before the house blends decorously with the neighborhood, another reminder than Philly's Captain Ahab is no longer haunting the streets and coming up with grand planning schemes.