Rittenhouse Row gets a New Hyatt Centric Hotel

The parking garage at 17th and Chancellor Streets, which houses Little Pete’s Restaurant and a couple other businesses, will soon be demolished and replaced with a new upscale Hyatt Centric Hotel. The Centric brand is a new boutique hotel being offered by Hyatt for upscale urban neighborhoods like Rittenhouse Square. This new hotel will be just off of the fancy and busy Rittenhouse Row shopping district on Walnut Street and a block from Rittenhouse Square Park.

The new hotel, which is being designed by DAS Architects, will be thirteen stories tall and stretch along Chancellor Street to almost 16th Street. It will have 309 guest rooms. The first floor and second floors will have a 7,300 square foot restaurant and a small lobby at the front entrance, in the middle of the block on Chancellor Street, which will lead up to a larger lobby on the second floor. The second floor will, also, have meeting facilities and the third floor will have a fitness center and more meeting rooms. There will be a garden terrace above the first floor for the restaurant, overlooking 17th Street. The ten stories above the third floor will have the hotel rooms, with approximately 31 rooms per floor.

The exterior of the building will have dark-colored brick and beige metal panels and angled windows. Some panels will divide the windows into two parts. There will be a colonnade on the outside at the first level along Chancellor Street. The developers want to enliven Chancellor Street with new lighting, street trees, and permeable paving. The developers would like to seek LEED Gold status for the sustainably-built building.

Construction on the new Hyatt Centric Hotel will begin early next year and last 18 to 24 months. This new hotel will join other hotels along 17th Street’s “hotel row”. Across from the future Hyatt Centric is the historic Radisson Blue Warwick, up the street at Liberty Place is a Westin hotel, at the corner at Chestnut Street is the exclusive Club Quarters, and at the corner at Sansom Street are the Sofitel and the Hotel Palomar (the Latham Hotel has been converted into an apartment building). Other hotels are being built nearby, such as the large W/Element Hotel at 15th and Chestnut, the Cambria at Broad and Locust, and the super-luxury SLS Hotel and Condominium at Broad and Spruce, and the mid-priced Hyde Hotel at Broad and Pine. The Hyatt Centric hotel will be another option in the crowded Rittenhouse neighborhood.

By, Gabriel Gottlieb