St. Rita’s Cascia Center receives approval from the Civic Design Review

Earlier in November we shared with you updated renderings for the St. Rita’s Cascia Center proposed for Broad and Ellsworth. The renderings featured scaled down building height from what was presented over the summer, but still showed a vast improvement from the original plans presented back in 2014.

The “peacemaking” facility, which will have senior housing on the upper levels, passed through the Civic Design Review earlier this week, only receiving negative comments on the development’s lack of windows.

From PlanPhilly:

“Really the matching of color is a really logical way to go about integrating this large building into the neighborhood,” says Joe Miskowitz, who co-chairs the zoning committee of the East Point Breeze Neighbors RCO (previously the Newbold Neighbors Association). “As well as breaking up the Ellsworth street side to really reflect the rowhomes that it is facing.”

But Miskowitz did question why there weren’t any windows on the apartment levels facing Broad Street and why the windows in the senior apartments were so small.

“I don’t know if there’s a reason for that in senior housing but it almost looks, for lack of a better word, like prison windows,” he said.