Project Overview
The Venice Island Performing Arts & Recreation Center is the centerpiece of a $46 million transformation of a narrow strip of land between the Manayunk Canal and the Schuylkill River. The project paired two civic needs that arrived at the same table: the Philadelphia Water Department’s federally mandated four-million-gallon underground stormwater basin, and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation’s replacement of a deteriorated neighborhood recreation center. The result is a 250-seat theater and multi-purpose recreation building sitting directly atop the basin, surrounded by an outdoor amphitheater, athletic courts, children’s spray park, rain gardens, and a green-roofed pump house.
Precast Solution
Fabcon supplied Versacore insulated precast wall panels for the performing arts center enclosure, finished in exposed aggregate with score lines — a treatment that gives the building visible texture and scale articulation appropriate to a civic arts facility in a historic mill neighborhood. The site presented an unusual constraint: the building sits on a constructed lid over a four-million-gallon basin, on an island accessible by limited bridge crossings. Plant-fabricated panels minimized on-site work, staging, and load duration over the basin structure during enclosure.
City of Philadelphia — Parks & Recreation / Philadelphia Water Department
Fabcon Precast
Buell Kratzer Powell
Daniel J. Keating Company
Key Project Attributes
Project/Precast Scope