Metro Goldman Manor

The man behind the Center City boom asks us to Trust him.

By A.D. Amorosi

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ARCHIVES . Articles

March 14–21, 2002

naked city

Metro Goldman Manor

The man behind the Center City boom asks us to Trust him.

By A.D. Amorosi



tony town: goldman in his newest venture, Trust. photo: scott weiner

Nick’s Shoe Repair. Robin’s Book Store. Full Moon Saloon. Sansom Cinema. Now playing: Dick Me! You can almost hear "My Favorite Things" in the distance while driving past 13th Street’s mix of dilapidated buildings and familiar funky locales.

Goldman Properties owner/developer Tony Goldman loves this area; its urban sprawl and squalor, its mix of textures, architectural and sociological. "Beauty is more beautiful when it’s next to the gritty— the counterpoint of perfect next to imperfect makes it exciting," says Goldman, pointing to his dominion. "This is a city environment. As long as the adult bookstores don’t far outnumber the vibe I’m trying to replace it with, we’re OK."

To Goldman, 13th Street’s culturally diverse foot traffic sounds like — as in the similar demilitarized-zone surroundings of NYC’s Soho district in the ’70s and Miami’s South Beach in the ’80s — money in the bank. "Philly’s actually come along faster and with greater fruition than what it took those regions to reconstruct, blossom and flourish. But I found Philly, on a scale from one to 10 … a 4. And now, we’re at a 5. We have a long way to go. But there’s a business district already at work here — which is different than Soho or South Beach — where we literally built business infrastructures."

Goldman’s hoping that foot traffic will jam on its brakes for Trust, a mode moderne restaubar with ¡Pasión! chef Guillermo Pernot, the first fruit of the reconstruction.

The former Cayuga Federal Savings is — as designed by Gary Farmer of Goldman Properties, Stomu Miyazaki, Curry Construction and local artisans — an American modernist’s wet dream: a metallic, uninterrupted open lounge space. Its nearly kitsch environs start with gleaming, revolving doors and end with a bathroom-level swimming pool that could be a club in itself.

Move to the right and you see a dining area and a metal-framed, glass-paneled kitchen space with a chartreuse walk-in fridge and a greenhouse-like wine storage unit. Peek left and there’s the swimming pool and unisex bathroom of exposed restored brick, steel beams, stainless-steel steps and a Lynn Principe faux-pool motif.

In the center of all this is the bar; a rubbed-raw, greenish-black circle made of granite and 58 feet in circumference, luminously laminated, featuring fluorescent-orange columns with crimp-wire fencing surrounding the outer edge — all topped by a sculptural centerpiece of silver futurist squiggle. Top Trust off with Pernot’s affordable Avignon-meets-Barcelona tapas menu and you get a room bristling with light and energy.

Still, the true centerpiece is Goldman, who, on this first evening, looks like a mad doctor in textured Romeo Gigli. He talks — as a crowd builds around him, loudly — about molding an entire area rather than just one lounge.

"I think I’m about to hit my stride in the development of the 13th Street project," he says, announcing that very day wraps had come off a dozen other properties on the block so that potential business owners can get a look-see, as well as potential loft tenants.

"I’m sorry — no, I’m not sorry — I don’t dance to other people’s drumming. We always had the shape. And I’ve been moving the shape toward that vision. Now, with Trust [and the forthcoming next-door neighbor, Hope] as its crossroad, we can start drawing people to the street."

Area residents — professionals, realtors, passersby, politicians — have been vocal about having to wait what Goldman Properties could bring to Center City’s tattered 13th Street corridor, ever since his arrival three years ago. Goldman has responded that he had no timetable, no need to satisfy anyone but Goldman Properties. With Trust, the street — rather, his idea — is defined finally by Goldman as his commitment to progress.

"This crossroad, this meeting place, not only defines the aim of the street, but my commitment to this city: aesthetically, culturally, socially, financially," he says. "It’s not talk. It’s reality. You come in and see and feel what the quality is."

If Goldman played Monopoly, he’d own Park Place and the Boardwalk. He knows that for the left to be fantastic, he must own the right as well. And because he could have nothing contrary to his vision, he waited a few years, laid strategically in wait and paid "the emotional and financial freight."

That Goldman’s vision includes local designers, artisans and conceptualists speaks not to compromise but to the commitment he mentioned earlier. It had to happen. Trust presents a "had to be" indigenous creation, one that had to be built and designed — and made affordable — by locals for it to work for city dwellers.

"Now we have to roll out the rest of the street to create an environment that’s lit up 24 hours. That’s why it has to include more business and more upstairs apartment-dwellers. That’s why I called it Trust. In our hospitality, we had to be aspirational. Trust is a powerful value relationship between proprietor and customer. I think that’s what people want from what I do. I’m here to earn it."

Metro Goldman Manor

Metro Goldman Manor

Trust , 121-127 S. 13th St. (southeast corner of 13th and Sansom), 215-629-1300.