Dranoff's tweaked South Broad Street tower means fewer hotel rooms, more dwellings

Carl Dranoff is tweaking his proposal for a condo and hotel tower at the corner of Broad and Spruce Streets to include fewer guest rooms and more dwelling units after receiving just a small fraction of the state grant money he requested for the project.

The Dranoff entity that owns the vacant 311 S. Broad St. construction site was awarded a zoning permit Wednesday for a project with 101 hotel rooms and 114 residential units, according the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections.

That plan differs from a 152-hotel-room, 90-residential-unit project outlined for the site in a permit awarded by the agency in January 2015.

Dranoff has promoted the project as a 45-story condo-and-hotel hybrid under the banner of Los Angeles-based SBE Entertainment Group's luxury SLS brand. He said in an email Thursday that the changes won't alter the building's exterior size or shape.

The alternations come about three weeks after he was informed by the Pennsylvania Budget Office that he would receive only $1.4 million of the $19 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program funds requested for the project's hotel.

The changes to the tower's makeup mark the second time in recent months that Dranoff has adjusted plans for a South Broad Street project.

In August, the developer released plans to build a 28-story condo tower at Broad and Pine Streets, rather than a previously proposal for a 22-story mix of apartments and hotel rooms under SBE's Hyde brand.

He said he aims to begin work on one of the two projects in 2018.