New Market West wins ULI 2025 Biennial Award for Excellence
Thriven Design is proud to announce that New Market West was selected as the 2025 winner of the ULI Philadelphia Biennial Award for Excellence last night at a ceremony at the Fitler Club in Center City, Philadelphia. Thomas Queenan, CEO of Mission First Housing Group, and Matthew Bartner, AIA LEED AP BD+C, Managing Principal, Practice & Performance of Thriven Design, accepted the award on behalf of the project team. Congratulations to all who helped bring this project to life!
Thomas Queenan, CEO of Mission First Housing Group, and Matthew Bartner, AIA LEED AP BD+C, Managing Principal, Practice & Performance of Thriven Design, attend the 2025 ULI Philadelphia biennial Awards for Excellence, May 21, 2025.
Kevin Moran, Executive Director, ULI Philadelphia; Thomas Queenan, CEO, Mission First Housing Group; Eric Goldstein, Awards Committee Co-Chair; Jeff Brown, Awards Committee Co-Chair, at the ULI Biennial Awards for Excellence, May 21, 2025.
ULI’s Awards for Excellence, which are presented every two years, recognize, “the highest standards of achievement in the development industry and advancement the ULI mission to shape the future of the built environment for positive impact in communities worldwide.” This distinction is the latest honor for New Market West, which previously received the 2021 Blue Ribbon Award from the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations (PACDC).
Mission First Housing Group’s New Market West development is a multiyear, multiphase reinvestment in the Haddington/Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia that began in 2017 and concluded in 2021. The project saw the revitalization of a vacant 1.5 acre lot into a 135,700 sf mixed use, transit-oriented commercial development and a five-story, 51,150 sf affordable workforce rental housing residence with apartments for 41 low income households. The project brought essential housing, childcare and health services to Haddington after a marked period of disinvestment.
Thriven Design provided professional architecture, engineering, planning, and interior design services for both Phase I and Phase II of the New Market West development. The four-story, Phase 1 mixed use commercial building of New Market West faces Market Street, a main artery across the City of Philadelphia. Its design combines social services, offices, retail, and early childhood education with an underground parking garage, public plaza, and outdoor amenity space with views of the city skyline.
The five-story residential building created during Phase II, Apartments at New Market West, faces North Salford Street and adds 28, one-bedroom and 13, two-bedroom apartments, as well as a laundry room, exercise room, and community room.
In less than five years since its full completion, New Market West has achieved its project goals of adding and retaining 300 local jobs and creating a thriving community hub through: artful partnerships with neighborhood non-profits including ACHIEVEability, Horizon House, and Wonderspring; close coordination with local leaders, including Councilman Curtis Jones, Jr., State Senator Vincent Hughes, and Representative Morgan Cephas, and innovative design that blended the natural attributes of the site (proximity to transit, a grocery store, a senior center, and hospital), with a host of essentials that young families require for success: childcare, early childhood education, employment resources, job training, and health services.
Learn more about New Market West and Thriven Design’s other mixed-use residential design at: https://thriven.design/expertise/.
