PHDC is announcing a new RFQ for artists! This is one of the largest award opportunities presented by the Percent for Art program. Festival Pier is the second-largest publicly owned parcel on the Delaware River waterfront. This project will be part of a larger investment strategy in the area.

Project Overview

PHDC and the development team of Haverford properties and Jefferson Apartment Group announce a two-stage process by which we will award and commission public artwork at the Riverview development to be located at Festival Pier, at Spring Garden Street and Columbus Boulevard.

The Property is being developed in coordination with the Percent for Art Program, which requires developers building on land acquired from the public sector to commit one percent (1%) of their construction costs to original, site-specific works of art. The Art Budget for the Project is one million, one hundred thousand dollars ($1,100,000).

Process Overview

Call for Artists: Request for Qualifications (RFQ) is Part 1 of a two-part Public Art Selection Process for Festival Pier in which up to five finalists will be selected by PHDC based on recommendations from PHDC Public Art Committee, the Developer, and community members.

Finalists will move on to Part 2: Request for Proposals (RFP) where they will be invited to develop full proposals. Finalists will receive a three thousand five-hundred-dollar ($3,500) honorarium in return for completing and presenting their proposal to a Review Committee who will be comprised of the Art Committee and development project stakeholders. Please download this document.

Questions/Requests for Additional Information

Q&A Session: PHDC and the development team will hold an optional Q&A session for interested artists on Tuesday, November 29, 2022, at 11:00 am. This session will be held virtually via the Zoom platform. Please email art@phdc.phila.gov for instructions.

Written Q&A: All questions and requests for additional information should be directed in writing to art@phdc.phila.gov with “Festival Pier Public Art RFQ” in the subject line. Questions and/or requests for additional information and PHDC’s responses to them will be posted on this page of the PHDC website.

Deadline for Questions and Requests for Additional Information: The deadline for questions is no later than 3:00 pm Friday, December 2, 2022.

Submissions will be accepted in one of the following ways:

Online Submission: Online Submission for RFQ Festival Pier - MAKING PHILADELPHIA BETTER BLOCK BY BLOCK (phdcphila.org)

OR

Email Submission to art@phdc.phila.gov via a file-sharing program such as Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) or Hightail (https://www.hightail.com/)

Submission Deadline

Applicants must submit their responses no later than Tuesday, January 10, 2023 by 3:00 PM; absolutely no response will be accepted after that time.

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