Why Are Men Who Build Skyscrapers Afraid of This Woman?

Luckily, Saffron was already on deadline when Auspitz’s resignation surfaced, and another reporter covered it. She actually agrees with Dranoff’s point that her many hats at the paper are confusing to readers and potentially unfair to her subjects. But the newsroom has changed: Citizens Bank “sponsors” a news column on the front page of the business section, and reporters have been encouraged to post directly to the web, with no editing or oversight. “That’s why they call it fish-wrap,” says Saffron. “It’s a kind of journalism, but not the kind I want to practice. It’s been a long time since the Inquirer was the paper of record. We’re definitely not.”   


IN A PERFECT newsroom, Saffron would be either an architecture reporter or a critic, not both, and some say the latter role is a bit beyond her reach. “A prominent architect in the city called me up,” says Dranoff of someone who wants his name off Saffron’s radar. “He said commenting on individual buildings is completely out of her league.” Design legend Denise Scott Brown of Venturi Scott Brown agrees that Saffron isn’t equipped to discuss “high architecture,” or to compare the rebuilding of New Orleans with that of London after the Great Fire of 1666, as Scott Brown has done. But that’s not necessarily what this city needs. “The critics with formal training have other problems,” says Scott Brown, who insists that Saffron’s lack of academic jargon doesn’t make her less effective. “The French talk about education as formation. But it can also be deformation. She has brought up some important issues in Philadelphia.”

If public response to Saffron’s columns is any measure, Scott Brown is right. Saffron’s in-box and voicemail overflowed in the wake of her tepid critique of Citizens Bank Park and a story about the plumbers union uproar over waterless urinals in the Comcast Center. Her thoughtful analysis of Ben van Berkel’s Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart, which won a newspaper editors’ award? Not a single e-mail. Like food critic Craig LaBan, she creates a certain day-after buzz and “Did you see Inga’s piece on the Linc?” watercooler chatter when she reviews local icons. But while a no-bells slam from LaBan has a clear impact on business, the Saffron Effect is less direct. Even her Symphony House thumping was as much an assault on development business-as-usual as it was on one building, and in reality, its aftermath wasn’t apocalyptic for Dranoff, who says his condos are 80 percent sold. He’s also not in jeopardy of having his other projects on South Broad suffer from Saffron broadsides. 

One advantage visionary writers have over developers, of course, is that Saffron’s bottom line is column inches and deadlines. Dranoff and his peers have to arm-wrestle with unions, zoning board approvals, material costs and political interests just to get a Wawa built, never mind a condo tower. Developer Bart Blatstein, who has felt Saffron’s praise (calling his Pearl Theater an “oasis” on North Broad) and derision (trashing his “scheme” for the Schmidt’s Brewery site in Northern Liberties), says she’s become more sensitive to the economic realities of these projects. And he concedes that her critiques help “to raise the bar” on what gets built.

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