Piercing into the sky along Darien St between the Stadium Holiday Inn and the Turf Club, are two VERY tall steel poles. Residents, commuters and those attending events have wondered what these giant towers are for… is there a giant bungy ride being installed? Well. no… simply these towers were put in place to support cell phone antennas which previously sat atop the Stadium Holiday Inn.

The reasoning for the moving of the antennas is the large construction project of the Philly Live Casino and Hotel Venue taking place on the Holiday Inn property. The developer Cordish and partners paid $37 million for the property with an initial intent to fully utilize the Holiday Inn tower and incorporate the new development of casino and entertainment venues around the casino. After taking full control of the project, Cordish decided the location of the hotel building in the center of the property was not ideal for them, as they could not build a large open casino floor… so they decided to demolish the existing building and rebuild a new tower on the edge of the property.

The added difficulty was that the hotel has contractual agreements with mobile phone providers for the placement of antennas on top of the building to provide cell coverage to South Philadelphia, and the developers needed to have a plan to keep the cell towers functional as the hotel tower was demolished and rebuilt.

It is unclear at this time of the two large poles will remain after the new hotel tower is developed.

Philly.com article from November has additional details, and suggests a 2020 opening of the casino.