Will New Philadelphians Embrace the Italian Market?

Now that the internet's had a few days to twist its digital panties over the new apartment building near 9th and Washington, I'm wondering less and less how the Italian Market's collective NIMBYs will react to the project, and more about how this luxury apartment building's prospective tenants will impact the market itself.

The south end of the 9th Street Market doesn't really play a nostalgic role in the neighborhood's Italian roots until you reach Geno's. Full of Hispanic restaurants, bodegas, and Vietnamese grocers, it's less old-world-charm and more Bladerunner grit. Though less appealing to tourists and New Philadelphians, the market's southern leg is actually a better microcosm of its surrounding neighborhoods. 

But Milwood Investment & Development won't be catering to the street's shopkeepers and butchers, but those New Philadelphians who do yoga and like their Dickensian grit diluted. 

Basically what I'm posing is, how will the hybrid-bound New Philadelphians take to live poultry and quinceanera stores?

My guess: not well. 

Sure, they'll embrace the charming diversity when they tour their new apartments. Sales reps will be focusing on the market's northern arm and it's charming Italian heritage. But before long, the NIMBYs screaming about parking and traffic will be met with new members, members riddled with xenophobia veiled by a concern for safety. 

If you think I'm wrong, just take a look at a neighborhood a short walk to the market's north. The Gayborhood, once gritty and charming in its own unique way, has traded quite a bit of its cultural heritage for strollers, wine bars, and gourmet pizza. On the surface, it seems harmless. After all, the Gayborhood is safer than it used to be, many of the businesses that closed were underwhelming, and the new ones are thriving.

But the Gayborhood, a neighborhood once so gay it had its own label on Google Maps, is now Midtown Village, just another neighborhood with homosexual tendencies. Once the first New Philadelphians moved in, they called for more, and the gentri-terraforming began.

And that's really what this is, just another futile monologue about gentrification. Because really, nothing can be done about it. And this is exactly what will take place at the 9th Street Market.

Well established institutions like DiBruno Brothers and Giordano's will remain in tact. But its less profitable authenticity like Shun Da Poultry and Mole Pablano will be swapped out for something befitting those willing to pay $2500 a month on new construction. What will come in their wake?

If development in the Gayborhood is any indication, the 9th Street Market will not succumb to the worst form of gentrification, the kind of Disneyfication of diversity that plagues Manhattan and Washington, D.C., but more boutiques, wine bars, and gourmet incarnations of the next trend to sweep the Food Network. 

And like the Gayborhood, on the surface, this transformation looks harmless, even positive. But people no longer move to neighborhoods to be a part of a community, they move to places and establish their comfort zones. Instead of simply accepting the 9th Street Market for what it is, the kitschy and the plainly pragmatic, harbingers of gentrification parasitically chip away at a neighborhood's soul until it meets the lowest common denominator: suburban sensibilities. 

Gentrification isn't an evil villain who wants to raise your property taxes and push you out, it's a brainless virus that unknowingly attacks its host until everything looks the same. It's nothing new and it's not something that can be stopped, but it is something that can be managed. Instead of apolitically ranting at town hall meetings about a bunch of one-off gripes, effective neighborhood leadership could lay down the ground work for a rigid guideline of their community's ideals.

Philadelphia's a big city. Perhaps one day we'll get it right. 

New Apartments for the Italian Market

Those at Milwood Investment & Development, the group behind Walnut Street's new Cheesecake Factory, want to bring 70 apartments to a vacant lot near 9th and Washington. Like anything in South Philadelphia, neighbors wanted to know about parking.

This photo from PlanPhilly shows a rendering of Milwood's 9th Street Market proposal.

Well, good news for the vehicularly mobile, it comes with 150 parking spaces. For the more aesthetically inclined, the parking will be underground. 

For the architecturally obsessed, you're likely thinking the same thing we thought when we saw 15th and Walnut's wild Cheesecake Factory: Why can't it be 20 stories taller?

Anthony Bourdain's Bladerunner Themed Market

If you've ever been to the Italian Market right before Christmas, you've probably felt like you were in another world. Or if you're a sci-fi geek like me, it undoubtedly conjured up images from Bladerunner.

If you've never seen the movie, it's not for everyone. It's an intellectual mystery set in a dystopic future Los Angeles that questions the ethics of artificial intelligence...or something. Thirty years later I still haven't quite figured it out. 

Several of the scenes take place in a sprawling quasi-outdoor market tucked in the crevasses deep inside the canyons of Los Angeles' towering skyscrapers. Vendors haggle, the homeless steal, and dark corridors lead to insidious dens of drug use and prostitution. Try to imagine Chinatown in three hundred years.

For us, we have our own bustling marketplaces on 9th Street and below Reading Terminal. But New York is prepping to offer something a little more...dicey, although a complete illusion.

Anthony Bourdain, one of television's endless supply of foul mouthed chefs, wants to provide a new market on Manhattan's Pier 57, and he's drawing on inspiration from Bladerunner. Quoted as saying his market "is meant to be chaotic because that's what hawker centers should be," in a sense he'll be resurrecting some of Manhattan's lost grit.

But will it work? Philadephia's public markets were born from a need and survive on posterity. Consumers endure the chaos because the markets are steeped in nostalgia, history, and tradition. Even in the fictional market in Bladerunner, we're led to believe that it organically evolved into what it had become. To outsource a public market to theme restaurant logic seems counterintuitive. But the fact that Manhattan has become the world's biggest Extreme Makeover: City Edition, is exactly why it will "work" there.

However its authenticity will hinge on its operation and execution. Reading Terminal Market came to be because goods could be shipped to the terminal above, similar to Pike Place's proximity to Seattle's waterfront ports. The 9th Street Market originally served as the hub of commerce for the city's Italian immigrant population. 

If Bourdain's market intends to interact with the river and host local vendors, it could succeed at being a true market. But if it is just another collection of boutiques and pricey wine and cheese pairings, it will merely be a food court with a twist. 

For us, we're lucky. I know it's bold to say we're more fortunate than New York, but in some ways we truly are. We have two thriving markets that continue to evolve, a legitimate Chinatown that continues to grow, and successful Night Markets returning for the summer. None are a scene from Bladerunner, nor should they be. Creating chaos for the sake of a chaotic experience makes no sense.