Camden's New Waterfront?

Camden's ambitious $830M master plan for its waterfront has been revised, and recently won approval by New Jersey's Economic Development Authority. This could be a very big deal, kids. Cira East, anyone?

The complex, designed by Robert A. M. Stern, would be developed by Liberty Property Trust. This firm, behind both Comcast towers, has a knack for getting shit done, and not wasting its time. The commercial space, residences, and hotel have a chance to dust off the irrelevance of this troubled city and resurrect some of its past as a place people actually want to be...if it's done right.

But don't let Stern's Cira Centre-esque towers fool you. This is no Cira Centre and - at least for now - the only thing that makes this project urban is the fact that it happens to be in a city. Take a gander at the site map and, whoa, that is a lot of parking. 

Unfortunately, Camden has found itself in a pickle where parking is a caveat for development. So much parking, in fact, that 4000 spaces would be provided for only 211 residential units and 130 hotel rooms. The good news is, all new parking would be garaged in structures surrounded by apartment buildings, so it won't be seen. 

Wow, that is a lot of parking.

It should be safe to say that - with 4000 new spaces and the surface lots surrounding the site - downtown Camden will have enough parking to satisfy itself for the next fifty years. If this plan happens in its entirety, one would hope it would attract urban minded residents and companies looking for a little slice of Philadelphia east of the Delaware, which is essentially what Camden should be, and new businesses would drive similar growth. Think Hoboken or Arlington, VA. 

But New Jersey, oddly being imbedded in the Northeast Corridor, is a state that has yet to truly embrace urbanism, real urbanism. I say "embrace" and not "understand" because the state has made strides with transit. They get it, they just don't seem ready to commit. Traffic and parking lots abound, and in New Jersey, especially South Jersey, car is King. 

New Jersey's reluctance to ditch it's cater-to-the-car approach, especially in urban areas like Camden, is mind boggling when you consider the city's built-in urban infrastructure. Newer West Coast suburbs like Redmond have built better urban experiences from scratch while urban cores like Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver scramble to retrofit their downtowns for a life detached from the car. 

With its sidewalk-facing apartments and vertical office space, it seems that Camden is at least trying to tiptoe into the world of tomorrow, which is subsequently the world of yesterday. I hope nothing but the best for Camden. And if its residents never abandon their cars, I hope to see those two beautiful skyscrapers every time I visit Penn's Landing.

Another Comcast Tower?

With initial plans to lease part of the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center to other businesses, Comcast has decided to keep the entire building to itself. Meanwhile, nearby, Liberty Property Trust has been purchasing and consolidating a neighboring block for what some are speculating may become a third Comcast tower.

It's not hard to imagine. The cable giant is a force, and if its merger with Time Warner goes through may necessitate more hometown office space. It also has the disposable cash to pull it off. As a major American powerhouse, Comcast could have easily set up shop in Manhattan, but they didn't chose Philadelphia solely for our pretzels. Land is affordable and talent is cheap, at least by comparison. 

A Comcast spokesperson told BizJournals it has no current plans to build a third tower, but similar comments were made during Comcast Center's construction.

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On a related note, check out Comcast's slideshow of the new CITC. Notice anything unusual in the first rendering? The Mellon Building and Liberty Place aren't hiding behind Comcast, they've been edited out. Oh, Comcast. 

Comcast vs American Commerce Center

Curbed posed a fun question to its readers on Tuesday: "Which Skyscraper Proposed for 18th & Arch is Better For Philly?"

It's a fun conversation starter for architecture nerds, particularly since those are likely the only who remember the proposed American Commerce Center. Liberty Property Trust did a fine job showing off Kohn Penderson Fox's American Commerce Center to the city, but it was always just a building with a theoretical For Rent sign on it. Comcast's Innovation & Technology Center isn't just a building. If it's built, it comes with its own jobs and businesses. 

The answer is obvious: the building most likely to succeed.

American Commerce Center - Kohn Penderson Fox

Architecturally, American Commerce Center complemented the city's existing architecture. It was tall, but it wasn't bold. That's good, but it's not great.

The CITC is new, at least for Philadelphia's skyline. Foster combines his early industrial towers with his newer glass curtains, giving our city something you'd expect to see in London or Hong Kong. The CITC doesn't blend and that's bound to stir up controversy, but breaking convention challenges the status quo, and Philadelphians are no stranger to a rut.

Comcast Innovation & Technology Center - Norman Robert Foster

 

What's more interesting about the comparison between the ACC and the CITC isn't their designs, or even the likelihood that either would be built, but the city's overall reaction. Despite the fact that the ACC had a slim chance of being erected, it endured a storm of public protest from neighbors.

The CITC seems to have been approved before it left the drafting table. There is no neighboring outcry about shadows. Comcast doesn't even seem interested in releasing varying designs, whereas their original tower was redesigned at least ten times before being finalized.

It's curious how Comcast managed to evade the city's routine community intervention, neighborhood organizations that demand a lot more from much smaller projects. Comcast seems confident that construction of this building, and only this building, will begin this summer. Surprisingly, it seems like Comcast might be right.

Comcast: Subtelty is Dead

Philebrity pointed out a curious disclosure ignored by every recent Philly.com article regarding Comcast's $1.2B expansion, and in doing so, may have inadvertently shown why most local news outlets have opted to ignore the not so subtle timing between Comcast's press release and a denied appeal to save Net Neutrality.

Obviously, Comcast owns NBCUniversal, so local NBC affiliates aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them. 

However, Comcast's partner in this new skyscraper is Liberty Property Trust, run by William P. Hankowsky.  

Hankowsky is a major owner of - you guessed it - Philadelphia Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News/Philly.com.
 

And now that Comcast is en route to owning the goddamn internet, did the state pat them on the back and offer a humble, "good job, guys"? 

No, the state and city are giving Comcast $40M towards construction.
 
That's like giving food stamps to Donald Trump. No, it's like giving your soul to Lord Voldemort. Which you won't be able to watch, because you bought Comcast's Basic Internet Package.

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Just a reminder, people. The end of Net Neutrality means only one thing: Your ISP can charge you more for what it arbitrarily deems "premium content." Comcast is celebrating with a $1.2B skyscraper because they will soon be allowed to charge you more for sites like Facebook and BuzzFeed based on nothing more than the fact that you want them.

AOL and the Future of Comcast

Bradley Maule of Philly Skyline is back, now writing for Hidden City Philadelphia. With him come the memories of a Philadelphia circa 2005 when everyday we'd eagerly turn to his own website, Philly.com, Brownstoner, or Inga Saffron's Blogger page, anticipating the seemingly daily proposals for new skyline changing high rises.

Maule has ignited speculation that Comcast and Liberty Property Trust have revisited plans for 18th Street, possibly employing London's Foster + Partners, responsible for 30 Saint Mary's Axe and Hong Kong's HSBC Building, among many other modern marvels.

Liberty Property Trust owns both sites on 18th Street between JFK and Arch, formerly the proposed sites of the American Commerce Center and Comcast's annex mirroring Suburban Station. For now, this seems to amount to little more than speculation stemming from Liberty's ownership and Comcast's impressive cover letter.

While Comcast has seen record growth, particularly since it's acquisition of NBCUniversal two years ago, many are questioning the cable (now media) giant's viability in a variety of industries already experiencing massive technological shifts.

There's no doubt that Comcast has the money to employ Foster + Partners and the blind ambition to set a few more local construction records. But their corporate business model may be primed to go the way of AOL.

"What's that, Wes? You're crazy." said everyone.

Well, first of all, AOL is far from dead. It exists as a collection of media outlets that you likely don't realize you visit all the time. But as a visible force in the technological realm, it is no longer a unified entity to be reckoned with.

The company that once dominated internet technology was forced into decades of "right sizing" when the industry they owned - dial up and highly proprietary internet access - disappeared over night.

Once poised to introduce us to the future of the internet and media, AOL was experimenting with dozens of new technologies and integrated media only coming to fruition today.

Before companies like Google took the reigns by releasing new, experimental technology, even risking the release of hackneyed ideas like Google Glass, AOL played it safe, put AOLTV in the closet, and chose a speculative business model despite their proven technological merit, and continued to buy, buy, buy.

AOL grew to the point that shareholders usurped the roles of internet revolutionaries and the company that put the world online from a garage in suburban Honolulu became synonymous with Oldsmobile.

Now is it sounding more familiar?

Comcast is still largely rooted in cable and it's recent investments are in traditional media. Like AOL customers who began peeking outside their Buddy Lists and Chat Rooms to explore what the world wide web had to offer, Comcast customers are exploring a vast world of media outside the confines of their cable boxes.

While Comcast continues to push bundles, forcing customers to purchase networks peddling Babies Having Babies and HSN just to get NBC and Fox (and still pushing landline service as something marketable), younger consumers are opting out of traditional television for internet entertainment.

Comcast seems to think their customers won't find anything they like, and likely thinks it shouldn't matter. After all, it's hard to access the internet without Comcast, especially in Philadelphia, right?

Wrong.

Technology and access to interactive media seems to be changing too fast for the dinosaurs at 18th and JFK to grasp. In fact, it's changing too fast for many of us over thirty-five. Not only is a younger generation watching their television shows without a television, they're accessing the internet and all it offers without a computer. And that's where Comcast's reign begins to falter.

While many interact with media on smart phones and tablets, accessed through Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon, the media their accessing is even less traditional, and often less corporatized.

Comcast seems to think its ace in the hole is in their acquisitions of mainstream media like NBCUniversal, while younger audiences are finding their entertainment on College Humor and Cracked.com and getting their news from BuzzFeed and privately run blogs.

You don't even need to be a Millennial to see the trend changing. A decade ago you likely wouldn't have met a person who didn't have several hundred channels cabled into their idiot box. Today you may only know a few.

Even if they are Comcast customers, much of people's viewing choices come from Netflix and Hulu where they can not only watch what they want when they want, but even watch original programming like Season 4 of Arrested Development and Orange Is The New Black which aren't even available on cable.

This rogue programming is often arguably better than standard programming because they're offered with less censorship, no network involvement, and are produced without the time constraints of the half hour sitcom or one hour drama.

Plus, and this is even more detrimental to the traditional cable programming business model, these programs are seemingly commercial-free because the advertising is imbedded in the application rather than interrupting the program. More and more people are willing to sit through a 30 second commercial to watch a three minute clip on YouTube, and advertisers are taking note.

If Comcast was smart, they would have bought Tumblr and Demand Media, not NBCUniversal.

It's hard to say if Comcast will ever choose to tap into this market. As Google begins to rollout Google Fiber, offering access 100 times faster than broadband, Comcast is saying we can't handle it and TimeWarner says we don't want it.

This may say little about the programming Comcast and TimeWarner offer, or the platform on which it's offered, but it says a lot about their corporate impression of the market place. 

These are the words of a monopoly. Of Walmart.

In fact, the cable industry has been lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to control how much of the internet their customers can access. Instead of joining the new media, cable providers are trying to block it. Like a cranky aunt with tight parental controls, Big Cable wants to restrict our viewing to serve their corporate interest.

Who knew allowing the sale of NBCUniversal to a company that controls which networks we access would have been a conflict of interest? Oh, just everyone.

But even if the cable industry succeeds in restricting Hulu and Netflix to serve themselves, market trends are dictated by the newest markets, markets these corporations don't seem to understand. These consumers already know where to find the content they want, and if they can't get it within a cable company's pre-packaged internet bundle, they'll find it on YouTube or download it from Russia.

And again, it doesn't matter because they're not watching television from a big screen TV in the living room, they're watching FunnyOrDie.com on the subway.

It's a new frontier.

These are consumers who got tired of Lady Gaga after a one year hiatus, despite her cult like following seemingly ages ago. To them, Google Fiber is Katy Perry and Comcast is Steely Dan. A laptop tethered to Comcast might as well be a big plastic Garfield phone.

If a technology company can't recognize that its market wants the newest and best, no matter how slightly newer or better, how will it ever be able to compete with the rogue, unpackaged entertainment within the Wild West of the internet, gaining more and more traction by the minute?

Barnes and Noble learned this from Amazon, and the retail industry learned this from everything from eBay to Overstock to CraigsList. Comcast, perhaps under the impression that access to the internet is somehow synonymous with the internet, ignored the memo.

As an amateur architectural buff with a vested interest in technology and our virtual environments, I only hope that Liberty Property Trust and Foster + Partners get to work on North 18th Street before Comcast's shareholders recognize exactly where they're headed.