Philadelphia's Preservation Crisis

Like many publicly operated organizations, the city's preservation task force has already proven itself useless. That's a chore in itself given it isn't even a year old. From HUD to the EPA, sometimes I wonder why we invest so much in publicly operated groups. Given their political nature, they shift in purpose through administrations and are often defunct byproducts of campaign promises that never fully emerge. 

There's simply no money in altruism, and like for-profit corporations that serve only Wall Street, publicly funded advocacy only subsists as political stock. 

Simply put, the investment in public preservation advocacy would be better spent on the organizations that have no vested interest in demolition and redevelopment. The very fact that private developers, publicly traded firms, and a City Council that banks political capital from redevelopment is in any way involved with the city's Historical Commission, Licenses and Inspections office, or Design Advocacy Group is a huge conflict of interest. Preservation and its impact on our urban fabric should be left exclusively to the experts trained in historic preservation with no interest in anything else, and its autonomy should be heeded. 

In nearly all realms of public life, officials defer to privately funded experts. Allowing the Historical Commission, a tag tag gang of bureaucratic flunkies, to decide what goes, often at the behest of millionaire property developers claiming economic hardship, is no different than Betsy DeVos running slipshod through our public education system. Why are we outraged by one and not the other? Both are charged with one responsibility, enacting the opposite. 

Of course granting private groups like the Preservation Alliance absolute power over historic preservation is a tough sell. There's the knee-jerk assumption that private advocacy with too much authority can run rampant over the financial realities of any municipality. But time and again, advocates - from preservationists to gun reformists - have proven themselves nothing if not compromising. Barring the most storied of historical sites, only facades command preservation in Philadelphia (though the loss of the Boyd Theater's auditorium may, hopefully, challenge this caveat). 

The preservation crisis in Philadelphia can't be understated. Arguably as historic as Boston but considerably poorer, a recent influx of residents, mostly young or empty nested, has overtaken the priorities of our schools and our beleaguered history. In the decades since the New Deal era, Philadelphia's history survived in a preserved decay, uncataloged and untouched by the happenstance of neglect and a lack of development. Enticed by unfamiliar growth for the first time in nearly a century, City Hall and the campaigns of all those within have been fixated on the city's transformation, more often than not to the detriment of our history.

Charged with the task of organizing that history, private groups are so bogged down with the need for proposed landmarks threatened by development that only the most notable find a home on their lists. And even then, it's meaningless when the Historical Commission is so liberal with granting hardships to developers who simply don't want to salvage a portion of a facade. Meanwhile, incidental row homes built to last forever are routinely swapped out, blocks clear-cut, for new construction chock full of amenities, aimed at transplants with no concern for history, constructed to last maybe a few decades. 

When America's economy finally began to rebound from the Great Depression in the 1980s, it was through a culture of disposability. Everything from phones to cars to homes are designed to be temporary, and it's become our biggest enemy. Preservationists haven't been able to recon with the profitable nature of development itself, acting on the blind assumption that most people would like to save old buildings, and sacrifice luxury and convenience to do so. The only way they can move past this, and possibly be expected to professionally interact with and influence the very nature of our disposable culture is by granting them the autonomy and authority to do what they are academically prepared for: protecting our history in spite of developers equally vested in profitably maximizing every square inch.

City Hall can't be expected to do this, and maybe we shouldn't want it to. American culture, as much as our fickle desire for fast fashion housing, is driven by individualistic civic engagement. Maybe it's time we hand the reigns of preservation power over to those who actually care about it. 

Dust Settles at 22nd and Market and the Storm Begins

As the dust settles at 22nd and Market, the fallout is spreading through Center City. Sean Benschop was the crane operator at the site and tested positive for marijuana and pain killers at the time of the accident, and will likely be charged with six counts of involuntary manslaughter.

The straight dope is that Benschop shouldn't have been driving a crane at the time. But Philadelphia's seemingly run by as many unfit criminals as it employs, and every city agency remotely tied to this disaster is doing everything in their power to deflect the spotlight from their own role in the collapse.

L&I has been on damage control shutting down Rosewood, a new bar all the way across town near 13th and Walnut because it employed Griffin Campbell Construction, the same contractor demolishing 22nd and Market. It's a cheap way for L&I to say, "look, we're doing our jobs," despite the fact that they not only granted Griffin Campbell a demolition permit on West Market Street, but didn't shut down the site after calls about the unsafe conditions were placed to Philadelphia's 311 non-emergency service.

L&I made various claims regarding the 311 calls, from confusion over the address reported to simply verifying that the site did indeed hold the permits that they themselves granted. Philadelphia's big, but it's not as if a misplaced digit in the 2100 block of West Market Street could cause confusion over the location of the site. So many demolition projects aren't taking place on Market Street that those in charge of safeguarding our addresses would be scratching their heads and saying, "Huh?" In fact, it's the only demolition project actively taking place on Center City's Market Street anywhere.

That's obvious, of course, which is likely why as soon as people starting pointing their fingers at L&I, L&I swooped in and shut down a loosely connected business. Of course, let's not forget that L&I is the sole organization that licensed these creeps in the first place. Maybe it's time to shut down L&I, a difficult endeavor when they're responsible for shutting things down. After five years in office, have Nutter's balls drops?

Not likely. City Hall is doing it's own damage control, and it's perhaps even more opportunistic than L&I's. After all, L&I is just covering their ass. But City Hall is full of politicians, more callous and criminal that any pot smoking crane operator. 

Clarke is playing politics the old fashioned way, one voters in this city seem to routinely ignore. He's proposed a 10% tax on vacant property owners. If you don't know anything about Councilman Clarke you might be thinking, "Great!" But if you're reading this, you're likely familiar with the fact that Clarke presides over one of the most blighted wards full of property hoarding slumlords, and it's a common perception that he does everything in his power to keep it that way, including allowing the Divine Lorraine to be all but sold for scrap.

So why would Clarke want to slap a 10% tax on his most powerful constituents? Well he already proposed the idea more than a decade ago and it was never enforced because (for reasons I can't figure out) it's not legal. In other words, Clarke knows the proposed tax will fail and so do his cronies, so he sit back and tell his voters, "Hey, I tried, blame bureaucracy."

It's a cheap political tactic that City Hall has been peddling since the beginning of time and for some reason it still works here. Street did the same thing when he openly opposed the smoking ban, telling business owners and the lingering smokers he was looking out for them while everyone knew it was inevitable.

We expect these games when we're talking about unions or business licenses, but when politicians use the tragic death of six people for their own gain, it's beyond disrespectful. It's detached and sick.

Meanwhile City Council hasn't said one word about L&I's role in the tragedy, and likely won't, at least not yet. That doesn't mean the aftershock won't find its way to all responsible. L&I's infrastructure is about as stable as 22nd and Market and City Hall still operates under the delusion that its voters still buy print journalism.

The whole story is surfacing and those responsible don't even see it. L&I will have to do a little more than shut down one bar and City Hall will have to do more than charge one crane operator with the whole disaster to save face, they're going to have to step up and admit their roles, and the administration will have no choice but to act.

Historic Church Saved!

Great news from PlanPhilly on the Church of the Assumption on Spring Garden. L&I has unanimously voted to stop plans to demolish the historic site. 

In more good news on Spring Garden's landmark, The Clay Studio has emerged as a "very serious buyer".

I find it ironic that the Philadelphia Historical Commission granted Siloam permission to demolish the church to build a parking lot while the Board of Licenses and Inspection - typically harbingers of the wrecking ball - favored the appeal of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association. 

Would the PHC - charged with preserving Philadelphia's historic catalog - have voted in favor of the CNA if the neighborhood group had spoken up sooner, or is the PHC simply not doing its job?