Ask for Concessions, Don't Make Demands

Out of the many dead proposals forgotten in the wake of the Great Recession, none stood to alter how we see Philadelphia like the collection of skyscrapers and high-rises that were proposed along the Delaware River near Northern Liberties. 

What we ended up with was a truncated Waterfront Square and a gussied up casino barn, both isolated from the sidewalk behind surface lots and gates. The worst played out.

Somewhere between the best - Bridgemans View - and the worst - SugarHouse Casino, was Trump Tower.

Less suburban in scale than Waterfront Square, but easily as isolated, Trump Tower was a building that would have blended in fine were it in Center City. It's design was handsome, if a bit dull, but also lacked the brassy adornments that tarnish Donald Trump's otherwise attractive skyscrapers (Atlantic City obviously excluded). 

Well, according to PhillyMag.com, it's back, sort of. If you follow Philadelphia Magazine on Facebook you saw the "get out of our town" comments begin piling up because, well, the internet, and no one can be bothered to read more than a headline. 

The Trump Tower isn't back, and it seems that, for now, the Golden Combover is done with Philadelphia. What is back, maybe, is the proposal. The land has changed hands, and the new owners want to use the Trump Tower proposal as a template. While the permit does't expire until 2016, the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association has already piped up against the resurrected proposal.

Bridgeman's View

Unfortunately, the Northern Delaware's proximity to Northern Liberties and Fishtown tethers it to nearby NIMBYs as a technicality, despite the fact that the established waterfront and its development goals could not be more at odds with the neighborhoods on the other side of Delaware Avenue. 

For decades, nearby NIMBYs have stymied development along the river, and their actions are indirectly responsible for the river being dealt the shittiest deck. Residents of Waterfront Square would do themselves a favor by creating their own neighborhood association, one that embraces the same height, panache, and amenities that would drive up their own property values. As it is, they face a dilapidated pier, one that nearby neighborhood associations seem resigned to keep. 

Unfortunately what's happening here, and is all too apparent in neighborhood politics, is a case of "if I can't have it, I don't want to see it." Waterfront Square does very little to tarnish the sight lines of the Delaware River, and an even more attractive high-rise would only enhance it. Skyscraping apartment buildings line Lake Michigan in Chicago and it doesn't hinder their enjoyment, it puts more people on the lake and makes it exciting. 

There are plenty of places in Philadelphia to escape the drudgery of the workweek, and a lively river next to an interstate and wide avenue isn't it. Dense development near the Schuylkill River finally provided a reason to invest in the Schuylkill Banks, and that investment is putting more bedrooms on that river. 

Resistant neighbors near the Delaware River are likely worried that more development, particularly high-rises, will cause development to snowball. But that's exactly what should happen if we ever expect the Delaware River to see the kind of improvements that have saved the Schuylkill Banks. The truth is, the Delaware Waterfront doesn't belong to Northern Liberties and Fishtown residents anymore than it belongs to someone from Chinatown. The voice that should be considered is the voice of those who actually live there. 

I say bring it on. If the pier's new owners want to develop a luxurious high-rise catering to Philadelphia's elite, why not? If NIMBYs are truly concerned about the fate of the river, and public access to it, they should be working with developers, not against them. Don't repeat the mistakes that gave us Waterfront Square and SugarHouse, digging feet into the sand against an inevitability, landing us with the worst. 

Ask for concessions, don't make demands. How will Trump Tower 2.0 be integrated into the neighborhood? Are developers willing to offer publicly accessible space? Are they willing to invest in street and sidewalk improvements beyond their property line? 

It's knee-jerk to assume the worst, but Philadelphia NIMBYs are notorious for doing just that. A little bit of nice can go a long, long way. But if NIMBYs are just going to shout demands and make unjust claims, it understandable why any sane developer wants to put up a wall. 

Financing a Vision

GroJLart at Philaphilia is quickly becoming my favorite "architectural nonsense" blogger in Philadelphia. His latest rant about the dead Bridgeman's View proposal for the waterfront got me reminiscing about a time long ago when we were still building houses we couldn't afford, buying gas guzzling SUVs we didn't need, and openly challenging the country's 1% to transform city skylines around the globe. The year was 2007, a distant memory filled with shopping sprees, cosmopolitans at the latest Steven Starr incarnations, and nights full of unapologetic laughter.

Oh, how I miss the laughter.

Perhaps that's what's so refreshing about GroJLart. Sure, his snarky rants probably trigger your kid's parental controls, but his dark humor applauds our wealthy developers for their inspired visions while berating them when they sell out. No nonsense, no politics, and when a building is just plain ugly, he says it's just plain ugly.

In the enlightened era before smart phones and a pantheon of reality television dedicated to the children spawned by the Jersey Shore, Bridgeman's View went beyond the conventional skyscraper and attempted to maximize what could be done with a glass curtain. In fact, it's unique coiled design might have been better suited to the shores of Dubai than the banks of the Delaware.

Bridgeman's View was more than another skyscraper. Had it been proposed for West Market Street we might be looking at it right now. But Bridgeman's View was an concept and offered a vision beyond occupying another vacant lot.

While it would have housed million dollar condos, it also sought to anchor a new neighborhood. Surrounded by projects that undoubtedly relied on the confidence of Bridgeman's View to turn a forlorn stretch of Delaware Avenue into its own urban core, it was surrounded by shopping, restaurants, bars, and may have encouraged SugarHouse to be more than an uninspired slot barn. 

In a way, the opposing community organizations were correct in their assumptions that Bridgeman's View wasn't concerned with their neighborhoods. It wasn't designed to complement Northern Liberties, but to liberate it from itself. Developers may have underestimated our community organization's relentless reaction to change. In an area arguably even assigned to any neighborhood, developers were forced to rationalize a skyscraper that rationally didn't belong.

In a city full of artists and creativity, we limit the right to be a visionary to those who can't afford it. While many in the surrounding communities might like to claim defeat over Bridgeman's View, the economy was its most vocal opposition. Had the contingent development surrounding the tower been afforded the ability to play out, Bridgeman's View might be pointing its middle finger at the neighbors that tried to squash it.

The New Delaware Avenue

Had it been built, today's economy would have probably left it a ghost town, but what a beautiful ghost town it would have been. It's a shame that of all the grand proposals for Northern Liberties' waterfront area, neighbors managed to NIMBY away all but the most poorly designed of the various proposals. And even in the case of these two, opposition fought so hard against an inevitable casino that they wound up with a suburban warehouse instead of a well designed tower with a landscaped marina.

In a time of optimistic real estate gambling, the post industrial wasteland that is Delaware Avenue was to be the site of a new, and concentrated business, residential, and entertainment district. With skyscrapers rivaling Center City's, the redevelopment of this concrete jungle of vacant lots, rotting warehouses, and abandoned cars promised that Northern Liberties could be more than a hipster's wet dream of ironic blight.

Bridgeman's View

A World Trade Center would redefine this corridor as an international business hub, while sleek, sky scraping condos would tag Northern Liberties as an elite address for Philadelphia's nouveau riche. Hotels and casinos would attract young and old, and Delaware Avenue would become our region's premier address for glitz, glamor, and excess.

Oh, how times change. While just a few years ago, one could envision such a scenario being today's reality, sadly, Delaware Avenue remains a blighted artery, and home to the homeless.

Sugarhouse Casino

Waterfront Square, a poorly designed condominium complex that suburbanizes Delaware Avenue as a gated community that disobeys the grid, is two towers short of its original plan. Developers are struggling to unload the remaining units in the recently completed, and stunted, tower.

Sugarhouse Casino draws a crowd but pays no respect to its surroundings. Like a pig in a prom dress, a large warehouse has been dressed up with a plastic facade. With development tied up in town meetings and neighborhood opposition for over a year, dwindling resources and a sagging economy eliminated a hotel component that redefined the area's skyline and balanced Waterfront Square's jarring presence.

Trump Tower

While many in the neighborhood continue to demonize the projects, the surrounding area and waterfront remain neglected and unused by those who fought so fiercely to preserve them. Certainly the addition of Trump Tower and Bridgeman's View, as well as others, would have led to a much worse real estate situation, one Philadelphia has weathered quite well compared to cities like Miami or Atlanta. But no NIMBY can claim their protest was due to some divine foresight.

While it may have turned into a ghost town, it would have created a badly needed, urban infrastructure in a suffering part of town, one that could save this area from the same mistakes made in South Philadelphia in which a similar landscape was redeveloped into an asphalt oasis of suburban shopping.

Given the current economy and the present state of the neighborhood, it's unlikely this stretch of Delaware Avenue will be thrown any developmental optimism again. If this NIMBY has the foresight it likes to claim, right now they are seeing strip malls and fast food drive-ins.

Can We Get a Pulse?

A quick look at some great contributions to the Philadelphia skyline that may or may not make it.

Richard Meier's Mandeville Place at 2401 Walnut Street is dead in the water following the real estate crash. Out of all the residential developments proposed, this arguably would have been the most glowing addition to Philadelphia's architectural portfolio.

Agoos/Lovera Architects' Bridgeman's View would have added height adjacent to a neighborhood that a Northern Liberties NIMBY may not have wanted, but got stuck with it anyway in the form of five lesser towers with Waterfront Square. This could have been the catalyst to create a new city on the Delaware but died off with the real estate crash, leaving the north end of Penn's Landing with a cluster of five isolated high rises and the coming of Sugarhouse Casino.

H2L2's Stamper Square, a tasteful and scaled addition to Society Hill, replacing the hole in the ground formerly occupied by the NewCity shopping mall, was staved off by bitter residents long enough for it to be completely killed by the bubble burst, leaving residents with...a hole in the ground.

The Boyd Theater restoration and ARCWheeler's addition of a Kimpton Hotel isn't quite dead...yet...but hasn't seemed to evolve beyond this sketch.

The parking garage at Brandywine Realty Trust's Cira Center South is moving along. According to Penn, this project is going forward. Cira Centre South would significantly change our skyline shifting our eyes upward west of the Schuylkill and creating what I would like to name Crystal City had it not already been taken by an underwhelming suburb of Washington, DC.

A name like Intercontinental might be a slim possibility during this particular financial situation. One can still hope this Brennan Beer Gorman design someday rises above the Vine Street Expressway.

The same could be said for Cope Linder's Waldorf Astoria at 15th and Chestnut, rivaling the neighboring Residences at the Ritz in height, style, and opulance.

Winka Dubbeldam's obscurely fascinating Unknot Tower (GMH Hotels) at 12th and Chestnut would make a truley unique and risky addition to Philadelphia, unmatched since the days when our archiscape was Frank Furness's playground.

Of course, Philadelphia's attempt to play with the big boys, rising above anything currently standing in Manhattan and rivaling Chicago's biggest, Kohn Peterson Fox's American Commerce Center is still the dream of many. Battled by biddies in neighboring residences, the ACC has weathered much of its criticism by simply being tall. Like many of our tallest, it's not necessarily great architecture but from the ground, simetimes height is all a building needs to inspire awe.