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It may seem counter-intuitive to criticize a charitable organization, particularly one aimed at feeding the city's many homeless. But that's what makes Food Not Bombs and its informal President so reprehensible. Food Not Bombs doesn't feed the homeless, but rather exploits the homeless in an effort to make loosely related political statements.
Recently the organization has been asked to discontinue its feedings in front of the Family Court Building and 20th and Vine, an action FNB immediately used to slander the city, claiming prioritizing tourism was a soulless act.
The decision had nothing to do with tourism. The truth of the matter is the city has no way of insuring that the feedings are safe because FNB refuses to get a permit, which they proudly profess on their website:
We refuse to get a permit for our servings; we believe nobody needs permission to share food with those in need.
If you're sitting in your dorm smoking pot, this premise might sound nice enough, but this permit is required for any large gatherings in a public park from protests to family reunions.
The group's motives don't sound quite as idealistic when you consider they admittedly parade the homeless in an effort to protest issues entirely unrelated to hunger, including funding for the police department.
Most recently the group, along with Occupy Philadelphia, protested the opening of the Barnes Museum. Only they weren't protesting the same drama the museum is accustomed to, they were protesting the gala itself.
Somehow philanthropy is now sinful. As those who helped bring one of the world's most astonishing museums to the Parkway dined (with the proper permits from the city), the FNB and Occupy Philadelphia illegally fed a line of homeless across the street in an attempt to gross everyone out.
Again, there isn't anything inherently wrong with feeding the homeless, if you are genuinely dedicated to helping the homeless. But 20th and Vine is only equipped to exploit the homeless and there is nothing humane about that.
There are no public facilities, it is no where near a shelter, and FNB is affiliated with no organizations that attempt to rehabilitate the homeless. FNB feeds them, makes what they perceive to be a point, and then releases them to sleep along the Vine Street Expressway, Sister Cities Park, or the steps of the library.
FNB is a Homeless Advocacy Group in every sense of the phrase, literally advocating for homelessness.
Should we just be a city of satiated homeless? Should we snub grant money and donations earmarked for museums and fountains because one group thinks it's better to spent elsewhere? Remember when volunteering or donating to a charitable organization was a good thing? Remember when it was politically correct to be happy?
We can't help everybody, and we certainly can't help them by dwelling on the fact that the most obvious improvements are going to be those that make the biggest tax payers happy to live here.
Protesting a fundraiser that helped bring priceless art into the eyes of millions of Philadelphians who would never otherwise see such a space, that is a soulless act. Using the homeless - living people - to make that point, that is barely human.
There are hundreds of charitable volunteer organizations in the city dedicated to helping the homeless, most of which not only feed them, but offer them the tools to feed themselves. FNB is associated with none of these.
As technology changes and evolves, it gets harder and harder to reuse purpose built structures whose purpose no longer exists. As the Court of Common Pleas Family Division outgrows its facility at 18th and Vine, demanding a new 14 story courthouse at 15th and Arch adjacent to City Hall, the fate of John Torrey Windrim's 1941 courthouse remains uncertain.
Philadelphia Family Court building, 18th and Vine.
But what of an addition? A nearly identical situation arose in Jamaica, Queens, New York where a Queens Family Courthouse was converted into a retail complex with a 12 story residential building encasing the rear of the original courthouse.
Queens Family Courthouse with residential addition.
I will agree, the Dermot Company's addition is not the best way to integrate old and new. And part of the problem is in their attempt to respect the scale of the original. The dull, horizontal addition cuts through the original courthouse. The subtlety of its presence is what makes it so obstructive.
Queens Family Courthouse in 1935.
A glass curtain of bright colors could be shooting from the center of the building. Asymmetrical lightening made of glass and steel could be exploding from the courthouse's main hall. Any number of shocking designs could create drama in a building originally intended to be dramatic.
We could learn from the mistakes made with the Queens Family Courthouse. If we intend to encourage the redevelopment of our Family Courthouse as a hotel or apartments, let's also encourage exciting design. Not something that blends into the background, or worse, something that dilutes the drama of the Ben Franklin Parkway and Logan Square.
Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Royal Ontario Museum. Although the addition is in stark contrast to the original building, the avante garde juxtaposition creates an exciting situation, whereas Dermot's addition to the Queens Family Courthouse humbly respects the architecture of the original building while doing nothing to compliment or contrast it, diluting the designs of both.
In 2010, especially at a time when the city is considering a tax on soda, a fee on trash pick up, and a 10% increase on real estate tax just to milk us for a few pennies to keep this city from sinking into the Delaware, one would think that the city and state would be watching our money like Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead, somehow lawyer Jeffrey B. Rotwitt has managed to work both sides of the system, naming himself the development czar of the new, $200M Family Court Building at 15th and Arch. Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille agreed to Rotwitt's fees, allowing Rotwitt to write himself a check from the city for $55,000 a month as a retainer and ultimately $3.9M, without a contract to build anything.
The reaction from Rendell, "we're looking into this," while Mayor Nutter and City Council merely remarked that this was a "gray area". Great job guys, way to keep those palms greased. Maybe you can make up for it by taxing the people who elected you every time they shit.
The once-proposed Park Tower by Skidmore Owings and Merrill would have occupied the new site of the Family Court Building, gracefully mirroring the adjacent Phoenix while an adjoining tower would have added height to this unusual little corner of Center City.
At first glance I didn't think this building was so bad. Wedged between two avant garde mid-century mid-rises and the sexy Art Deco Metropolitan, it might be nice to have something subtle and bland bridging the gap and replacing a surface lot. Then I saw the price tag. $200 million. Who approves these numbers and how do they get so high? Unions, or just an inept administration bent on burning through as much money as possible. In any other city this building would cost less than $100 million. What makes it even worse is the architect, John W. Chase of EwingCole, basically apologizing for the sub-par design, saying it is good enough given the circumstances. If you're going to blame the economy for bad architecture, it should be priced appropriately. I know the $200 million covers more than the blueprints, but considering that is a large chunk of what the Comcast Center and the Convention Center expansion cost, there is room in that price for a better looking building.
