Fashion Plates: Architecture Edition

Up in Port Fishington (I think that's a thing), Naked Philly found some interesting homes at Sepviva and Firth. Something about these houses makes me want to play Q*bert.

Q*bert

What can I say? They're fun houses on a corner that needed a flea dip. And if those plastic panels don't start to fade and crack in a year or two, they're pretty easy to wipe down with Windex.

But checkerboard court up in Kens- Fish- Port- ...that neighborhood, isn't in a truly vetted area. Architects can choose to be daring, or just cheap and boring. However, the use of these snap-on panels is running rampant in neighborhoods that demand better design and better materials. 

Okay, that's kinda cool.

From Goldtex Apartments to 1900 Arch to the proposed Hudson Hotel, we're being duped into confusing exciting architecture with the thrifty tactic of slapping multicolored plastic panels on otherwise dull buildings. 

Norman Foster's tallest-in-Philly on one corner, and...this, on the other.

Architects are dangling a shiny set of keys in our face and we respond with, "ooh, colors." But these quasi-futuristic row homes and apartment buildings aren't anything special. Most aren't even interesting enough to be ugly. Their best attribute may only be the fact that once the style has run its course, it will be that much easier to replace the facade with the next trend. 

In the case of the Hudson Hotel, that might be the deliberate plan. Once we tire of block long plastic barcodes, this shoehorned suburban Aloft is a ready built shell that can be refaced with whatever comes next. 

That's the same ledgestone veneer found on every suburban Bonefish Grill in the country, available at Home Depot.

Sheathing boring buildings with randomly placed color panels is probably the cheapest way to be trendy. But even Hudson's street-facing facade is riddled with already dated materials that scream "King of Prussia strip mall."

The sad truth is hotel goers rarely care about a hotel's architecture, just the amenities. Hudson is catering to people who don't care what Philadelphia looks like, just the spa treatments. That experience can be wedged into any structure, even one as piss-poor as the Hilton Home2 at 12th and Arch.

From Sepviva and Firth's monochromatic corner to pricy parcels near Rittenhouse Square, it's hard to wonder if these designs are simply the trends of the times, or if developers are commissioning something cheap and modular. I can hear the sales pitch, "Want to decorate for the holidays? Snap on some red and green panels, or blue and silver for Hanukkah. Easter? Mix and match!" 

Maybe this is the future of design in the ever changing and ever fickle new Millennium: Fashion Plates for home design.

Unions: Lost in Nostalgia

According to Philly.com, the city has experienced a 20% increase in hotel bookings directly related to improved work rules at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. 

Record scratch - what?

Check out the numbers in the article. They're impressive.

It's also a mind blowing no-brainer the Pennsylvania Convention Center should have grasped way back when it opened in 1993. But politics and the mentality of residents have changed. The only thing that hasn't changed, it seems, are the tactics of the dying trade unions. And they're not dying because of public perception, they're suffocating themselves by refusing to acknowledge a new millennium...already 14 years old.

How effective are their weekly protests at the Convention Center? Those of us annoyed by their routined rhetoric are local, while the vast majority of convention attendees are not. Conventioneers are simply returning home with a funny story about some inflatable "Fat Cat" they saw in Philadelphia. Their presence has little to no barring on any conventions. Hell, they're even offering up some good music at 12th and Arch.

Lately they've been picketing Boxers, a new bar in the Gayborhood...at 10am. You know when customers and employees aren't at bars? At 10am. One passerby even commented on the inflatable rat, "I don't get it, are they calling themselves rats?"

They're cluelessness would be sad if they weren't trying to strangle development in the city. Protests at Goldtex Apartments at 12th and Pearl were so misguided that the developers, the Post Brothers, actually highjacked their rhetoric and used it as a marketing ploy. But those acting out were too bent on chasing their waking dream that they didn't get it.

Here's how lost they are: When I was taking pictures of some picketers at an apartment development near Race and Camac one day, a protestor mistook me for someone who gave a shit and said. "Look, dey got den damn Mexicans working up there, you know dey ain't local." 

I didn't even know how to respond. Not because of the racist nature of his remark, but because the racist nature of his remark was about two layers deep. The workers he was pointing at were Chinese...in Chinatown. So I just muttered something about all the New Jersey license plates illegally parked next to him and walked away. 

These are organizations so deeply indebted to their own dysfunctions that they can't even recognize the fact that they need guidance. Philadelphia's sidewalks are a mouse maze of pedestrians staring at their phones and listening to Taylor Swift. The 21st Century cares about a union protest only for as long as it takes to post it on Instagram.

The best thing the more rigid unions could do would be to hire a public relationship manager well versed in marketing organ slimming pills during Real Housewives marathons. Someone who understands that the only causes the modern world cares about are those with a brand and sexy spokespeople. 

But they're lost, buried beneath rhetoric that applied in an era when politicians turned a blind eye to the illegal and violent efforts that got unscrupulous results. But the truth is, politicians were never on their side. Politicians are on the side of what wins elections. And in a new world where picket lines are irrelevant, politicians who join, lose. And the delusions that keep fueling these aging unions' tactics have turned them into a nonsensical circus, and that's exactly why they'll vanish.

That Inflatable Rat

The inflatable "Fat Cat" has become a regular fixture at the Pennsylvania Convention Center's 12th Street entrance. The Teamsters and Carpenters at the picket line have brandished posters claiming a "lockout," that they signed an agreement with the center. But that claim leaves out one fatal detail, that they didn't agree to the new terms until after the deadline. 

"Buh-bye," said the center.

Their most recent protest, at least the unions' most prominent recent presence, was during this month's Veterans Wheelchair Games. A motorcade of large vans circled the block spouting worn rhetoric about diminished wages behind a clan of $20,000 Harley Davidsons. Others shouted from megaphones while many simply mobbed the sidewalks making it difficult for wheelchair bound veterans to enter the convention.

After the protest came to a close, a police escort led the motorcade along Race Street, through Chinatown towards the Ben Franklin Bridge, ferrying the "local" workers back to their homes in New Jersey.

Progress

The irony and hypocrisy is mind numbing. But the message and tactics behind many of the trade unions in the tristate area has become so routine that the numbed minds of many Philadelphians brush it off as white noise. 

Buildings continue to rise, businesses continue to open, many without union labor. "Crossing the picket line" has no significant meaning to a Center City swapping Baby Boomers for Generation X, even Millennials. They snap pictures of inflatable rats and the union members cheer, clueless that the photo winds up on Instagram hashtagged, "WTF?" New Philadelphians didn't forget about the union protests at MilkBoy and Goldtex, they never cared to begin with.

Given the disconnect between the local trade unions and their target audience, the inflatable rat has become a sign of progress. Both MilkBoy and Goldtex weathered the frustrations of daily protests, and both are now successful businesses. Boxers, a new sports bar opening in the Gayborhood is one of the most recent targets, specifically the Sheet Metal Worker's Union. The popular Manhattan and Brooklyn nightspot is opening its third location in Philadelphia and opted for market rate labor. Few outside the trades industries seem phased, and it hasn't impeded development.

Back in the day, City Hall turned a blind eye to some of the unions' more nefarious tactics. But increased surveillance, social media, and evolving popular opinion have put protesters in a place where they can't overstep their First Amendment rights. Even some politicians have denounced the unions' unscrupulous tactics where they manifest, or simply remain quiet on the subject if it serves their interest.

Meanwhile the media, once largely sensitive to the trade unions, hasn't shied away from stories about illegal union activity. In February, ten Ironworkers Local 401 members were arrested by the FBI and the local media aired their dirty laundry.

When your sole clique survives on whores to public opinion, never underestimate their willingness to turn in favor of that public opinion. And that is the exact problem with the trade unions' overall operation. It isn't just outdated, it sidesteps a community perplexed by their message, it refuses to engage with the developers who cut their checks, and it solely functions as a bully with friends in high places. 

Without a slick public relations representative or a fresh new image, trades unions in Philadelphia are DOA, resigned to collect the crumbs from developers that didn't get the memo, or can afford the luxury of a workspace free of an inflatable rat. A rat increasingly synonymous with a better, newer Philadelphia.

Neighborhood? What neighborhood?

When Pennsylvania decided to move forward with a convention center expansion tentatively planned since the 90s, a number if iconic and historic properties were lost. In the 1980s this neighborhood without a name was virtually indistinguishable from Callowhill to the north. Monolithic warehouses and turn of the century factories-turned-offices butted right up against Philadelphia's City Hall.

We've all heard what happened. 676 tore a chasm between Center City and Callowhill, a new Market East Station rendered the Reading Terminal headhouse irrelevant, and the Pennsylvania Convention Center eradicated what remained.

Of course there are countless ways this could have been done better. The PCC could have straddled the Expressway. It could have made its home somewhere in the wasteland of North Broad closer to Spring Garden. Reading Terminal could have been renovated instead of moved, incorporated into the convention center instead of being relocated underground, leaving the viaduct unused and unmanaged, and acres of surface parking too costly to cap.

I suppose we're lucky that the state decided to incorporate the headhouse and terminal into its convention facilities considering the city once toyed with the notion of tearing it down.

But the wounds of poor design have yet to heal. The convention center's northern façade, if you can even call it that, hovers over Race Street topped with unflattering utility equipment. It's windowless walls and sterile sidewalks point a middle finger at what's left of the neighborhood it destroyed, calling landhoarders to demolish what's left for parking. Parking that the center inexplicably wasn't required to provide for itself somewhere within its three block sarcophagus.

The first blows came at a time when few fought to preserve Center City, and those concerned citizens were busy fighting city planners from dropping the wrecking ball on their own neighborhoods at places like South Street and Chinatown. City Hall had an itchy trigger finger and to them, our historic architecture was synonymous with an era they wanted to forget.

Much of that attitude lingers on Market East and North Broad Street. It's easy to forget that politicians don't write for architecture blogs, and many of their citizens share the same blind eye toward our abandoned infrastructure. When most see an abandoned warehouse or factory, when they see the old Robinson's Department Store on Market Street, they don't ignore the grime and only see blight.

Comment sections and message boards are filled with the same rhetoric when it comes to the neighborhoods around the convention center, Market East, or North Broad, "bulldoze it all." Of course the assertion is ridiculous to anyone who remembers the fact that we already did, and the deplorable end result of our destruction is a city calling for more.

With the exception of several historic buildings on Arch Street, the nameless convention center neighborhood is as bland and unrecognizable as the center itself. The Metzger Building and Lithograph Building are gone. A Herculean feat was employed to demolish the massive Odd Fellows Building. Perhaps the most tragic loss was the Race Street Firehouse, historically significant in more ways than one. Its bizarre gargoyles were removed, put into storage, briefly fought over by several historic institutions before being as forgotten as the building itself. A few short years later, it's unclear where they ended up or if they're simply collecting dust somewhere.

It's almost fitting that the neighborhood's soul would be lost when the six creatures charged with warding off evil were removed and locked away.

Luckily the misdeeds of city planning have shown little interest in Callowhill and its organic development remains largely in the hands of private developers. Unlike Northern Liberties or Passyunk Square, Callowhill stands to be more than an island of self sustainment.

While many of the neighborhood's former industrial relics remain vacant or underutilized, its most iconic landmarks haven't met the wrecking ball of haphazard development.

Post Brothers Goldtex Apartment building is a large investment in not only Callowhill's community, but also stands to bridge a long lost gap between Center City and its neighborhood. With small, pricy units comparable to Rittenhouse or Washington Square, the endeavor is a risky one. But if it proves successful it will pave the way for other developers to tap the neighborhood's vacant land and unused warehouses, as well as ask why the blocks between Race and Vine aren't lined with restaurants, bars, and apartments.

Trade Unions: Strategize or Disappear

As trade union members still protest at the site of Post Brothers' Goldtex Apartments, things are getting a bit, well, sad.

They've clearly switched from targeting the construction crew and general public to targeting potential renters. Their latest stunt has included a couple mannequins in white decontamination suits with signs suggesting that the site is infested with mold.

Of course without proof this might be considered slanderous, but why bother? The fact that the unions are trying to deter renters means they've ceded to the notion that the building will be rented.

At this point, what is their end game? What resolve will satisfy the few who continue to protest?

The media has dragged the Post Brothers' names through the mud, L&I has repeatedly halted development for investigations, City Council and the Mayor's Office have proven where their allegiance lies, and the project is still active.

If any misconduct is taking place at Goldtex it would have been revealed by a media or government at the unions' beck and call for the past year. Yet the Post Brothers are still succeeding.

What would make the cheerleaders happy? Do they want jobs at Goldtex? Do they want the project abandoned? Do they want to bankrupt Post Brothers? Do they think they can?

At the beginning their message was clear: Post Brothers didn't hire a union crew.

But what's left?

The unions lost this battle, but there are countless other projects throughout the city worthy of their inflatable rat.

They continue to peddle a lost message at Goldtex, one that has proven to be ineffectual, and a protest that no longer does the unions any favor. Without focus they look like grown toddlers throwing a temper tantrum, hurting whatever credibility they had left by focusing their attention on one lost cause.

What's even worse for the unions than their reluctance to cede this battle is that they've learned nothing from the loss. Their strategy is unchanged. They launched a 21st Century turf war with fifty year old rhetoric.

When inflatable rats and poorly worded banners don't work, you don't drag your rat and worn commentary to the next protest. You regroup and strategize.

As our city grows more and more tired from union fatigue, they've become the white noise of a dying movement.

Where's their PR manager?

Their message appeals to a working class mid-century America, not to the diverse crew of Post Brothers' workforce and certainly not to anyone with the means to rent a $1400 apartment.

In order to advertise their cause they need to sell it to yuppies shopping for a cushy loft or understand why "scabs" exist. People who buy $90 bottles of olive oil take one look at your typical union picket line and think, "geez, if they don't want me to live here it must be swank."

Union Muscle? Hit the gym, you're playing with the big boys.

It looks like the nonsense at the site of Post Brother's Goldtex Apartments isn't going to end until its tenants are hanging their curtains. While the Firefighter's Union actually opened up a legitimate concern, an easily addressable issue, the city's trade unions continue on their own route to derail construction outside any scope of logic, or at least carry out a few last ditch attempts.

You know the throngs of protesters that routinely block moving traffic in and out of the site? The traffic moving at about a mile an hour behind the crowd of New Jersey muscle waving poorly worded banners about "Community Standards"? The hoards of white guys who criticized the presence of a few Asian construction workers who clearly couldn't be local, you know, in Chinatown?



COMING SOON, whether you like it or not.


The Building and Trades Council has decided to take a security guard to court for no less than six counts of criminal activity, allegedly trying to run over some of the protesters.

With claims like aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, The Building and Trades Council is trying to project a "we're not messing around" image, flexing their muscles. We've all seen them sitting on the side of Vine Street guarding their frownie faced signs. That muscle atrophied years ago.

Anyone with an ounce of reason knows what this is: The Building and Trades Council's pathetic attempt to stave off development for another week or two by forcing the Post Brothers into another frivolous court battle.

With all the eyes on the site, both from the petty union members sitting outside with their camera phones and Post Brothers' security system rivaling Fort Knox, it's pretty obvious that the case will wind up just being another headache for the Post Brothers which could still get tossed out.

At worst it's a costly battle for both parties, including The Building and Trades Union who seems more vested in wasting money trying to bankrupt a nearly complete project than actually finding its members work.

More Heat for Post Brothers

Post Brothers are receiving heat again with claims from the city's unions, aided by a hackneyed investigation on the part of ABC's Wendy Saltzman.

I have to give it to Saltzman for doing her job. After all, the mainstream media is in the business of running stories that accumulate comments that translate into advertisement, not peddling that annoying little thing called journalism. Nothing gets people talking in Philadelphia like unions, and any reporter in Philadelphia worth her words has a Google alert set for "Goldtex Apartments."

The tactics to derail Post Brother's Goldtex project have become increasingly tedious and technical as the building nears completion, however this time the claims are not completely erroneous.

Although the blueprints were approved years ago by L&I, the city's firefighter's union president, Joe Schulle has filed a legitimate concern.

Unions stick together, but the recent complaint filed with L&I may not be part of our unions' mafia-like solidarity that tends to bring construction to a halt.

So what's the problem? Well, that's not entirely clear.

The plans approved by L&I show the building's studio units with lofts above the bathroom and closet. Access to the loft is by way of a pull down staircase that blocks the unit's only entrance. Plain and simple, it's a fire hazard. When L&I approved the plans the loft space was strictly designated as storage or utility space.

Unfortunately, Goldtex Apartment's sales reps are selling the space as extra living space. Let's be realistic here, that's what they were going for all along and how any tenant would use the space. L&I might not be in the business of marketing apartment units, but they should have a rigid set of guidelines that dictates that any space, utility or otherwise needs to be easily escapable.

It was shortsighted of L&I to approve this configuration, but also shortsighted on the part of the architects. Access to the loft could be easily configured to the right or left of the apartment's entrance. L&I should have pointed that out when they reviewed the plans, and the Post Brothers and their architects should have complied.

At Post Brother's eleventh hour it poses a last minute headache that would be minimal to any other developer. But for developers embroiled in an ongoing battle with the city's trade unions, and now the firefighter's union, the media has turned an easily addressable issue into breaking news and stalled construction.

The stairs will either stay or get moved, but our trade unions' dream of a vacant Goldtex Apartment Building and a bankrupt Post Brothers won't happen. The positioning of the stairs is certainly a valid concern, one which should have been addressed before construction began.

But the outcry from the trade unions and their supporters, and the media's overreaction on their behalf is only making them appear less credible and relevant to a much larger and rational public that already views these unions as petty and outdated.

It's a shame because in this particular instance the firefighter's union is actually doing what it was designed to do, but the trade unions have done such a good job at crying wolf that when any union actually does its job, only the union members and muckrakers seem to care.

Residential Development and the Status Quo

Carl Dranoff is no stranger to scrutiny. It's not surprising. While his designs are often unassuming and sometimes ridiculed, his firm is also synonymous with Philadelphia residential development.

While many have criticized the bland tower that rose from the site of the Sidney Hillman Medical Center, few have dropped the name of its developer, the John Buck Company, because it isn't a household name.

But both developers share the same struggle: appeasing lots and lots of tenants.

Dranoff's proposed One Riverside Park won't win any awards. Even in the design phase, we know it never will. Dranoff's bland designs are deliberate. Symphony House and 777 South Broad are his most unique, but they still echo tested design.

He's not a visionary, he's a businessman. Instead of hiring award winning firms that design iconic buildings, he hires ones that design buildings that rent quickly.

Heaving the weight of this reality on Dranoff's firm isn't entirely fair. There are plenty of developers in Philadelphia scarring our city with lesser architecture, or worse, bulldozing our history for parking lots from their mansions in New Jersey.

Dranoff is just the most visible because, perhaps, he's the most ambitious.

He's leaving a legacy on the city he loves. Respectably, he stands behind his properties in the face of criticism, deserved or not, and most of his buildings aren't significant enough to be ugly.

Dranoff is no Frank Furness, and perhaps that's where people get confused. He isn't an architect. He's a developer catering to families and suburban refugees looking for comfort and amenities, the kind of people we see jogging the Schuylkill Trail at 5am as we weirdos return from the all night clothing optional rave in Baltimore.

His demographic might cock their heads quizzically at the unique architecture popping up around University City, along New York's High Line, or even the Murano or the Residences at the Ritz. They're easy to appease, but easily turned off by the unfamiliar.

Basically, his market has a conservative eye. But that's where the money is. Dranoff knows this, and instead of trading potential tenants for unique design, he plays it safe and caters to the broadest market possible. Right now in Philadelphia that's the upper middle class ex-suburbanite who wants a home near the park, ample parking, and to live in something that blends into the background.

It's easy to call out other cities in comparison, but even New York is still churning out plenty of boring rectangular cubes to accommodate the status quo. New York and Chicago simply build so much that they have more gems to stand out.

Still, Dranoff's projects and weak design aren't entirely excused by this vast demand for the ordinary. Hilton Home2's developer citied construction costs to excuse his architectural disaster and he couldn't have been more knee-deep in bull ****.

It's true, it costs a lot to build in Philadelphia, but turning a building on an odd angle, adding unorthodox materials, or selecting a unique color palette doesn't up the construction costs.

Philadelphia is saddled with cost prohibitive situations, but that lies in construction, not design. There is no architecture union in Philadelphia that I'm aware of, and if there is, H2L2 and Erdy-McHenry aren't working against each other to produce the lowest common denominator.

Edgy and interesting design doesn't have to be cost prohibitive when it comes time to build, and Dranoff has the money to hire an architect with an eye for the unique. We know this because Post Brothers hired a firm to design a much more interested renovation at 12th and Wood and proved that Philadelphia's costly prohibitions aren't in themselves requirements, just a daily headache.

However Dranoff seems uninterested in ruffling the feathers of the city's unions. Post Brothers' renovations at the Goldtex, while visually unique, aren't structurally unique.

Dranoff could easily employ an edgy design firm to help him adorn the Schuylkill River, but that isn't what he does. Dranoff's reluctance to build an iconic high rise on the Schuylkill Banks is marketing, and a business move to sell his beds as fast as possible.

Post Brother's "Clap-Trap"

Post Brother's Goldtex Apartment building has been coming along remarkably despite months of daily protests wielding the union's notable carnival toy: a twelve foot inflatable rat, which in a slack jawed sense of 1950's "tough guy" symbolism, is now orange. I'm just guessing. I can't bring myself to research why it's orange, maybe it's just faded.

Assuming the building would near completion without anymore shady moves by the region's trade unions is kind of like hoping a giant turd disappears from a broken toilet in the middle of the night.

Well, they're back. Inga Saffron has the scoop.

According to Inga, Frank Keel, head of public relations for the Building Trades Council, stated that “concerned citizens (had) seen the incomplete state of the building, reached out to L&I." 

As a neighbor I have yet to meet one of these "concerned citizens," likely because most of those stalking the Goldtex site do so from a yellow tagged SUV and hightail it over the river before any of us are home.

Business Manager for Building Trades, Pat Gillespie, always unafraid of airing midcentury machismo called Goldtex a "clap-trap" which is "nowhere near ready for occupancy." Lucille Bluth, the matriarch of Arrested Development's fictional Bluth family, is the last person I've ever heard utter the phrase "clap-trap."

It's easy to look at Goldtex Apartments and assume it's not nearing completion, and Keel and Gillespie are playing right into this misconception. What neither understand is that no one cares. All seasoned Philadelphians see at 12th and Wood is an astoundingly iconic apartment building going up in record time. Consider our point of reference. We're used to corporations that spend three decades on environmental impact studies and design contests to build a park.

Public opinion for trade unions was already beginning to falter and these protests have managed to turn the tide. L&I will throw the unions a few more favors, but when Goldtex Apartments opens, Post Brothers will have proven to the business community that you can build in Philadelphia without union muscle.

At this point it's nothing but a game of face saving pride. Post Brothers have proven time and again that they're willing to dance. Unions are used to targeting Philadelphia developers, developers that routinely rely on kickbacks from the city or tax breaks. Their biggest misstep was targeting a developer willing to use their own cash. The desperate last ditch efforts to derail a project that will certainly open only proves the game is over.