Philadelphia's Polished Turd

In Inga Saffron's latest article, she refers to Brickstone's East Chestnut development as a "Cinderella transformation," and spends a lot of words gushing about Blackney Hayes traditional design for The Collins, named for the Oppenheim, Collins & Co. department store the developer partially demolished. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm one of Saffron's biggest fans. My mom referred to her as "a modern day Ayn Rand," and politics aside, I tend to agree. Her passion for architecture as art has helped elevate her readers' demands for quality design well above the expectations in bigger and "better" cities. And more to the point, her articles - including this one - avoid the academic mumbo-jumbo that plague architectural critiques and alienate lay readers in the Times.

But on East Chestnut, I don't see a Cinderella Story, at least not one that turns a peasant into a princess. A DelCo prom queen, maybe. East Chestnut Street's renaissance, one piece in the larger transformation taking place east of Broad, isn't a fairy tale bringing about something uniquely special. It isn't Walnut Street, Passyunk Square, The Piazza, or even South Street. From the Convention Center District to what I loathe to call Midtown Village, the change unfolding is textbook urban-suburbanization carbon copied from second rate cities around the country. 

And Philadelphia is better than Indianapolis. 

Although East Chestnut is currently seeing a few quirky independent and local businesses emerge from the wreckage of 1976's ridiculous Chestnut Street Transway, the trend won't stick. Philly Cupcake already closed due to increased rent, MilkBoy is on its way to South Street, and I Goldberg is looking for a new home. The Collins, and NREA's East Market a block away, will put a lot of residents east of Broad and even more pedestrians on the sidewalks, but don't expect the kinds of locals that transformed West Walnut Street to be filling their beds. 

East Chestnut's transformation, and more broadly East Market's, is not one of local wizardry. It isn't the dynamic and uniquely Philadelphian approach that piqued the nation's interest in the early 2000s and put us back on the map. It isn't Susanna Foo and Alma de Cuba and Rouge and Astral Plane and all the weirdly fabulous places that made Philadelphia the "it" place to be for those in-the-know.

It's corporate. It's Target. And it's everything that demands more chains.

While PREIT's renovations at the Gallery may have stalled, there is no doubt in my mind that Market East is poised to take off. Curmudgeonly locals may claim that Market East will never be more than a Hooverville illuminated in LED ads for Dunkin' Donuts, but they'll be eating crow the moment East Market opens their doors. I'm not being optimistic when I say this. I don't like the model East Market and East Chestnut have chosen, but mark my words, there will be a crane on the Disney Hole in less than ten years. And it will be because of Target. 

Target is a beast, but it's a suburban beast, even when it's downtown. All you need to do is look to nearby cities to see what follows. The Target in Washington D.C. reinvented Columbia Heights, a neighborhood demographically similar to Market East, and it did so by cramming the trappings of suburbia into a mini-mall. The area surrounding it is chock full of luxury apartments, shiny and new, but in no way reminiscent of their environs. Columbia Heights now looks like its inner-suburban cousins in Clarendon and Crystal City, all thanks to Target, its only lingering urbanity the low income residents City Council requires they continue to house.

A block from our own City Hall without similar housing requirements in place, Market East and East Chestnut are poised to be even more bland because it will be empirically desirable to the Starbucks and beer swilling Basic B's and Bros. It will no doubt be lauded as "cool," but no one's really cool when everyone is.

Within a one or two block radius, Target will suck everything into its high-rent orbit. After its first Michael Graves tea kettle leaves the checkout aisle, it's only a matter of time before property owners begin upping their rent or selling out to national developers, before Cella Luxuria and Lapstone & Hammer start looking for other neighborhoods. We won't see the kind of organic transformation that created Walnut Street, instead we'll see University City downtown. Another Chipotle. A sushirrito joint. Another Starbucks. Then another. Then another. Then a Comcast Experience Store. Sure, that's just capitalism, but unchecked it eradicates diversity and creates neighborhoods for the most mundane un-individals. New Philadelphians who dedicate Instagram accounts to Chipotle despite what happens to their bodies seven hours later.

These are people who don't get cities, and don't get local businesses. These are people who look at the corner dry cleaner with disdain and say, "that would make such a great gastropub." These are the people who will be Market East. And they'll be the first to leave when their kids reach pre-k and realize just how bad our schools are, because they helped crowd-fund a beer garden instead of a library.

It's not necessarily bad for Center City, at least as a whole, or financially. Downtown Philadelphia needed a place to dump its suburban garbage, and ever since Kmart closed, people have needed a place to buy kitty litter and toothpaste. Target - three of them in fact - is our answer. But don't fool yourself into thinking that the 1100 block of Chestnut Street is some kind of Cinderella Story unless your notion of Cinderella picked up her gown under the fluorescent glow of a Target and chucked it into a shopping cart next to a box of Tampax and a plastic barrel of cheese balls. 

East Chestnut and the greater Market East vicinity is undergoing a transformation, but it's purely pragmatic. A place for auto-tethered Millennials to pretend they're being urban and conventioneers to find a little piece of Oklahoma City. It's going to be big, it's going to be shiny, and it's going to change Center City Philadelphia. But the only thing that will make it unique is that it will upend everything that has made our city so special. 

Our individuality. 

The Urban Arcade

Shopping malls might be as American as suburbia, but like apple pie and pizza, we didn't technically invent either. Gostiny Dvor in St. Petersburg, FL is commonly accepted as the first shopping mall, but that and other early examples are often a combination of indoor bazars and European arcades. In that regard, the foundation for shopping malls is rooted in Ancient Rome, perhaps even earlier.

History aside, the American shopping mall as we know it is unquestionably dying. Hanging out at the mall was a great pastime for teenagers in the 80s and 90s, but actually shopping at a mall was born from a need. Before online shopping, malls were a one stop approach to a retail experience now easily accessed on our iPads. Suburban malls have no choice but to continue catering to a market that is fading because, architecturally, there's little else you can do with the space.

But in the digital age, these once convenient solutions have become burdensome. They are destinations, and often troublesome to reach. Traffic jams, jug handles, parking, and lines can be circumvented with the click of a button on amazon.com. 

Urban malls, on the other hand, have always been a bit unique. They were designed to serve the same needs as those in King of Prussia or Cherry Hill, as well as to keep downtown shoppers from fleeing to the 'burbs for Sears. But as suburban malls continue to stagnate and struggle to evolve, these urban shopping malls that have outlived what little usefulness they once provided are reinventing the urban shopping experience by looking to history.

What our urban malls could be.

Ironically, urban malls like Eaton Centre in Toronto and Pioneer Place in Portland, are experiencing a resurgence while their suburban counterparts continue to fail. While suburban malls must rely on their place as isolated attractions, urban malls can grab foot traffic and tourists, and like the Gallery at Market East or Pentagon City Mall in Arlington, VA, are frequently integrated with public transportation. But urban malls can succeed by the mere fact that they're downtown. They have a logistical advantage if their management chooses to embrace it.

Food courts allow coworkers and families to grab lunch at their favorite spots while also allowing them to dine in the same place. It doesn't take a lot to make these places work, just proper management and an understanding that their target audience is unique to the inner city crowd and often supplemental, not direct. 

Ignore the suburban counterparts and begin looking at urban malls as modern European arcades. The Gallery is far from the best example, but it has far more potential than a dying suburban mall.

Save Robinson's

When it comes to Philadelphia's architectural heritage, and legacy, our most iconic landmarks tend to elicit both affection and hatred. Many confuse the PSFS Building with midcentury modernism, despite the fact that it was designed at the height of the Roaring 20s. As soon as City Hall opened its doors, residents deplored its chaotic, classical elements. Arguably Frank Furness's greatest work, the Provident Life & Title Company was slated for demolition because city planners felt it didn't blend well with the Colonial recreation they were attempting to establish near Independence Hall. 

The starchitects of the 19th Century - Frank Furness, Willis G. Hale, William Decker, Wilson Eyre - were the Norman + Foster and Zaha Hadid's of their day. Time will likely treat their works with the same lack of regard, only to come to appreciate those that survive once again a century from now.

With Market East's impending rebirth, it's easy to look at the grit and ask that it all be wiped clean. Save the PSFS Building, Reading Terminal's head house, Lit Brothers, and the 9th Street Post Office, it's hard to see anything notable hiding in the urban brambles. What commercial history remains has been significantly altered, haphazardly combined, and skinned for illuminated plastic panels that resulted from marketing teams behind CVS and H&R Block, not architects. 

Meanwhile, the Gallery at Market East's cold, concrete walls serve as the district's white elephant, blinding us from truly looking at much else. But there's at least one worn beauty hiding behind the dust of recent development.

I've mentioned Robinson's Department Store before, but short of a few other small blogs like mine, few have really bothered to look up. Those who do see what it offers. They see blight. They see a Jetsonian nightmare or something from Bladerunner. It is dystopic. 

Like the PSFS Building, it was built earlier than most assume. In 1946, Robinson's was built during a uniquely transitioning era of American architecture. Cities were demolishing Victorian and Gothic buildings synonymous with the corporations that led to the Great Depression. Art Deco schools and post office were being built with federal funds being pumped back into the economy, but the style was synonymous with government bureaucracy. As America was struggling to rebuild its economy from new humble beginnings, companies didn't have the funds to hire the starchitects of the era, but the starchitects also no longer existed. 

Inga Saffron has a great historical perspective on the beleaguered building, and finally brought it to the attention of the general public.

Robinson's Market Street location was designed by Viennese architect Victor Gruen. Known prominently for designing some of the nation's first shopping malls, our Robinson's Department Store may have been one of the first buildings designed specifically to be identified with a brand. 

Prior to the 1940s, architecture was primarily dictated by what was aesthetically en vogue for the time. Art and architecture existed superfluously side by side. With the emergence of the suburban ideal, architecture evolved as a way to set its tenants apart from their competition. If you wanted to find a Howard Johnson's or a Stuckey's, all you needed to look for was the roof. Likewise, Robinson's curved wall clad in thousands of purple tiles and looming over Market Street was unmistakable. The building was synonymous with the brand it housed.

But will it survive the hype surrounding Market East's renaissance? Only if enough people are willing to look up and see more than what's there. Astounding architecture can be lost in the shuffle. Some people don't care, others want something new, still others are more conservative. And although Robinson's is nearly 70 years old, it's anything but traditional. 

Despite the overwhelming amount of undeveloped real estate on Market East, with surface lots at 12th and Market and at the Disney Hole, Robinson's demise might not seem imminent. But NREA chose to demolish the remnants of Snellenberg's department store in lieu of developing on cleared land for a reason. The 1000 block of Market Street could be next on the chopping block. 

Hidden Secrets on Market East

With the world's largest 80s-era McDonald's roof finally coming down on Market East, a little bit of history is seeing light for the first time in decades. 

Most residents probably don't even realize that the two story building on Market East between 11th and 12th wasn't built in the 1980s, but is actually a stump of a building built long, long ago. Once home to Snellenburg's Department Store, the top floors were chopped off a few decades ago and the remaining two floors wrapped in a "modern" skin.

Since then it's been an eyesore along Market East that can only be rivaled by 8th and Market's Disney Hole. 

What once was

With the building being demolished for NREA's mixed-use East Market project, the skin is being removed and architectural elements of the grand department store are slowly being exposed. If you look up along 12th Street you can see brick and concrete once hidden behind the facade. And if you look closely you can see at least one stone column and several carved friezes capping the building's bricked up windows. 

If you want to see it, look soon. Developers likely had no idea there'd be anything worth salvaging from this building so it probably won't last long.

Market East: Done With the Disney Hole

Ten years ago, Market East wasn't great. Strawbridge and Clothier, Gap, Guess, and a few mundane retailers managed to keep the Gallery afloat. The Disney Hole sat at 8th and Market reminding us of a more hopeful - albeit unrealistic - time. 

But things went from bad to worse. In 2005, the May Company consolidated with Federated Department Stores, resulting in two of its own stores competing for shoppers within a few blocks. May closed the historic Strawbridge and Clothier, sold its Lord & Taylor brand, and opened a Macy's at the Wanamaker Building.

The few reasons to visit the Gallery followed Strawbridge's. At best, it became an unofficial outlet mall, a bad one. What were once the worst of the Gallery's stores, low-end retailers expanded into vacant spaces while knock-offs and cell phone stores filled in the rest. 

For a few years it was unclear how the mall would ever survive. Worse, many wondered what would happen if it were forced to close. Would it be a vacant eyesore home to squatters atop a transportation hub? Would it become a playground for graffiti artists? Would it become a massive parking lot spitting distance from City Hall and some of the nation's greatest historic monuments? 

One thing's for sure, despite it's reputation, had the Gallery officially died Market East would have gone down with the ship.

Luckily, perhaps miraculously, the Gallery seems poised to rebound. Century 21, a company that has redefined the concept of the discount reseller, has sent thousands to Market East. New rules at the Pennsylvania Convention Center have attracted attention from the events industry, and it's filling nearby hotel rooms. Most exciting is the massive project under development on the Girard Trust Block.

In a few years, Philadelphia's once-hub of consumerism may look like the modern-day counterpart it should be. Dazzling lights now crown the Lit Brothers building echoing the neon and incandescent signage that once advertised shoe repairs and alterations. And more is coming to the Gallery and East Market.

These changes will likely increase the value of the remaining properties. While little has been said of the remaining blocks or the Barbarella-esque Robinson's Department Store, improvements underway will only challenge property owners to up their game.

Disney Hole: We're done with you!

There is, however, one unfortunate hole in the unheard of changes taking place on Market East: The Disney Hole. When themed restaurants were all the rage in the 1990s - think Hard Rock Cafe, Planet Hollywood, Rainforest Cafe - Disney decided to get in on the action. But Disney wanted more than a chain of restaurants, it wanted to bring its successful theme parks to America's inner cities. 

In all fairness, it wasn't a bad idea. Although indoor amusement parks are a largely untested concept, DisneyQuest would have brought more entertainment to our inner cities than Dave and Busters or pop-culture restaurant museums. And Market East is a good location for entertainment, especially twenty years later. 

Unfortunately the concept flopped, at least in terms of the broad scope of the overall plan. We never got a DisneyQuest at 8th and Market, just a vacant lot where Gimbel's once stood. And today, multiple variables make the land a hostile ass ache for potential developers. For one, it's owned and managed by some of the city's most notorious land hoarders, property managers that understand just how profitable the city allows surface parking lots to be. 

It's also a massive lot. Of late, the most realistic proposal was for the Market8 Casino. Although it was always unlikely it would have ever been built, an entertainment venue on par with the scale of a casino complex (or DisneyQuest) is likely the lot's best hope. Sadly, in Philadelphia it seems more profitable to demolish and then build than to build on cleared land, apparent by NREA's choice to clear the Girard Trust Block themselves to make way for East Market, rather than drop it on the Disney Hole. 

So what will happen to the Disney Hole? Will Market East become so valuable that its owners and managers will have no choice but to cooperate just long enough to cash a bloated check? Or will they make so much money parking Market East's upcoming flock of shoppers that they'll never let it go? 

Interestingly, in all the hype surrounding Market East's improvements, little has been said of the street's oozing cold sore. 

For a while it was rumored that the Sixers might be moving to New Jersey. Granted, Camden could use the boost, but I would hate to lose the only sport I can stomach to another state. 

But relocating the Sixers (and everything that comes with the Wells Fargo Center) might not be such a bad idea. And here's why: 8th and Market is the perfect location. As much as I like the fact that our professional athletics have fostered a unique "Stadium District," the Wells Fargo Center isn't just a seasonal arena. It's also a concert venue. 

When someone wants to see Madonna in New York, they head to Midtown. And that's how it is in most cities. In Philadelphia, we have to hop on the train and head towards the edge of Mordor. I'm not much of a concert goer, evident in the fact that the last time I saw an arena concert it was at the MCI Center in DC. And had it been in that (much smaller) city's end-of-the-line, I never would have gone. I love venues like the Trocadero and the Electric Factory, but were the Wells Fargo Center downtown and around the corner, I'd be much more likely to check out a concert. 

But 8th and Market isn't just downtown, it's perhaps downtown's most underrated parcels. It's not just on Market Street, it's atop a transportation hub, the largest in the city: PATCo, and SEPTA's regional rails and subways, and it's right off the Vine Street Expressway. You literally can't find a better transportation accessible location in the city without running Amtrak all the way to Jefferson Station.

So why hasn't this been formally, or even informally proposed? Well, like all things in Philadelphia, development and ideas move slowly. What's unique about the changes taking place on Market East are also unique to Philadelphians, City Hall, and national developers who occasionally check in on their local investments to make sure we're still begging for the status quo. 

Well, things are starting to change a little more quickly whether we want them to or not. And with national developers finally investing in the last frontier of Center City, we better get used to it. 

Surface parking lots are disappearing, and so with them are the land hoarders and slumlords that have plagued Center City for too long. If we can get rid of the Disney Hole, we can be sure a new era has arrived. 

And while locals may be able to turn a blind eye to a massive parking lot along our soon-to-be Corridor of Commercialism, national retailers and investors will not. 

So bring it on. Let's enhance the exciting changes along Market East with something even more exciting, and let's drop it right on top of the Disney Hole.

2014's Best Proposal

Welcome to the New Year, and a new Philadelphia. 2014 gave us marriage equality and decriminalized marijuana. And while our skyline was forever altered prior to the Great Recession, the city is poised for another architectural renaissance that won't just change the way we look at Philadelphia, but how we interact with it.

Sure, Comcast is building the tallest American building outside New York and Chicago. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and FMC are breaking convention by building tall north of Vine Street and west of the Schuylkill River. Whatever you think of Comcast Center, these other projects are true game changers. They will bridge gaps, extending what we think of Center City beyond its psychological barriers. 

But altering the way we see a city from the interstate is only part of what makes a city. Tall buildings can be purely aesthetic. Ask Los Angeles or Dallas. 

Philadelphia knows better.

Despite new heights being reached north, south, east, and west, the most influential project under development right now is taking place on Market East. NREA's East Market is clearing and rehabbing the Girard Trust Block for a massive mixed use complex bound by 11th and 12th. The project includes shopping, entertainment, restaurants, and a mid rise apartment tower, perhaps two.

In University City this might not seem so exciting. Hell, it wouldn't be unheard of in Conshohocken. But in Center City, developers tend to build up. East Market isn't necessarily tall, at least night in a city where we tend to look vertically. But Center City hasn't attempted a mixed use project on this scale since the Gallery at Market East. And unlike the Gallery, East Market isn't an attempt to offer urbanites suburban woes, it's offering city residents a slice of modern urbanism.

Its storefronts face the sidewalks, and it sacrifices land for even more pedestrianization by slicing the block in half. It's ambitious, but not blindly. It's finally giving Philadelphians what they want on Market East, what they've wanted for fifty years, and what it was a century ago: a shopping hub. 

It's called "Market Street" for a reason.

Sure, I may be gushingly deviating from truly Philadelphian pessimism, but it comes from a realistic place. East Market isn't another Gallery, it's the Gallery-done-right. The only reason it seems risky is because the Gallery is its only analogy. Architecturally, East Market is nothing special. Its modernity is carbon-copy, its tower looks like many built in the early 21st Century. The excitement of its renderings stems from plasma screens and flashy advertisements. But where East Market deviates from large projects past is its sustainability. 

It's engaging, it's smart, and it answers to what residents have been long asking for. It makes Market East feel less an island of poor urban planning and more like an integrated part of Philadelphia. Smart architecture doesn't just exist like Comcast Center or Centre Square, it engages the community and encourages future growth like Dilworth Park or the Piazza. It recognizes the fact that cities aren't just isolated buckets, but pieces of a larger whole. East Market isn't just good urbanism, it begs developers for more.

Potential Renovations Coming in the New Year

With the successful arrival of Century 21, you might have expected The Gallery at Market East to roll out the holiday cheer. But with the exception of a thermostat set to "summer in Miami," it might as well be an April Wednesday in the halls of the beleaguered mall. 

No decorations, no Santa, the same classical Muzak. It's just not Christmas on Market East.

Well the Daily News has the reason. PREIT has asked kiosk vendors to vacate the Gallery 1 by the end of the year. The potential renovation is likely good news for shoppers. But some retailers are unhappy. It's not guaranteed that all vendors will be asked to return, and some are speculating that PREIT may not want some back.

For the Love of Kmart

My car died the other day and the Make a Wish foundation is coming to pick it up tomorrow. I won't be getting another car for a few months, and while I'll miss spontaneous trips to Pennsyltucky, what I miss more is Kmart.

Yes, Kmart. I hate to admit it, but I truly miss that dreary discount department store. 

With the mercury rising I need a new air conditioner. A few years ago I would have lugged my granny cart to Market East to buy a cheap window unit, but today I have little options. I'll probably borrow a friend's car or rent one, but Zip Cars and suburban friends aren't clean answers to pedestrianization strategies.

The impending improvements to Market East are wonderful and welcome, but high end retail and luxury apartments don't provide the same necessities and staples offered by the Kmarts and Walmarts of the world. 

Perhaps a Target will fill the void. People seem to love the idea, and there's ample real estate on Broad. I've always imagined that the old School Board Building on North Broad Street would make a fantastic shopping center, perhaps anchored with a Target and a Philadelphia Sports Club. Until that happens I'll have to buy overpriced paper towels and kitty litter at CVS.

Philadelphia's Game Changers

BizJournals reported on Center City's retail trend, and how it's ready to explode. The Neiman Marcus Last Call on the second floor of the Shops at Liberty Place turned out to be an unsubstantiated rumor. But Nordstrom Rack is scheduled to occupy the former Daffy's space at 17th and Chestnut while Forever 21, American Eagle, and Uniqlo will round out the blocks. Nearby, the Cheesecake Factory is under construction. And across Center City, 801 Market Street is being prepped for a Century 21 while Macy's could be expanding its furniture section.

The storefronts along Market East's Girard Square are advertising Going Out of Business sales, making way for NREA's East Market, a residential, retail, and entertainment complex that will span the block and link the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Midtown Village.

Kmart has closed, its escalators have been removed and stacked for maintenance. Everything from a Target to a high end grocer has been rumored for the space, but the mid-mall flagship may be divided to expand low volume retail. 

Game Changer

Brickstone Realty is currently demolishing several buildings on the 1100 block of Chestnut and is in an agreement to purchase more. This development will face the south side of NREA's massive project. Brickstone is also developing the Stantec Tower behind Lit Brothers which will introduce hundreds of residents into a colonnade of retail, entertainment, and office space that already extends all the way to 12th and Market.

Paul Levy was quoted in BizJournals stating, "we've crossed over the tipping point." That's great for retailers, particularly high end retailers that have been wondering when Philadelphia will finally arrive. It will provide tourists with an avenue to burn cash on their way to the Liberty Bell and conventioneers will have entertainment and restaurants at the door of their hotels.

But there was a cold functionality to what Market East was, and it's hard to tell if it is missed, if it will be replaced, and where. Namely, Kmart. Kmart left because of its own corporate struggles, but it served its purpose on Market East and to the thousands of Center City residents seeking the goods that can't be found without a car.

When the mercury inches towards 80 degrees, residents are going to start looking for new air conditioners and garden hoses. Items that can be carried home in a grocery cart, but not lugged back on a bus from South Philadelphia. The problem with the "tipping point" is that it tips in favor of a specific demographic. Will discount retailers revisit Center City, even Target? Or have these proposals solidified Center City's economy as a Manhattanized microcosm? 

Zip Cars and bike lanes are not answers to pedestrianization, and islands of economic homogeneity don't make good cities. Center City isn't cheap, but it's affordable. These changes will come fast, most notably on Market East, and it will attract residents that creep into affordable Washington Square West, South Street, and Chinatown neighborhood. Neighborhoods that have delicately maintained Center City's inadvertent uniqueness. 

These are game changers, and they're coming fast.

CBRE's Market East

CBRE

Commercial real estate advisors at CBRE + Fameco created a forecast report for the Great Philadelphia Area. It's full of really exciting ideas (PDF), but the true gem is a reborn Gallery at Market East which includes a theater, several high-rise caps, and even shows a Filbert Street brimming with retail activity and nightlife.

Of course this report is an overview, not in anyway a series of proposals. But it shows what needs to be done to redefine Market East.

Bye Bye, Girard Block

Have you walked around the Girard Block and wondered why so many of its Market Street storefronts are having closing sales? Well, that's because this summer, the eyesore with its giant 70s era McDonald's roof will be coming down.

National Real Estate Advisors will begin demolishing the remains of the old Snellenberg Departmemt Store to make way for their $500M redevelopment of the entire block. The initial phase will include a 17 story tower, retail space, and a renovated Family Court building on 11th Street.

Although the market will control future phases - which was the plan when the Gallery was built to support two office towers - this project will be the shot Market East needs. Apartments along 11th Street will help spur adjacent development between Market and Chestnut. Likewise, it s retail presence will provide the Gallery with the competition it needs to step up its game.

How to rebrand the Gallery mall? Stop thinking of it as a mall.

For decades, The Gallery at Market East has been a piss poor example of urban shopping malls, a genre known for piss poor shopping. The blogosphere has been buzzing with rumors for Kmart's vacant space with everything from a Bloomies to scaled back retail space allowing for more tenants.

But can the Gallery ever be more than it is as a mall? It will still be an enclosed, urban shopping experience. An experience that never thrived in any city since it began in the 1960s, and is even less likely to thrive now that residents have revisited their love affair with the urban experience.

There are of course a couple ways that the Gallery could improve its reputation as a shopping destination. Altering its Market Street façade, namely at the street, opening its retail space to the sidewalk would be vastly more inviting to pedestrians than a concrete wall that doesn't even utilize its existing display windows. But if PREIT ever hopes to attract high end shoppers, changing from its current state to a King of Prussia rival won't organically evolve. The mall would have to be shut down, remodel, and reopen with enough fanfare to squash its reputation amongst locals.

But even that is a gamble. Center City already has its answer to King of Prussia and it's growing. Walnut Street's high rent is pushing retailers to Chestnut Street. If anyone thinks the Gallery should try to compete with suburban shopping, they're ignoring the fact that suburban shopping never worked a few blocks from City Hall.

Of course that leaves us with a white elephant on Market East, one PREIT seems to be maintaining as-is until adjacent development changes the district's market and puts more people on the street. But PREIT is thinking inside the box, literally, assuming that a building built as a mall must be a mall.

The Gallery sits on very unique corridor within Center City and those vested in its success have completely ignored what that corridor uniquely offers: thousands upon thousands of tourists. On one side the Gallery is a dense cluster of hotels and at the other, the city's historic district.

Thousands of tourists and conventioneers traverse Thunderdome every month, ignoring the Gallery and huffing it to 6th Street. In turn, PREIT ignores them, dreaming of a Target replacing Kmart or a few Forever 21 carbon copies turning out the same revenue as those already at the Gallery.

Tourists are looking for their traps and PREIT isn't listening. I heard my uncle complain about Philadelphia after attending conventions here. Gushing about Baltimore of all places, I had to explain to him that he needed to venture a few more blocks to experience Philadelphia. But the truth is, he wasn't looking for a local Philadelphian experience, he was looking for those trappings he found near Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Convention Center: ESPN Zone, Dave and Busters, maybe a movie theater.

The Gallery is the perfect locale and a blank slate for these venues. It's too perfect to ignore, yet PREIT ignores it. If those in charge had the foresight to think of the Gallery as more than a mall, they could have worked with Live Nation to salvage the Boyd Theater's grand auditorium and rebuild it inside the vacant Kmart. The two story Old Navy is the perfect venue for a two story microbrew or concert hall. Anchor the east side of the mall with a flagship Urban Outfitters, our city's homegrown purveyor of hip clothing. Sure there's one on Walnut Street, but if two H&Ms can succeed a few blocks from each other, an Urban Outfitters on Market East, catering to an entirely different, tourism driven market would thrive.

If PREIT is waiting for nearby development to  spawn interest in the neighborhood, it's ironic, because The Gallery at Market East is the perfect space to kick off interest in the neighborhood. But it won't succeed as an indoor, suburban style shopping mall for the same reason it's never succeeded: that's not what those passing by want. Right now, PREIT is the only legitimate game in the vicinity, and if NREA moves ahead with its East Market between 11th and 12th, the Gallery is going to find itself not only facing competition amongst shoppers, but also tenants.

Start marketing the location and catering to tourists on the street. Stop thinking about locals who already have a Diesel and a Betty Page on Walnut Street, don't need a Macy's equivalent, and are just as unwilling to lug home a desk from Target as they were from Kmart.

Suburban shopping will never succeed in an urban environment because it's urban. The only want to adaptively reuse a behemoth like the Gallery, particularly one tucked conveniently between the tourists and their destinations, is to stuff it full of Lego stores, Ripley's Believe it Or Not and Guinness Museums, and maybe even an FAO Schwartz.

NREA's Girard Square

Since Mayor Richardson Dilworth's massive overhaul of Society Hill, Philadelphia's Center City has seen a number of hackneyed projects by urban planners, but private development has been left to grow organically. In recent years, developers have taken to emerging neighborhoods to implement master plans, some more successful than others, but from Passyunk Square to the Piazza, they've left a lasting impact.

It seems counterintuitive that developers take to the netherregions of the city to invest, but in cities like Philadelphia, those neighborhoods are home to vast tracts of affordable property and less community involvement. Most visibly, these neighborhoods offer architects the opportunity to practice and fine tune their craft, for better (the Piazza) or worse (the Piazza).

The time may have come for this creative planning to find its way to Center City. Unlike New York or Chicago, Philadelphia's proper core hasn't been exhausted. Contrary to logic, the untapped localles surrounding City Hall have always been risky. It's taken developers a long time to come to trust Center City's real estate market well enough to know we don't have a U-Haul parked in front of our apartments, ready to bolt at any moment.

In Philadelphia, we do things backwards. We're cautious. Just as developers have chosen Graduate Hospital and University City to invest, Center City developers have tiptoed around our major thoroughfares. With the exception of a few large residential projects on West Market Street, likely driven by their proximity to highways and corporate Philadelphia, it's hard to look at the should-be prime real estate of Market East and not ask, "how bad are they going to let this get?"

PREIT has tentative plans to subdivide its Kmart location and offer smaller retail. It's true, the pass-through anchor store is unusal, and in a successsful mall, PREIT's plan would make sense both financially and architecturally. But with a third floor all but vacant, what retailers will fill these smaller spaces?

Despite the Gallery's reputation, change may be coming to Market East. One of Center City's most successful changes is just around the corner. Midtown Village was a cohesive plan that transformed a forelorn stretch of Center City's Gayborhood overnight, and it's quickly spilling over to Chestnut Street. Some have even compared it to Passyunk Square and the Piazza.

NREA has joined a local developer, and owns the primary stake in Girard Square, the block bound by 11th and 12th, and Market and Chestnut, the block that makes the Gallery at Market East look like a beacon of retail success. NREA recently released a pair of renderings of a redesigned Girard Square that doesn't just redefine Market East, it redefines this part of Center City.

Bringing Chestnut Street's failed pedestrian promenade to the middle of a block where it belongs, NREA combines the success of the Piazza and numerous University City developments, and drops it two blocks from City Hall.

The key to Girard Squares success lies in NREA's proposed residential towers. Despite its proximity to Midtown Village, Center City has proven itself fickle. Without in-house residents for the development's retail and entertainment venues, a Girard Square pedestrian promenade could be a bigger disaster than the Gallery.

Still, the rendering provides some excitingly hopeful eyecandy. Midtown Village is growing with urban newbies, the kind of 30 somethings that grace the cast of Happy Endings and The New Girl, the kind that spend happy hour at Frankford Hall and Bru. They flocked to the city for the Piazza and Passyunk Square. It only makes sense to offer them a place to imbibe amongst Center City's skyscrapers, with a convenient elevator ride home.

Philadelphhia Eataly

For a century Market East thrived, serving Philadelphia's diverse community. It was America's Main Street, its success waxing and waning. But then Strawbridge and Clothier was purchased by Macy's, closed, and Market East was declared dead.

Macy's retained the Wanamaker Building and not wanting to compete with itself, relinquished the historic Strawbridge and Clothier building. The Wanamaker Building is certainly the more significant of the two, but the Strawbridge building on Market East was Strawbridge's historic flagship location.

Rumors of casinos and condos circulated for years until it was finally turned into a dull office building. For now the ground floor is occupied by the Franklin Flea Market, a temporary winter market that will undoubtedly be one of those places only truly appreciated by history, like Center City in the 90s or McGlinchey's.

The latest rumor is that Food Network's celebrity chef, Mario Batali and his colleagues are eyeing the building's retail space for Eataly, a Gourmet Italian grocery store started in New York.

With many Center City residents asking for a grocery store, Eataly may be one solution. There's no doubt that market research pointed Eataly to DiBruno's apparent interest in a Ben Franklin House location as well as the Reading Terminal Market, making Strawbridge's a perfect location for competition.

Grocery shopping is different for urbanites. Although Whole Foods and Trader Joe's (for some reason) serve their purpose, many city folks don't simply go to a big box grocery stores on Sunday afternoon. They grab things on their way home to work, selecting various items from one vendor or one shop, moving to the next.

Eataly provides this opportunity, particularly near DiBruno Brothers and Reading Terminal Market on the path from Center City to Washington Square, Society Hill, and the emerging Callowhill.

Of course the biggest question for Eataly if it decides to open here is, will they sell wine?

Robinson's on Market East

Robinson's Luggage is closing its doors. I don't know why that's news. Who buys luggage at a specialty store? I still throw my chonies in a Jansport backpack.

This isn't about overpriced handbags. It's about Market East's Robinson's Department Store and the need to declare it historic and begin the campaign to restore its façade is now. Yes, this very minute.

Historic communities have a knack for calling history buffs to action at the eleventh hour. The historic Boyd Theater is likely doomed, as is Kenny Gamble's Philadelphia International Music. As much as I'd love to see both saved, historic preservation is a job for thousands of people, and part of that job is admitting you've lost.

But more importantly, it's anticipating future loss.

With NREA's planned expansion of the Girard Trust Block, the Gallery's proposed renovations, and rumors flying around Bloomingdale's interest as an anchor, it's quite possible that we will be looking at a whole new Market East by 2015.

Market East doesn't host a bevy of historic properties. With ample real estate at the Disney Hole and lackluster, craptastic architecture begging to be redeveloped, the gems of Market East are likely secure. No one will ever tear down Reading Terminal or the PSFS Building and the post office is probably safe.

But there's one icon on Market East that is largely ignored by historians and completely ignored by shoppers that choose to endure Kmart.

Victor Gruen's Robinson's Department Store still stands at 1020 Market Street. Its neon lights broken and large signature long gone, few people know it's there and why it's significant.

At first glance, Robinson's is a Brutalist nightmare, a product of midcentury design many would rather forget. Stained and cracked, the five story Robinson's looks like a murky, concrete wave prepared to envelope what's left of Market East.

But it's more than that. The façade is actually comprised of thousands of small, indigo tiles that once sparkled as a beacon to Market East's thriving enterprises.

Of all of California's Grayson - Robinson's eleven unique department stores, Philadelphia's is one of the few that remain. Although Robinson's tends to get lumped into worn midcentury design, it's anything but.

Its graceful curves harken earlier experiments with Art Nuveau and Art Deco while the sterility and simplicity of its face carried architects to their modern interpretation of International Style: Brutalism. It was built at an odd period of European influence during America's rebirth that followed the Great Depression. Many peg it for basic 1960s retail design, but it was built in 1946 and it's so much more interesting.

While Robinson's peddled affordable womensware much like Burlington Coat Factory and Marshall's, it predated low budget architecture by a solid two decades while catering to the diversity that was Market East.

In its heyday, Robinson's dazzling façade was illuminated by five large lights, its signature, and two smaller neon demarcations. Although its beauty is hard to see today, the building is largely underutilized. Some Scrubbing Bubble and a Sham Wow could easily bring out its luster.

But now is the time. Market East has positioned itself as a clean slate and Robinson's simply blends into the background of disposable real estate. Philadelphian's preservationists need to recognize Robinson's worth, as it was, is, and can be.

Bringing Change to Market East

Karen Heller's recent assessment of the state of Market East and it's future is pleasantly hopeful, and its numbers informative. Market East and East Chestnut are, of course, Center City's final frontier.

We've all been there and scratched our heads wondering why. The reasons are complex but common. Almost every post industrial American city has or has had a deteriorating stretch of forgotten retail space. Given the fate of cities like Cleveland or Detroit, Philadelphia's Market East has fared better than its given reputation.

It's not pleasant but it's relevant.

SSH Investments - Girard Trust property

The end result of midcentury suburbanization and poorly planned Cold War era design, the Gallery at Market East attempted to compete with King of Prussia and Cherry Hill Mall by providing urbanites with the indoor retail amenities that city planners assumed we wanted.

Market East should have become Philadelphia's answer to Chicago's miracle mile, but the city's overzealous planning stalled when it created a canyon of undesirable street life. Market East became trapped between Center City's central business district on West Market and Society Hill's historic district, leaving it with no reason for anyone to be there.
 
It was a good idea but it wasn't organic. When city planners over-plan they tend to take a suburban approach. Every place takes on a role. That's not what urbanites want or what tourists want when they visit a big city. That's why West Market Street, despite its dazzling skyscrapers, is a ghost town at night.

Market East's attempt to become the region's premier retail corridor was fleeting and has long been forgotten. Salvaging what's become of it has been the primary goal for decades. We've been teased with plans to revitalize the Gallery, potential casinos, and various skyscrapers. Morale surrounding development opportunities has become so grim the simple idea of a few display windows at Kmart seems like a herculean feat.

While the Gallery at Market East is the neighborhood's largest presence, it's also a major obstacle. Still, management at the Gallery seems to be waiting for neighbors to make the first move, or the city to pull the plug.

It's like the annoying neighbor who refuses to mow the grass complaining about the neighborhood. It doesn't cost a dime to ask Old Navy to properly use its display windows. Instead of telling homeless people to stop sleeping on its desolate Filbert Street façade, the Gallery put up an iron fence. That's inviting.

SSH Investments seems poised to give Market Street the injection it needs, and the competition the Gallery needs to get its act together.

Plans for a revitalized, and tall, Girard Trust property are nothing new. Prior design studies for improvements have includesdthis spectacular proposal by EEK Architects.

SSH signed a 150 year lease with the Girard Trust, the four acre parcel between 11th and 12th, promising to blow us away in the next few years. Tentative plans include a retail complex capped with apartment towers.

Lately development and discussion has been primarily focused on the Pennsylvania Convention Center, pandering Market East proposals at conventioneers who often don't care what city they're in.

The center's numbers dwindling, massive debt, it's become the money pit everyone but those in City Hall seemed to know it would become. That's enough to prove to anyone that conventioneers are not the demographic Market East needs to accommodate.

Center City is certainly more than the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Those indebted to the site seem solely focused on the center while simultaneously discussing what a disaster it has become. This face saving dialogue is futile.

If SSH can truly pull off a successful revitalization at the Girard Trust property, one that includes residents, it can change the game at Market East and give the neighborhood more to work with than convention numbers that continue to decline.

Plans for a revitalized Girard Trust property have circulated in the past, and phased projects that promise exciting towers routinely leave us with a stump. The Gallery might be as successful as Liberty Place's shopping center if it was capped with the two office towers it was built to support.

If SSH can't bring it's game, the Girard Trust property could become the Gallery 2.0. But if it can bring hundreds of residents to 11th and Market, it brings hundreds of pedestrians to the street and, more importantly, people looking for a place to shop.

Chesnut Street Renaissance

With Bru's indoor beer garden, Commonwealth 1201 apartments, West Elm, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Philly Cupcake, MilkBoy, Spice Cafe, Fago de Chao, Lucky Strike, and the White Building, East Chestnut's reputation as a stretch of warn retail might be a blind eyed judgment held only by Philadelphia's who remember what it was twenty years ago.

It certainly hasn't peaked and has a long way to go, but its reputation may already be one that new Philadelphians don't understand. It has its share of lack luster shops and vacant storefronts, but it's not as tragic as Market East. In fact, with the exception of the 1000 and 1100 blocks, business does quite well on Chestnut Street day and night, with many of the new businesses overshadowing the corridor's lingering blight.

It's about to get even better. In June, Brickstone Realty Corp. bought the Oppenheim, Collins & Co. Department Store, House of Beauty, and the dollar store on the 1100 block, all vacant.

Brickstone intends to turn the department store into a mixed use apartment and retail complex, demolishing the other two for new, additional retail.

While Chestnut's revival has been underway for the last decade, active development provides space for the unique boutiques being out priced by Walnut Street's increased rents, and even those businesses seeking refuge from West Chestnut's pricier real estate.

Once upon a time on Chestnut Street

For too long, much of Chestnut Street sat stagnant, with absentee slumlords and land hoarders awaiting a turn in the market, one that plummeted when city planners closed Chestnut Street to traffic and attempted to transform it into a pedestrian promenade.

Many owners simply sat on their vacant buildings by locking the doors and paying outdated property tax, not even bothering to rent to retailers and tenants simply because too few were even interested. The change is already here and property owners are waking up. Perhaps the best asset to Chestnut Street's renaissance is its affordability for start ups and independent boutiques, the kinds that transformed Walnut Street into what it is today.

A renewed interest in the area provides a vast amount of space that proves Center City's retail scene is nowhere near capacity. Its proximity could even lead curious retailers to Market East's even larger canvas of affordable real estate which, in the shadow of City Hall, remains inexplicably dormant.

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.