Nagging Your Way to Relevance

College is expensive, especially design school. And architecture school? Forget it. But my favorite little clique of chronic complainers have found a loop hole in all of that. Apparently in Philadelphia, if you want to be a professional in anything - let's say urban planning - all you need is a website, 30 fans on Facebook, and the incessant ability to nag.

Well, Mary Tracy and her cohorts at SCRUB have outnagged themselves this time. In addition to being the thorn in Market East's multiple attempts to reinvent itself, SCRUB has self-assigned itself an expert in urban planning and outdoor marketing, publishing the "Accessory Signage Handbook".

These anti-blight activists, who have done little if anything to address this city's definable examples of "urban blight", organized a workshop in Lower Moyamensing on responsible and legal signage. That's funny, because the only signage SCRUB has been attacking is the legal signage along Interstate 95, small posters on news stands, and the attempted use of The Gallery's blank walls.

Meanwhile vacant buildings in our poorest neighborhoods continue to be shrouded in illegally applied signage that isn't just ugly, but also dangerous, and Market East remains a desolate strip of mid-century architecture, concrete, and trash filled surface lots.

I can't wait to hear what these self-professed professional urban planners have to say about City Target's possible arrival at The Disney Hole.

Lighting Up Market East

Has Mary Tracy, Executive Director of SCRUB (The Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight), ever been to Market East? I often wonder. This is the woman who said of the first serious discussions to improve the decaying corridor in over two decades, "they're talking about taking what could be a really majestic area and totally stigmatizing it with honky-tonk junk."

You would think the last time she walked Market Street from 8th to 12th was 1776 because even since the early 19th Century, Market East has been stigmatized with "honky-tonk junk." It is what it is, and it's how it's succeeded in the past. It's also the street that inspired a nation of Market Streets and Main Streets as the main commercial corridor. What she calls "honky-tonk junk" is what pays a city's bills.

But where is this majestic potential that Mary Tracy envisions? She and SCRUB have only ever played a contrarian thorn, but never offered an alternative solution. Like a lot of Philadelphia's dreamers, I can see a lot in a little. If we couldn't, we'd live in San Francisco or Boston or some boutique city that has already figured out what SCRUB refuses to accept: progress costs money.

But where is the potential in Market East? Is it in the two story Girard Block with its giant McDonald's inspired roof? Is it in the dead Colorforms adorning the vacant Value Plus? No, the potential, while obvious to many may be ironic to SCRUB, is in the blank canvas that is The Gallery.


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Market East's "majestic" 10th and Market, one of a few corners SCRUB routinely ignores in their plight to preserve this stagnant corridor. Why? Because any attention paid to this intersection would prompt the rational opinion: Sure, light it up!
Take a tour.

Illuminated by Hard Rock Cafe's neon guitar and Sole Food's scrolling news feed, Market East succeeds at 12th. While those who think Philadelphia can't sell anything that doesn't have a Liberty Bell on it refuse to accept that Market East's brightly lit corridor of consumerism will carry our tourists from their hotel to Independence Mall, those with a basic understanding of Economics 101 see the ugly mid-century architectural abortions along Market Street being used to capture billions of tourist dollars along their trek to our historic hot spots.

SCRUB claims to fight for a cleaner Philadelphia, billing themselves as an anti-blight organization, but I can't think of a single instance in which it has done anything to fight urban blight, only stifle capitalism. Have they ever cleared a block of vacant row homes or launched a campaign to clear trash from vacant lots?

Advertisements aren't blight. They pay for things like sidewalks and trees. Ultimately they can even pay to develop light rails and renovate historic city-owned buildings. But the primary focus of this group is to attack corporate investment in our city. Then they assume that taxes will pay for our dreamers' visions, while our taxes barely keep our libraries and pools open.

Unless SCRUB has found the secret wardrobe to a world of unlimited public funds, I think we're better off following the model that saved so many other cities' decaying retail corridor. If Mary Tracy knows something that other cities don't, show me the flute playing goat-man from Narnia and I'll shut up.

She doesn't. And if SCRUB's interest lied in removing blight, they would be compromising with City Council on a way to attract business - revenue - to Market East.

Instead, they bullheadedly refuse to accept the basic rules of capitalism under the misguided delusion that this city has one and only one thing to offer: "People are coming to our city to visit the historic areas; that's our brand." -Mary Tracy, Executive Director of S.C.R.U.B.

I'm sorry, SCRUB, but I think we're a little better than that. Maybe you can't envision a better Market East, but I sure can. And it's time to turn the lights back on.

Scrubbing Market East

S.C.R.U.B. managed to weasel their way into a Daily News article on the recent conversation in City Council to finally do something with our city's ailing Main Street, Market East. And big surprise, they don't like it.

What could have come across as a healthy, compromising debate to sturdy the organization's relevance, only solidifies their reputation as a handful of contrarian hipsters with no understanding of economics, urban planning, and what most of our residents and businesses actually want or need.

Market East has always served as Center City's bustling commercial corridor, it's history illuminated in consumerism. With the exception of Reading Terminal, the PSFS Building, and the United States Post Office, Market East's historic infrastructure was entirely eradicated by mid-century development between 8th and 13th Streets.

If the "Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight" were truly dedicated to reducing urban blight, one of the first projects they should be cheerleading would be improvements to the street scape in Center City's commercial core.

Instead, Mary Tracy, President of S.C.R.U.B., called improvements to Market East "honky-tonk junk" and pegged Philadelphia a one trick pony by calling history our brand. I'm sorry, but like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, I would hope that one of our nation's biggest cities is more dynamic than that.

Rendering showing improvements to the Girard Trust Block between 11th and 12th. Originally the site of Snellenburg's Department store, the current building was created by chopping off all but two floors of the defunct department store and was intended to serve as a placeholder for future development.

While Tracy is correct in asserting that "People are coming to our city to visit the historic areas," she is ignoring the fact that they are also coming to shop, work, go to conventions, and to enjoy our restaurants and nightlife.

Besides, if history really were our "brand," what history is being preserved by stagnating Market East development between 8th and 13th?