Sigma Sound Studios

The Sound of Philadelphia is coming down to make way for Carl Dranoff's towering SLS International Hotel and Residences on South Broad Street. Philadelphia International Records was definitely a Philadelphia institutions, and an American one. But uptown in a forgotten pocket of Center City, perhaps the last pocket to be terraformed by new condos and hotels, Sigma Sound Studios is also no-more. 

BizJournals has the skinny.

The small building that gave us Macho Man and Disco Inferno, the latter a song that never seems to end, has been sold and will be converted into apartments. It isn't clear yet whether the building will simply be renovated, grow, or like the Sound of Philadelphia, demolished for something larger. Sigma Sound Studios isn't a huge building, and in an emerging neighborhood literally steps from City Hall, its redevelopment would likely profit from additional space.

This neighborhood - the place I've called home for almost eight years - is a unique one. It's long-gone warehouses once housed films from studios like Warner Brothers and MGM throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s. But throughout much of the 20th Century, it was also a notorious red light district. Rumor has it, in the early 20th Century, sailors docked on Delaware Avenue were forbidden from walking the streets of what was often called the Furnished Room District, so named for its abundance of flop houses, brothels, and drug dens. 

As late as the early 2000s, XXX book stores occupied Arch Street and loosely named "massage parlors" still play a part in what's left of a neighborhood clinging to its seedy past. Likely because of its history, the district bound by Broad, 11th, Market, and Vine was targeted for reconstruction in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Unfortunately its history - the good, the weird, and the untoward - has been scraped from the historical narrative of Philadelphia with very little record. 

While I'll miss my cheap rent and a garden a stone's throw from City Hall, it will be exciting to see how the neighborhood evolves and how its unique inhabitants choose to remember it. Wedged between the Convention Center and the growing Loft District, change was inevitable. Hopefully it won't soullessly embrace the convention center but also retain a little bit of its heart, however jaded. Things in Philadelphia tend to do just that.

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.

Center City's Final Frontier

Despite its approval by the Historical Commission, Baywood Hotels' proposed addition to the historic NFL Films headquarters has drawn the attention of preservationists to a forgotten pocket of Center City, perhaps the district's Final Frontier.

Inga Saffron's recent Inquirer article regarding the project paints a colorful depiction of this neighborhood - my neighborhood - and focuses on the liveliness of an area few know without dwelling on our overabundance of unwanted surface parking lots.

Unfortunately the piece sinks into the bystander effect of architectural journalism, praising the area for its quaintness and charm without really understanding anything about those of us who call it home.

While it's true that little has changed in this neighborhood's built environment since the early 20th Century, it's the unbuilt environment that has scarred it irreparably. While two or three streets managed to survive midcentury demolition, it's hard to say if the district's potential survived as well. Trinity courtyards and narrow alleys that once looked like those in Washington Square and Society Hill now stare blankly at surface lots or towering windowless walls. 

In a city addicted to its history, this may be one case where reality is all that remains.

But having lived in the neighborhood bound by Chinatown, Broad Street, the Vine Street Expressway, and the Convention Center for more than five years I've come to understand that reality is what my neighbors want. We will never be the extension of Old City we could have been before the I-676 and the Convention Center eradicated our lofty potential. We're ruins of what could have been stuck between being a towering extension of Philadelphia's true downtown and a fight to preserve a sinking vessel preservationists don't understand. 

Just two blocks from City Hall, we're neither quaint nor relevant. The Chinatown Drift of the Expressway keeps us up at night because there is no architecture to buffer the noise. Surface lots create endless garbage that finds its way into our community gardens. A lack of late night business and our minimal population means absent security and an abundance of prostitution and open air drug use. 

It's easy to look at quaint alleys like Winter Court and see potential in the provincial charm. But what I see are used heroin needles in my flowerbeds. 

Baywood Hotels' proposed tower near 13th and Vine has been contested by local historians, most notably the Friends of the Boyd because of the building's historic status as the first home of NFL Films. While many, including Saffron, have accused it of being a "not-so-subtle" interpretation of the PSFS Building, the most recently released rendering looks more like 1706 Rittenhouse plated in materials that echo the original Streamlined Moderne office building.

Deja Vu

Truth be told, neighbors are also concerned about the project. Another hotel means more parking. In any other neighborhood I'd say the claim is absurd, but in this neighborhood we understand just how expendable our buildings are, and just how much the asphalt prairie can expand. 

The fact that Baywood Hotels is interested in preserving the facade of the existing office building is astounding in a neighborhood where row homes disappear overnight without so much as a whisper. While the hotel may bring more surface lots in the near future, it will also increase the value of those lots and attract the attention of future developers. 

Improved work rules at the Pennsylvania Convention Center are already evident in the droves of conventioneers mingling around 12th and Arch and future development is exactly what we asked for when the center first expanded. This neighborhood was always expected to be its collateral damage. 

Still, Philadelphia has managed to do a great job of juxtaposing sky scraping towers with Colonial charm. There's plenty of room to grow, to fill in the gaps, for towers to sidle up to courtyards. Baywood Hotel, dull as it may be, is a catalyst this neighborhood needs to truly be the part of Center City that it is.

Big Brothers Big Sisters: A Win for Preservationists?

The historic Big Brothers Big Sisters Building near 13th and Race may get an addition. In a sign that changes at the Pennsylvania Convention Center are resonating within the exhibition industry, we might start seeing all those hotels the center's expansion once promised.

The building that was home to a Warner Brothers film distribution center is more commonly known for its most recent tenant, the national headquarters for Big Brothers Big Sisters, was historically designated as the first home of NFL Films, a motion picture association founded in 1962 affiliated with the National Football League.

The Philadelphia Historical Commission approved the addition of a modest hotel tower much to the dismay of Friends of the Boyd, who've aired frustration with the commission comparing it to the loss of the Boyd's most lavish asset, its auditorium.

But unlike the Boyd, Center City's last historic movie theater, the most significant architectural elements of 238 North 13th Street are its Art Deco facade and lobby. While the addition of a high-rise will require the demolition of much of the building's interior, the facade will be saved and perhaps even its lobby.

Although dismayed by the decision, preservationists have won a compromise, a decision could have easily led to the demolition of a building perceived to be insignificant, even ugly, to many. 

Images of the proposed tower are hard to find, but rumors imply that it may echo the PSFS Building, an odd choice given the clash Art Deco and International Style may pose. A simple glass tower would allow the two floors of history to shine on their own merit without gunking up the building's gears with something so retro.

"Over-Success" or Something Better?

Can a city suffer from "over-success?" Ask a capitalist and you'll get a staunch "NO." Ask a native New Yorker or Washingtonian who watched their city transform over night and you might get a more insightful answer.

Inga Saffron posed the interesting question on Changing Skyline. Philadelphia natives would likely laugh, as would anyone just a few years ago. But things are changing fast and that change is about to accelerate. 

Relaxed rules at the Pennsylvania Convention Center brought 2500 fraternity brothers - and nine million dollars - to 12th and Arch this week. National retailers once leery of competing with local boutiques in a city rigidly attached to homegrown businesses are quickly filling up Walnut Street.

While local retailers have largely managed to relocate to Chestnut Street, and Market East and East Chestnut remain affordable sources for future growth, the dull ills that come with being a bull's eye for big business are showing themselves in the places Saffron mentions: banks.

Long gone are the days when banks were independent feats of architectural marvel. Today the panache of grand columns and chandeliers means nothing to the institutions. Like a roadside Hampton Inn or Taco Bell, banks are creatures of branded design. And where retail thrives, banks are in the business of making themselves available and visible. 

Fortunately for Philadelphia the footprint of your average Wells Fargo can be diluted by its surroundings. What's worse, and what Saffron forgot to mention, are the never-ending chains of drug stores. Can we even call them that anymore? They're essentially high priced grocery stores that happen to have pharmacies somewhere beyond the stacks of fatty junk food.

And they take up a lot of space.

About a year ago Walgreens occupied the vacant Borders at Broad and Chestnut opening up one of the grandest pharmacies anyone's ever seen. Not only is it three floors, it's three floors of some of the most bad ass architecture in Philadelphia on a prime corner. It's hard to argue. It's better used than vacant. But with hindsight being what it is, the recent retail boom asks if this could have been a better location for the Cheesecake Factory coming to 15th and Walnut. 

Luckily the former Daffy's at 17th and Chestnut will find new life as it was meant, soon to become a Nordstrom Rack. However, while Chestnut was a brief reprieve for the independent boutiques priced off Walnut Street, the new American Eagle Outfitters and upcoming Nordstrom Rack may be a signal that Chestnut is about to change. The proposed W Hotel at 15th and Chestnut will likely up the ante.

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For the time being, independent retailers have plenty of room to play. East Chestnut is about to see some new residents and Midtown Village has proved itself a successful experiment in cultivating local entertainment and shopping. The businesses that once made Walnut what it is are in a position to do the same east of Broad. As Walnut swaps local flair for Center City's answer to King of Prussia, the shopping streets east of Broad are ready to trade City Blue and Easy Pickins for that local flair.

It's hard to determine how the city's retail environment will evolve. Market East improvements will bring their own chains to the Gallery at Market East and the upcoming Market East's mixed use complex, likely impacting the shopping culture on Chestnut and Walnut. But there's still room before Philadelphia succumbs to "over-success." Center City sits on a very small, walkable acreage, but unlike New York or Washington, D.C., it has room to grow.

North Broad is a hotbed of underutilized storefronts. As more residents find themselves in Callowhill, local businesses will surely follow. Even Old City, although perceived to be pricy and successful, is chock full of vacant buildings and subpar retail. There are plenty of neighborhoods well within the limits of Center City, more between Spring Garden and Washington Avenue, ripe for the kind of retail innovation that separates Philadelphia from New York and other cities.

Rittenhouse and University City are what they are for very specific reasons. Rittenhouse, namely Walnut Street, has become the city's premier shopping district for visitors while University City caters to college students who seek out the creature comforts of home.

But Northern Liberties and Passyunk Square have created enclaves of local charm, almost exclusively fed by homegrown businesses far from the radar of national chains. As the city continues to grow local businesses can fill in the gaps, cultivating Callowhill, Broad Street both North and South, Hawthorne, and Grays Ferry.

In a city so large it's shortsighted to assume shopping destinations can't exist beyond Walnut Street and University City.

We have a unique situation in Philadelphia, perhaps the only example of a post industrial city that has truly recovered from the throws of irrelevance. As local businesses feed off the growth of national chains - and they will - they'll do what they did for Walnut Street elsewhere, terraforming the city north to Girard and south to Washington, fostering a city in which independent businesses and national chains thrive side by side. 

How? 

Because Philadelphia is more than just a Renaissance Town of local boutiques and tiny art galleries. Leave that to Birmingham and Richmond. We're a capital of innovation and creativity, a city capable of turning our local boutiques into the national chains so many revile. In a capitalistic sense we're where Manhattan was ten years ago, begging for more of the same, but our vast portfolio of underutilized real estate affords us the ability to be something much greater. Bringing on more national retail will only enable us to expand our vast wealth of independent ideology well beyond the confines of Center City.

Philly's Got Class

Philadelphia University graduate, Christopher Class, noted our city's deplorable reputation as a a filthy energy hog, stated in so many words in a report by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council. Essentially, our air sucks and we don't recycle. Does anyone else miss the 90s? When everyone recycled and toothpicks weren't individually wrapped in plastic? Boy did we lose that battle.

But Class doesn't seem ready to give in, and his experimental school, the Reading Viaduct Sustainability Center doesn't just help the environment and teach about doing so, it solves several other urban obstacles in the process.

Although the project is heavily experimental, it's more exciting than most plans released by seasoned architects and a prime example of any city's need for fresh talent.

The sprawling center runs from Reading Viaduct's Vine Street stump to 12th and Race. Pedestrian causeways branch out in multiple directions across the Vine Street Expressway, sidewalks elevated above what appear to be energy generating fans. 

Without demolishing a single building, the center transforms the undesirable real estate facing the Convention Center's loading dock into purposeful galleries and classrooms congruously to a wild building hovering over a park that anchors 12th and Race.

Reading Viaduct Sustainability Center - Christopher Class

But despite Philadelphia's poor score in one environmental survey, our city has a unique interest in sustainability. Much of our woes are the directly result of our aging and existing infrastructure. The same problems exist in London and New York. Our lack of investment in sustainable buildings is incidental. We simple have far more old buildings than new ones, or ones that can efficiently "go green."

That hasn't stopped new development from making strides in this area. When Comcast Center was built, it was the tallest "green" building in the country and Lincoln Financial Field generates so much of its own solar and wind power that it sells its reserves to the city.

There is always room for improvement and the ideas are limitless. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia so why not put a solar roof on every building in Center City? Our narrow streets cause wind tunnels on our most towering avenues. Put them to work with giant fans. Turn Philadelphia into a self sustaining power plant. Experimental theories of course, but Philadelphia is more innovative than most think. 

The Other Disney Holes

The Disney Hole at 8th and Market, a surface parking lot once home to Gimbels and the proposed site of a DisneyQuest indoor amusement park, has been a black eye on Market East's already battered face for decades. But in a city that has more parking than it knows what to do with, it isn't Center City's worst example of poor planning that defaulted to the status quo of urban real estate: surface parking.

In the 1980s, when loft living was more akin to starving artistry than wealthy yuppies, the area north of Arch Street between 11th and Broad looked a lot like Old City. It was packed with underutilized warehouses, some providing cheap housing and office space, others vacant. Interspersed with worthless trinity homes, modest row houses, and ample parking, blocks and blocks were razed for the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the Vine Street Expressway's extension, and a Market East Station that allowed trains leaving Suburban Station to connect directly to the Northeast.

Unfortunately these shortsighted projects failed to recognize the potential future of Center City and the neighborhood once referred to as the Furnished Room District. At the time, Market East was lined with triple X theaters and this neighborhood was the backwater of Philadelphia's sex industry. The collateral damage was welcome, a neighborhood so disdained that little history was ever even recorded. Many buildings demolished without the posterity of a photograph.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center, despite its woes, did pull this neighborhood up. Reading Terminal Market has handsomely reaped the rewards. But its attractions and hotels cater to those who come to the city in cars, and the equal and opposite reaction to the area's success has been the Disney Holes along Vine Street that continue to chip away at what's left.

Vine Street has been a wide avenue since the 1930s, and has long since detached Callowhill from its right to truly call itself Center City. It was likely perceived that the Vine Street Expressway would be no worse. But a lack of insight and a loathing for the Furnished Room District allowed urban planners to not only introduce a freeway, but also widen Vine's existing surface streets, requiring more demolition along the east bound lanes leaving blocks too narrow to truly develop.

It was a dumb move. Interstate 676 was specifically designed to relieve crosstown traffic on Vine Street. If anything, Vine's surface components should have been narrowed. The street rarely sees the need for its six lanes and those who use it as an exit ramp to New Jersey speed. And for reasons I'll never quite understand, most Jersey bound traffic tends to use Race Street to connect to the Ben Franklin Bridge.

But as the city continues to grow, defying a post-recession logic, little has been said of Center City's final frontier. Have those in City Hall been in office so long that they still turn a blind eye to a neighborhood they fought so hard to erase? Lavish master plans have been proposed to connect Center City and the Delaware River, the Ben Franklin Parkway is still improving, and plans have been proposed as far north as Strawberry Mansion. Why has the Furnished Room District, two blocks form City Hall, been ignored?

Some have suggested capping the Vine Street Expressway, among other things. All fine ideas, but none have gotten attention from those who could make it happen. When you consider the fact that the improvements at the Pennsylvania Convention Center are already beginning to resonate, it seems even odder that this neighborhood remains forgotten. These parking lots are about as relevant to City Hall as those surrounding the Stadium District. 

And perhaps that's why. The state foolishly failed to provide any designated parking for the Convention Center and these lots wildly profit as necessary evil. The center even advertises them. All thirty six of them. Yes, thirty six. Thirty six parking lots and garages that the Pennsylvania Convention Center advertises on its website, not one owned by the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Perhaps soon the center will find enough money to cap its Race Street facade with its own garages. It has the room, and the space would generate money. Can you imagine that? A Pennsylvania Convention Center free from the confines of the Carpenters and Teamsters, with a can't-beat downtown location, and its own designated parking? Wow.

But I digress.

More hotels are coming. Once the last surface lot on Arch Street disappears, hotels will find themselves on North Broad Street, Race Street, and ultimately development will begin to replace the Disney Holes along Vine Street.

The city needs to get out in front of the progress and tackle Vine Street now. Change is happening and it's happening fast. Designating street parking on Vine Street and narrowing each side to two lanes would dramatically slow down traffic, improve pedestrianization, and expand the footprint for potential development. 

Vine Street may not even need to be capped to pull Callowhill closer to Center City. Many cities have highway trenches running through their cores, and those that succeed without a Big Dig succeed because they're surrounded by dense development. Let's start enticing that development with a better Vine Street and finish what the city started thirty years ago. 

Mor Good News for the Pennsylvania Convention Center

A year ago the fate of the Pennsylvania Convention Center was uncertain. The state promised its expansion would bring more hotels, but could barely find customers to fill the rooms we already had. Although the state might never admit that their $1B investment was failing, the center had an abysmal rate of returning conventions and a notorious reputation due to its costly labor and frustrating rules. 

But things are changing for the convention center and the unions. 

Management ousted the Teamsters and Carpenters, retaining just three unions capable of doing their jobs. One union member filed a charge against Local 107, claiming he wasn't appropriately represented, signaling that support for the most stubborn unions may be beginning to unravel from within. 

The center relaxed their rules allowing vendors to use electric screwdrivers and set up larger displays on their own. 

And word is getting out.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association hasn't held a convention in Philadelphia since 2007. The group's executive director, Peter O'Neil echoed the frustration of many citing "onerous work rules and limitations on exhibitors" as the reason they've stayed away.

But thanks to the center's improvements, they're coming back in 2018, renting 16,000 hotel rooms. One convention four years from now may seem irrelevant, but the events industry is a very informed one. It's their job, and word resonates fast within their community.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center has always had a unique advantage. It's in the middle of a major city. It's connected to the Marriott at 12th and Market. It's close to restaurants, nightlife, and tourist attractions. The location is as good as it gets. That's why the few conventions that have chosen to return, continue to return. The industry loves the Pennsylvania Convention Center. It's only flaw was its employees. 

Other cities have built their convention centers in worn neighborhoods and built creature comforts around the spaces. Many are islands of new business detached from the city. In Philadelphia, that infrastructure has always been in place, it just hasn't been maximized. But soon the gloomy bridge between the Convention Center and Midtown Village will be filled with restaurants at East Market and the Gallery's facelift will provide a desirable shopping mall connected to the center. 

The new rules give our center a huge advantage over centers in DC, New York, and Baltimore that still retain the frustrating caveat of uncompromising unions. Obviously Philadelphia can't compete with better weather in Las Vegas or San Diego, but if New York moves its center to Queens, Philadelphia may soon own the Northeast's convention market.

The Bright Side of the Pennsylvania Convention Center

After two unions failed to meet a deadlined agreement with the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the massive exhibition space covering three full city blocks may finally have the opportunity to reinvent itself. Given the damage already done by more than two decades of costly union headaches, it will take time for the facility to recover from the reputation it's developed. 

But beneath that sullied reputation, complaints that would make Comcast blush, and the politics that plague its administration, stands a building that's hard to ignore but easy to forget. One that, perhaps aside from much of its architecture, really is great. Sure, scissor lifts and cranes loom over Race Street, lined with parking garages and windowless brick. Chinatown's 11th Street greets pedestrians with vacant store fronts too costly and shallow to find tenants. Even Arch Street, although the center's most used facade, is lined with three blocks of dated monotony. 

However, some buildings can be above architecture, but only if they manage to serve their intended purpose and serve it well. And the Pennsylvania Convention Center could be one of those places.

I was talking with a friend of mine who attended a volleyball convention in Philadelphia a few years ago. Not the biggest of conventions by any means, this year it was held in Washington, D.C. The reasons for moving it to D.C. are obvious and gripes about the Pennsylvania Convention Center have been discussed ad nauseam here, in the media, and message boards.

What was much more surprising was the praise that the Pennsylvania Convention Center received despite its cost. After a few minutes of sharing the usual complaints about its unions, our conversation segued to the uniqueness of the facility, namely its location. It truly is as good as it gets.

D.C.'s Walter E. Washington Convention Center is located across from Mount Vernon Square near the newly gentrified Shaw neighborhood. It's surrounded by the suburban creature comforts we may soon find on Market East, within walking distance of hotels and the National Mall, but it's not near the heart of Washington D.C. which largely lies in its unique series of independent neighborhoods. What's worse, Dulles International Airport is not supported by Metro Rail requiring an expensive and often lengthy cab ride. 

This isn't unique to Washington, D.C. The Los Angeles Convention Center is located downtown, a moniker attributed solely to the city's skyline. Even closer to home, Pittsburgh's  David L. Lawrence Convention Center may run circles around Philadelphia's center both architecturally and environmentally, but it's removed from the city's heart, located on the Allegheny River downtown where life ceases at five on Friday.

The Pennsylvania Convention Center's uniqueness is largely due to the uniqueness of Center City itself. I've often said that the center should have been placed in the demolished Convention Hall and Civic Center west of the Schuylkill River, removed from the heart of Philadelphia "where conventioneers belong."

But its presence at Broad and Arch may be exactly where such a venue belongs. SEPTA carries conventioneers directly to its door from Philadelphia International Airport and 30th Street Station. The Philadelphia Marriott is connected to the center. It's two blocks from City Hall, Midtown Village, and Chinatown, and a short stroll to the Liberty Bell and Independence Mall. 

Soon, East Market and a revitalized Gallery at Market East will offer conventioneers those creature comforts they're accustomed to in their bedroom communities. And unlike those convention spaces isolated on corporate islands, in cities that compartmentalize everything from activities to lifestyles, Philadelphia's Center City offers guests the same activities, lifestyles, shopping, and entertainment conveniently situated in the short space between Vine Street and South Street. 

We don't call Center City the "city center" for a reason. It's not a neighborhood. It truly is a Center City, a city within a city at the Pennsylvania Convention Center's doorsteps. If the center's administrators can maximize their freedom from the confines of the Carpenters and Teamsters and recognize the space's unique location, the Pennsylvania Convention Center may finally be what many had dreamed it would be.

More Convention Center Surface Parking?

It's not clear what's happening here, but given the fact that the building is mid-block on a small street, it will likely become more surface parking. This is a block of Juniper Street between Race and Vine and the second building on this block to be recently demolished. 

It seems the powers behind one of Philadelphia's most nefarious purveyors of unsightly surface parking will not be content until their footprint is as big as the Pennsylvania Convention Center itself.

A word of advice thanks to the piss poor planners in my small hometown. When one property hoarder demolishes entire blocks or even neighborhoods for surface parking, a funny thing happens. Businesses flee and suddenly no one's left looking for parking.

Who's the Boss?

Walking by the main entrance of Philadelphia's lavish convention center, one might wonder when it's scheduled to open. Its escalators stand idle and unused, its doors locked. During conventions, signs direct conventioneers to 12th and Arch.

When the state decided to expand the center there were more jeers than cheers, concerns that have proven themselves valid. Even before the expansion, the Pennsylvania Convention Center had developed a reputation amongst those responsible for touring expositions. It was expensive and its unions slow and difficult to work with.

The desolate Broad Street entrance, often lined with sleeping homeless is a symbol of the center's epic failure. The hotels its expansion promised never materialized. New restaurants and stores along Broad Street should have been the end result of larger conventions and more business, but the center's decline has caused little more than a few new surface parking spaces along Vine Street.

The reasons are endless. The state isn't particularly savvy when it comes to predicting the future. In fact, the paper pushers in Harrisburg and City Hall are perpetually a decade behind. Convention facilities are in decline in general. Most still serve a purpose, but in ten years or less, technology and telecommuting will render inner city convention spaces useless for business conventions. They'll be left hosting Flower Shows and old car exhibits. Considering the PCC could never recoup its nearly $1B price tag by 2024, the expansion was a shortsighted investment.

What's worse, PCC management didn't resolve its customer service issues before agreeing to expand. They just blindly grew. If a homeowner can't pay a mortgage, the bank doesn't give them a Home Depot gift card and tell them to add another bedroom. The PCC's entire drama has been an example of the absolute worst kind of business and government oversight since it began in the early 1990s. The city already had a convention space: Convention Hall. But the state gambled on a new facility, and when the cards hit 22, they threw more money at it like an addict in Atlantic City.

But it looks like those in charge have finally decided to go to rehab. The center has drafted a new labor contract, one that grants conventioneers more freedom to construct their own exhibits, use electric screwdrivers and step ladders, and request drug tests. It's sad that any of that seems unheard of, but the Jerseyvania Triangle is a hotbed of union "muscle." So much so, only four of the six unions employed at the PCC have agreed to the new rules. Carpenters Local 8 and Teamsters Local 107 have declined the new contract and will likely drag out the inflatable rat.

However, the resistance of the two holdouts may prove to be an ultimate baby step. If the center can weather a few months or protests, the long term outcome could be a step towards the PCC recouping part of its investment, and more importantly, it's reputation. The four unions that agreed to the new terms are more than enough to carry the load. If the center's line is firmly drawn, there's no reason to continue working with unions unwilling to recognize who's the boss.

We all know it was Mona.

Union Strike at PCC: Beer and Muchie Sales Skyrocket

After a failure to agree on a new contract, the Pennsylvania Convention Center has barred union carpenters from the building. Just in time for the American Academy of Neurology's convention, union carpenters insisted on returning to work under the terms of their old contract.

The difference in contracts?

The new contract would increase pay, but allow vendors to use stepladders and electric screwdrivers, drug testing, and allow vendors a greater space to work without union labor.

Union carpenters are concerned that this will cut back on hours, and therefore pay. Probably true, but that's the point. The PCC's piss poor return rate is the direct result of its expense and frustration, and it's reputation as a to-be-avoided venue is growing. When literal brain surgeons are required to wait for a union carpenter to use an electric screwdriver, vendors begin asking what they're really paying for.

The terms of the PCC's new contract seek to address the issues the center likely understands, but it's historic reluctance to stand up to the union's rigid tactics is indicative of the state's political position. Let's face it, these are jobs for the sake of jobs. Like gas pumpers in New Jersey and Oregon, they're nothing more.

The unions know that, the press knows that, and most of all the state knows that the trade unions are the loudest of them all. Harrisburg and City Hall know that voters don't like hearing "job cuts," and until your average voter understands the difference between a trade union and a teachers union, the goons will continue to win each fight at the PCC.

The Philadelphia Boondoggle

From Penn's Landing to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia's public endeavors seem to be the definitive embodiment of a boondoggle. Twenty one years after the Pennsylvania Convention Center opened, the billion dollar money pit has yet to deliver its promises. When the Center's first phase failed miserably, the state threw more money at an expansion that hasn't unlocked the front doors of its grand façade, several years after it was complete.

Now it's true, civic projects are not designed to profit but - theoretically - use tax revenue to best serve its taxpayers. They provide a necessary service or an asset. However profitability shouldn't be ignored. Adjacent development was used to pitch the PCC expansion. When the development never emerged, or emerged heavily subsidized, no one was really held accountable. Empty promises are the method operandi of the status quo.

The only new hotel to emerge near the PCC is the lackluster Hilton Home2 at 12th and Arch, its ground floor retail occupied by the first fast food options you'd expect to find next to any convention center in America, two decades after it opened.

Meanwhile the surface lots north of the PCC continue to chip away at the build environment, trading buyable real estate for high cost/low maintenance surface parking. Whether or not the PCC has recouped the billion spent on its two phased construction or if it can maintain its day to day operations with the revenue from its vendors, the center has done more harm than good. Considering the emerging revitalization of the Loft District, the Reading Viaduct Park, and the nation's overall renewed interest in downtown living, the PCC has come to find itself an unwelcome partner in City Hall's vicinity.

After all, the streets surrounding Reading Terminal below Vine Street looked a lot like today's Loft District before the PCC was dropped on us by the state. It's no stretch to imagine that the neighborhood's proximity to Washington Square West and Reading Terminal Market would have helped it evolve into one that looks a lot like Old City were it not for the PCC. And full time residents vested in its streets would have undoubtedly had an impact on our deteriorating Market East.

But ifs and buts aren't cluster of nuts, so, no granola.

Still, what about our future boondoggles? Has the city learned its lesson?

As malls go, ordinary but not bad - architecturally. Fill it with attractions that appeal to the market on the street: TOURISTS.

Speaking of Market East, PREIT may be the city's next money pit. Although the Gallery at Market East isn't owned by the city, the marriage between the two is strong. It's not surprising that PREIT's proposals for a revitalized Gallery Mall are about as lackluster as anything the city pitches. History has told us that inner city malls don't work and why, but those at PREIT can only see their white elephant as a mall.

While its layout may scream "mall," its best reuse as a mall is only by the vaguest definition. Tucked between numerous hotels and the Historic District, it should be full of tourist attractions, a beer hall, and some corny museums. But all PREIT can see is Center City's answer to King of Prussia and a Target, despite the fact that Center City already has KOP on Walnut Street and Kmart failed for the same reason a Target won't succeed.

But why should we expect innovation? PREIT, like the city and state offices vested in the PCC and its expansion, don't understand Center City and what it needs. When it comes to master plans, particularly if the word "Pennsylvania" is affixed, it's tough to expect more than a cash strapped burden.

Can it ever get better? Maybe. The Delaware River Waterfront Commission incited a bit of excitement surrounding the release of its new master plan. But "master plan" has developed a pejorative connotation when it comes to civic projects. Hargreaves Associates master plan for Penn's Landing and the vicinity is far from the first. Despite the fact that it's a good design, one that includes speculative commercial and residential development, on its own it provides no new reason to go to the river that isn't already there.

With more destination attractions, residents, and events, Festival Pier is not a bad space.

Like PREIT and City Hall, the DRWC doesn't understand its audience. It's unfortunate. More so than the PCC or the Gallery Mall, Penn's Landing is a potentially unrivalled asset for the city. But it's operated by bureaucrats that understand two things: pushing paper and maintaining the status quo. It should be filled with events every weekend: concerts, movies, exotic animals to promote the Philadelphia Zoo and the New Jersey State Aquarium, local restaurant booths, beer gardens. But the DRWC doesn't field events, it maintains those willing to return.

Unfortunately, until these organizations are employed by visionaries working with businesspeople who know how to execute a vision, we'll be faced with nothing more than renderings and master plans, and perhaps someday, a new Convention Center, Mall, or Waterfront Park afflicted with the exact same obstacles that kept them from ever succeeding in the first place.

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.

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.