What's Next for the Shirt Corner?

Four months after the dust settled at the site of Old City's Shirt Corner fire at Third and Market, we finally have our sidewalk back. 

Great. 

But the question now is, "what's next?"

The restoration and reconstruction of the Suit Corner across the street was supposed to help the corner transition into a handsomely quaint Old City intersection. 

But the end result of the fire has traded cheap yellow suits at one corner for scorched abandonment at another.

Despite Old City's pricy lofts and upscale restaurants, the neighborhood is no stranger to abandoned buildings and empty lots. It may be some time before this property changes hands, but the soon-to-be vacant lot entered the real estate market by accident. When derelict property vanishes in Philadelphia, the fallout often makes way for a surface parking lot.

But six decades into Old City's love affair with parking lots, can we finally know better? Old City has been one of the most vocal voices when it comes to opposing new development, but when it comes to screaming "Not In My Back Yard," parking lots are rarely mentioned until after they've been laid. 

Six decades later, the city still looks at parking lots as an acceptedly interim use for vacant land, but six decades in we know that "interim" is defined by a parking corporation's bloated asking price. 

Sadly, in Philadelphia, it costs less to level a building to build something new than it does to acquire a ready-to-build parking lot for the same project. 

Just look at the Disney Hole at 8th and Market. 

In a city full of bike lanes and park improvements, residents are telling City Hall, "we don't need more parking." Old City has fought tooth and nail to stop the development of a vacant lot at 2nd and Race citing shadows and traffic. Pressuring property owners to smart-sell their vacant land is long overdo. Basically, find someone with a plan to build or be burdened with the property tax until you do.

Unfortunately neighboring voices tend to be reactionary. They'll oppose development but won't proactively seek an alternative. This mentality is detrimental to the growth of any city, not because it stymies development, but because it settles for the status quo. And in Center City, the status quo is a parking lot or a vacant building.

It's interesting that those actively advocating against potential development are doing so in what they perceive to be their neighborhood's best interests, while not actively seeking ways to make their neighborhoods better. Old City in particular, full of new residents, shouldn't be a neighborhood saddled with Negadelphians who assume the worst in every proposal.

It may seem odd that I'm harping on NIMBYs because community activists haven't said one word about the future of the site of the Shirt Corner. But that lack of involvement is exactly why I'm harping on those allegedly invested in their neighborhoods. 

Where are they?

Anyone concerned with the future of Old City should be actively trying to block the sale of the Shirt Corner site as a surface lot now, not after a deal is in place. But that's the flaw in Philadelphia's abundance of neighborhood organizations and their reactionary approach. It's easy to throw a wrench in the development of a building we'll see, but a noble effort would include a voice that attempts to groom a growing neighborhood into what it should be through developing vacant land. 

And in a neighborhood with ample parking for both residents and visitors, that starts with derailing more designated private parking.

Ample Parking, Day or Night

When I first moved to Washington, D.C. almost twenty years ago, my large studio cost a modest $450 a month, development was stale, and the internet was for nerds. Today my first apartment - untouched and still teeming with more roaches than Joe's Apartment - asks a whopping $1200 a month. And that's considered affordable.

Twenty years old and raised on a farm, I was just tiptoeing my way into urban life. Put your license and cash in your sock at night, but leave a few bucks in your wallet in case you get mugged. Don't make eye contact with the beggars. And don't go in Meridian Hill Park after sundown unless you're buying drugs or a blow job. 

The neighborhood once home to abandoned embassies, one of them torched, is now full of microbrews, new families, and strollers extending all the way to Maryland.

But one thing hasn't changed, a frustrating urban ill I learned to deal with very early on: You will never find a parking space at your door. 

In Washington and many other cities, parking hassles are acceptedly traded for the luxury of living downtown. If you have to own a car for work, circling your block, even the surrounding blocks for twenty minutes is just something you have to do. 

But in Philadelphia, a city three times the size of Washington, D.C., having a car isn't largely perceived to be a privilege or unfortunate necessity, many view door front parking as a right. That attitude is expected in some emerging neighborhoods where long time Philadelphia residents spent the better part of the 20th Century living amongst abandonment when parking was a breeze. 

As the city's built environment grows, so does its population. Neighborhoods in North and South Philadelphia once vacant enough to accommodate a car for every member of the family parked along their block are quickly discovering what cities a fraction of the size have known for decades. 

Gone are the days of saving your spot with a piece of rusted lawn furniture. South Philadelphia residents may soon even find themselves faced with the fact that median parking is illegal, a law currently overlooked that will inevitably be enforced, further exasperating the parking within nearby neighborhoods.

Dead for no good reason

But where the parking gripes are even more quizzical is in the city's core. Not only do an over abundance of surface lots and parking garages adequately accommodate those living and working in Center City, the individuals who live and work here knowingly chose apartments and accepted jobs in one of the nation's densest downtowns within one of its biggest cities.

Ironically the same voices in Center City that champion better pedestrianization, urbanism, and bike lanes are the same ones who pipe up when a developer proposes a new apartment or office building, citing traffic and parking as a concern. 

Old City, a neighborhood once densely packed with warehouses and factories is now a high priced neighborhood full of charming alleyways broken up by small surface lots to accommodate both unnecessary cars brought in from New Jersey for nightlife as well as the community's reluctance to allow larger development that might bring with it a parking garage. 

But an even greater hypocrisy occurs across town near Rittenhouse Square where the Center City Residents' Association blocked the development of a sky scraping apartment tower at 19th and Chestnut. Despite a half dozen nearby high-rises, the CCRA claimed that spot zoning should not allow a building so tall, yammering from buildings that spot zoning allowed.

The larger complaint apparent in community meetings, on message boards, and the online comment Rabbit Hole regarded parking and traffic. With streets in the vicinity overwhelmingly metered, the parking grief is a nonstarter. Wealthy tenants who would inexplicably want to park on the street would need to hunt for spaces well below Rittenhouse Square. But more realistically, most who even owned a car would likely rent a space in one of the dozens of lots and garages in the area, many just a block away.

Despite being an American powerhouse that continues to grow taller and spread wider, Philadelphia's old habits dictate development in our densest pockets. The ongoing spot zoning argument doesn't validate the concerns of resident activists, rather it exposes an outdated zoning map, one that allows the tallest building between New York in Chicago on Arch Street, but nixes a high-rise apartment building a few blocks south.

Our current zoning in Center City refuses to accept the fact that the city between Vine and South is fusing into a cohesively proper downtown. There are places where height is relevant, notably in the Independence Historic District. But spot zoning in and around Rittenhouse has already set a precedent, and any debate about shadows and wind tunnels should be moot. And parking should never be considered in any debate regarding development downtown. 

The only regions within our city where development seems free to do its job is where the Atlanta-ization of our city is possible, where vast disjoined apartment complexes can provide ample parking near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and University City. Meanwhile hypocrisy and entitlement are stymying development in the one region within the city where common sense says it should touch the sky.

The day will come when logic, reason, and the quest to truly become an advanced and competitive city will supersede the lost cause of revisiting a Philadelphia that died in the 1950s, a lost cause that quells its agitation simply through the posterity of quiet streets and quaint architecture. We're a big city primed to be the next New York. Let's start acting like it.

No Savsies

PhillyMag.com

With ten years in Philadelphia behind me I think it's fair to say I'm local, so I think it's equally fair to believe there are some Philadelphian institutions that I will never, ever understand, and that lack of understanding can no longer be blamed on my status as a transplant: I'm here, I'm local, and I just don't get it.

I'm not talking about City Hall, SEPTA, the city wage tax, or any of the urban demons that come with every major city from Boston to San Diego. I'm talking about those uniquely Philadelphian quirks, either beloved or tolerated.

Wawa: I don't care for it. Crab Fries: Where's the crab? And saving your parking space with various pieces of furniture: You're overestimating how much I care about the finish on my car because I will gladly park on top of it.

Slash my tires? Sure, but it's not hard to guess who owns the rusted lawn chair or moldy velvet lounge adorning my sidewalk all winter, and I know enough about seasoned Philadelphians to know just how proudly and loudly any one of those spot squatters would brag about slashing the tires on my little gay bug.

So it should be no surprise how thrilled I was with Philadelphia's #NoSavsies campaign this winter, and it came just in time. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not some curmudgeon dodging Philadelphia's pot holes looking for a lawn chair to flatten. If I find myself facing a piece of misplaced patio furniture in Pennsport or Fishtown, I'm not touching it. But in this winter that will never end, the habit has wormed its way into my Center City neighborhood and nearby Callowhill, or at least it's trying.

After one particularly rough hunt for a space I found myself on Ridge Avenue waiting for someone to leave. As the SUV (from NJ mind you) pulled out, the driver stepped out and placed two traffic cones in the public space. The driver watched me, perplexed, as I got out and hurled the cones on the sidewalk, turning back and screaming, "this will not start in my neighborhood!"

Fueled with two months of Winter Madness I made my Seinfeldian statement, got my spot, and walked home in the forty-second day of sub-freezing temperature. With snot-cicles forming around my nose on my six block trek, I kept thinking of the spot I spent two hours shoveling out, directly across from my front door.

This notion that people feel entitled to a quasi-public space because they shoveled it out is ludicrous. They shoveled out because they chose to leave, just like me.

How deluded and self righteous must someone be that they assume there is a fleet of phantom cars hovering in the stratosphere, waiting to steal their spot.

"I dug it out, it's my spot." No, you dug it out, therefore you gave up that spot, and anyone "stealing" your space did the exact same thing.