The Little Building that Could

Right now, FMC is redefining the University City skyline and Comcast is building the nation's tallest skyscraper outside Chicago or New York. Starwoods is filling a hole at 15th and Chestnut with a Bladerunner-esque W Hotel and NREA is gambling on Market East with East Market. But the most important development taking place in Center City right now is on a little corner most residents have forgotten and fewer have bothered to visit. 

I've lived across the street from the historic Big Brother Big Sisters building for about eight years now, and I've watched anti-developers bulldoze building after building, and I really thought that the BBBS building would be next. Aside from the grandiose buildings demolished for the Convention Center's expansion, most of the damage has been in the way of abandoned, one-story warehouses - no great loss - but typically replaced by more surface parking. 

If you think the Gallery was a bad idea, just walk up to 13th and Vine.

As drab as it looks in renderings, Marriott's AC Hotel capping to the BBBS building is a welcome addition to my neighborhood.

Within the last few weeks, another old warehouse bit the dust. Unfortunately, a very cute apartment building went with it, and as far as I know, there are no plans for the site but more parking, apparent in the fact that the rubble was paved over in a day. It's amazing how long it takes for a potentially iconic piece of architecture to receive approval, yet how fast and inconspicuously another can be flattened. 

The problem with this area is one that enables itself. Surface lot owners are lowly taxed and make bank off their lack of overhead. They occasionally pay for a minimum wage parking attendant, and barely maintain the asphalt. The rest is profit. The only time something gets developed around here is when something else gets torn down.

I've seen single buildings razed for no more than three parking spaces. The demolition is justified as a way to "clear the land" for speculative development, but if the property ever goes on the market, it goes on the market for twice its value because the profit margin on surface parking is so high. It's literally cheaper to demolish a building in this neighborhood and start from scratch than it is to build on a "cleared lot" advertised as "developable land." 

What's most unnerving is how the cycle perpetuates itself. Surface parking on its own isn't a demand, but parking always will be, garaged or otherwise, because people are friggin' lazy. But surface parking scars the urban landscape and makes it undesirable for development. Over time, as surface parking grows, the reason to park there disappears. 

My hometown of Harrisonburg, VA learned the hard way. With two large garages perfectly situated north and west, "downtown" was primed for a renaissance in the 1980s. People - the laziest people - didn't like walking two blocks, and parking "development" inched closer and closer to Court Square until every reason to ever go downtown was demolished. Twenty years later, and in a city with 1.5M more residents, I find myself living in the the middle of the exact same situation. 

There isn't a single block of Center City real estate that doesn't have surface parking on it, yet we continue to allow it to chip away at our urban fabric. Had the historic Gimbels Department Store not been demolished for speculative development, it's hard to imagine real estate so close to City Hall would be so hard to unload. Even abandoned, that handsome piece of architecture would put more feet on to the cement than the Disney Hole provides in parking.

I'd rather walk by this - abandoned - than another surface lot.

My neighborhood - roughly bound by Broad, 11th, Market, and Vine - was Ground Zero for decades of civic redevelopment projects. Boxed in by the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the Vine Street Expressway, Market East Station, and the Gallery, it's become the bilge water for the city's bad ideas. The Convention Center has finally proven itself great for the region, but that isn't so great for its neighbors. 

While City Planners and NIMBYs continued to argue over minute details elsewhere, an entire neighborhood has been almost exterminated. 

I wish we still sidled up to some of the lofty warehouses that were here before the first leg of the PCC. If we were ever a part of Callowhill, that was the time. As it stands, we should be an extension of the Loft District, but Callowhill's neighborhood organization wants nothing to do with us. Who can blame them? Fighting surface lots is a Sisyphean task. At best we're under the PCDC, not the most progressive group. 

But we are a neighborhood and a place Philadelphians call home. Marriott's AC Hotel might not bring more residents, but it adds to our sense of purpose. Our most impressive addition in the last twenty years has been the Hampton Inn, and while it's far from the best, its guests helped open the QQ Mart, run by one of the sweetest families you'll ever meet. 

Philadelphia is doing great right now. It's hard to look at projects at 19th and Chestnut or 12th and Walnut without asking, "shouldn't we expect more?" But up at 13th and Vine - shoehorned between a highway and a massive project that should have come with its own parking - we don't have that luxury. We're begging for the developmental and architectural scraps, all in the hopes that it may someday bring more people, and eventually something better. The fact that anyone is talking about Marriott's AC Hotel means this lost corner of Center City - a corner a few blocks from City Hall - is relevant once again. 

I have one of the best views of the city from my third floor bedroom window: the skyline atop the historic Big Brothers Big Sisters buildings. But despite my view and comparatively cheap rent, I'd trade it in a second for foot traffic and a brick wall filled with neighbors.  

Days Numbered for City Hall Parking

Ever since Dilworth Plaza was reborn as the wet and wild Dilworth Park, the north side of City Hall has looked worse than ever. Walking towards North Broad Street through or around City Hall, you might be wondering where the Walmart is. That's because every day of the week there are anywhere from a few to a lot of personal vehicles treating the north apron like a suburban parking prairie. 

PhillyMag.com

It's ugly. PhillyMag.com called it crap.

Ramping up for a visit from the Pope and the upcoming Democratic National Convention, the city is finally recognizing the lingering blight throughout Center City that might be caught in the backdrop of an international news broadcast. But we're not just hosting the Vatican and a bunch of politicians, we're also prepping for millions of visitors who will be taking billions of pictures and posting them to Instagram.

Well, the north apron of City Hall is about to get a makeover that will help it blend into Dilworth Park a little bit better. While permanent bollards will put the kibosh on the abundance of civilian parking, eradicating parking in and of itself isn't that exciting. What's more noteworthy, particular for our upcoming tourists will be more greenery and the fact that City Hall will be keeping its mature trees. Finally, someone in Philadelphia recognize the value of a living tree!

The changes obviously won't be as dramatically transformative as Dilworth Park, but not everything needs to be in order to be just as significant. 

However there are some questions that remain to be answered. 

For one, what will happen to the parking that has been allowed to run rampant over the last few years? Will it be condensed to the Northeast corner of City Hall or will City Hall simply tell its employees to walk from the dozens of parking lots and garages a few short blocks away? And two, will City Hall use this redesign as a misguided opportunity to formally accommodate permanent parking spaces on the apron?

The Slums of Center City

If you've lived in Philadelphia for a while, you might not see them. But look up. Pretend you've never been here before. Or visit a city like Savannah, soak up its manicured blocks, its considerable lack of surface parking, then return to Philadelphia and stroll through neighborhoods like Old City and Midtown Village. 

You'll see it, the slums of Center City. Along East Chestnut Street and throughout Old City, it's everywhere. Seemingly abandoned buildings in the heart of the city. Often, at best, a building is only as good as its ground floor. An Old City gallery capped with boarded up or broken windows, sometimes gaping maws open to the elements.

How has this happened? As the outer rung blossoms from Passyunk Square to Northern Liberties to University City, Philadelphia's heart - Center City - is perplexingly clotted. 

It's hard to complain. We're not Detroit. But we need to stop comparing ourselves to the worst. That's what got us here. 

In South Philadelphia and Fishtown, neighborhoods are so congested that cars take to the median to find parking and save spots with lawn chairs. But in Center City, where land usage begs for the most stringent of requirements, parking lots surround garages, across the street from even more. 

A surface lot faces City Hall, the geographic center of our city. New Philadelphians look at our city's smile and wonder why its missing so many teeth. But those at the source of the problem are looking at a city in disdain. Dinosaurs, whether they're in bed with City Hall or not, whether they're in City Hall or not, see another Philadelphia. One that is Detroit.

They acquired now-prime property when the city was on death's door. And now fifty plus years into their investment, these properties are monthly checks from a city they forgot about while they play shuffleboard in Palm Beach.

Unfortunately the slumlords and the surface parking lot owners enable each other, and City Hall grants them a pass. Slowly these properties are being passed down to their children, children inheriting the burden of a city they don't know is trying to thrive. From California to Texas to Boston, Center City is owned by the unfamiliar.

With some of the lowest parking taxes in the nation, our density begs for us to have the highest. But not just parking tax, land usage tax. Have you ever strolled down East Chestnut and looked up at the dramatic bay windows, empty and cracked, and thought, "If no one want to live there, I will!"

How can the city allow this? Because these owners took a chance on Philadelphia when no one else would? That would be like saying I took a chance on Detroit if I snatched up a few of their $5000 houses and let them rot for the next fifty years. 

What's worse, developers that actually develop routine avoid these properties, likely because they know they're owned by cranky old-timers hoarding land to pass down to their kids. Perhaps as some of these buildings manage to outlive their owners, their children will take an ounce of pride in their part of a new Philadelphia. Unfortunately, if the city doesn't take strides to discourage land hoarding and slumlording throughout the city, particularly at the foundation of its skyscrapers, inherited land will inherit its blighted mentality. 

How One Parking Garage Exposed a NIMBY's Ulterior Motive

The Piazza is getting a new parking garage, you know, right around the corner from that other parking garage. Despite easy access to SEPTA's Girard Avenue El, Northern Liberties residents seem deeply attached to their cars. And neighbors already turning a blind eye to heinously bizarre street parking juxtaposed against fantastic architecture seem more than willing to accommodate suburban traffic as long as there's a place to stash their beloved Priuses.

A new parking garage on land that can accommodate one may seem benign. Despite Northern Liberties should-be proximity to Center City (Spring Garden really is just a few blocks from Old City), it's been an island since I-95 was built. But residents' lack of reaction to more parking exposes neighborhood groups' own hypocrisy and what they really expect of the city.

Um...

At the height of the building boom, numerous high-rises were proposed along the river. So many so that they could have created a densely urban neighborhood on par with West Market Street. 

What happened? 

The neighborhood bitched and moaned about shadows and access to the river until the economy collapsed. Then they all retreated west of the interstate to pat themselves on the back for a job well done. 

Well fuck that noise.

These NIMBYs didn't give a shit about shadows or river access - something that still only exists in Penn Treaty Park, a park never threatened by development - but were only concerned with potential urban density that threatened their precious parking spaces.

If Philadelphia wasn't afraid of being Philadelphia, this could have happened.

I guess I just can't grasp the new urban mentality. The mentality of those somewhere between suburban and urban. By the time you've accommodated all the ills that make the suburbs so intolerable you've created a microcosm of those suburban ills: parking structures, parking lots, and a sprawling lack of density.

By then, you've killed your neighborhood and turned it into Ardmore without the charm.

As cities grow - and Philadelphia is growing - that means taller buildings, more people, and less parking. That should be exciting to anyone living in a city. You can't move to a city, applaud yourself for being an urbanite, and then turn around and expect your Starbucks drive-thru. You have to learn to enjoy the urban experience. 

If you don't like it, well, that's why New Jersey exists.