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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.
Robert A. M. Stern came back with his revised Museum of the American Revolution, and surprise,
the silly cupola is gone. Besides a couple entrances facing Chestnut Street, formerly a subtly adorned brick wall in previous renderings, much of the proposal remains unchanged.
The Art Commission approved the revisions, so we're getting what we see.
While the hokey tower was the most noticeable offender, the most offensive attribute in previous renderings was the building's lack of engagement with the streets.
As it is, its vaguely classical elements are handsome enough and won't elicit any anxiety in tourists. But as it is, those vague elements are well suited for a college library or a small town convention center. It's a gussied up suburban shopping center. It's a big box.
Given Stern's starchitect reputation - and I assume, costly contract - we deserve to demand better. The design we see could be designed by vastly less expensive architects, even architecture students. It's not bad, it's just boring.
Why?
Well, the Independence Historic District has been trending towards the more conventional. Despite the fact that a number of the district's "old" buildings are fine recreations, the district also dabbled in experimental architecture with the old Liberty Bell Pavilion and the building that preceded the soon-to-be Museum of the American Revolution.
The district may be leery of dabbling in interpretive design considering popular opinion surrounding those buildings with which it experimented. Obviously, the National Museum of Jewish American History is a recent outlier and proof that the neighborhood can successfully support exciting architecture.
Sadly the Independence Historic District, Stern, even the Art Commission may be adhering to traditional market research: a museum dedicated to American history should look like a museum dedicated to American history. And truthfully, to busloads of tourists, Stern's design fits. But that simply brings us back to the ultimate question, why pay for a Stern when he delivers a Toll Brothers if tourists don't know the difference?
Babette Josephs, the former Congresswoman who sought to challenge Rep Brian Sims, won't be appearing on the Democratic primary ballot in May. Josephs was defeated by Sims in 2012 bringing her fourteen year reign to an end.
Josephs didn't get the 300 signatures required to appear on the ballot. A significant number of signatures were thrown out when it was determined that the homeless man she hired to go door to door had moved to West Philadelphia, and no longer lived in her district. Ironically she told Philly.com, "It's about the people of the 182nd District and the people of Pennsylvania." It would seem she isn't invested enough in the 182nd District to know that her most important asset didn't even live in it.
Sims, who replaced Josephs in 2012, may not be everyone's favorite. He's a politician first and foremost, but he deviates from the career cronies we are accustomed to watching rise through the ranks abiding by the status quo.
Sims could easily secure his place as one of Pennsylvania's many career Congressman by doing little more than existing as the reigning Democrat in a heavily Democratic district. But he's active and visible. I don't think he's content with his current position and that's a good thing for Center City. No one hires an employee who doesn't want his boss's job, and I think Sims is eying Washington. It's rare that the Philadelphia region ever has anyone that ambitious.
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| Thunderdome |
If you haven't gotten your fill of useless lists, Cities Journal provides you with one that's so bad it doesn't even bother to assign an author. It reads like a recent grad's rant. Someone who just received the first few rejection letters via CareerBuilder after five years at Bennington and decided to take it out on the few cities that didn't want him.
It would be annoying if it wasn't so comically ridiculous.
For one, there are no apparent qualifiers for the cities in the list of fifteen. Major cities like Chicago sidle up to small towns like Paterson, NJ. He even includes East Los Angeles, a part of Los Angeles County which isn't even a city.
And of course when it comes to his knowledge of the cities he's critiqued, Philadelphia is all cheesesteaks and Rocky, and Detroit is Journey because of one lyric in America's top karaoke song.
In what would make a pretty decent Onion article, the inaccuracies are too numerable to mention. No word on Miami's forest of vacant skyscrapers, that's apparently Chicago. And of course Philadelphia is a wasteland of unemployed boxers scrapping to make ends meet lorded over by a fuzzy green mascot.
But Portland? America's go to locale for unemployed hipsters? Well, that's the author's Xandu. Sure, he'll find work...under the Burnside Bridge.
The Philadelphia City Planning Commission's Design Review Committee echoed the mainstream media's opinion about CHoP's proposed research facility on Schuylkill Avenue near the South Street Bridge, asking the hospital to come back with a better design.
CHoP, likely expecting the request, plans to address the Commission's bullet points that can be addressed, but also noted the architectural constraints that the location presents, as well as the unconventional requirements within the facility itself.
While many of the Commission's requests are understandable, the hospital's predicament is equally understandable. Like many former developments along the Schuylkill River, the flood plain requires CHoP to elevate its property. Likewise, the density of the space requires parking. The solution to both is placing the tower atop a parking podium. While the Commission asked CHoP to be less "auto-centric," one can imagine the exact opposite request had CHoP provided less parking, urging its employees to take public transportation. Nothing fires up residents like workers taking up their street spaces, and if CHoP hadn't provided enough parking in its design, that's the fire we'd be feeling.
But CHoP isn't immune simply because of the difficulties the river presents. Despite the fact that this will be a research facility, not a care facility, it's being developed by an organization versed in hospital development. University City's hospital region looks like a modern, dense city from the expressway, but on the street it's what you'd expect of any densely packed group of hospitals. It isn't urban and completely detached from the residences that surround it. CHoP likely intended to carry that across the river to Schuylkill Avenue, and neighbors are understandably skeptical.
CHoP did try to appease neighbors by proposing removable panels along its façade for future retail, but how deep are those spaces, what actually exists behind the panels, and why hasn't CHoP attempted to field retail tenants itself? Well, the spaces are probably about as shallow as the undesirable retail spaces along the Convention Center, and like the PCC, hospitals aren't versed in dealing with retail tenants on the street. In other words, as is, don't expect picking up Chipotle along the east incline of the South Street Bridge.
Truthfully, better design isn't great design, but CHoP's isn't just better than what's there, it's better than anyone is willing to build now or in the future. Any developers would face the same obstacles posed by the flood plain, the bridge, and the CSX tracks, but CHoP can afford to tackle them in some way, perhaps the only way modern technology allows.
In the end, CHoP may provide an asset to several struggling neighborhoods. Toll Brothers' Naval Square has been a financial success to Toll Brothers' shareholders, but its residents still remain largely fortressed behind private gates. They've provided little foot traffic, foot traffic that CHoP can provide. CHoP's presence in University City may not provide its own ground floor retail or uan rban experience you'd want to find in a city, but its employees aid businesses surrounding the grid of hospitals.
CHoP may never open its sidewalks to retail, it may offer its employees a dining hall like most corporate facilities, but that won't change the fact that thousands of employees will sometimes look for a lunch that isn't provided by Aramark and stick around after five for happy hour. That will easily drive business south of South Street into the neighborhood surrounding Naval Square, incentivizing retail development in space that isn't owned by CHoP, and adding street life to a neighborhood that needs it.
Whether or not you're in favor of a memorial park at 22nd and Market, the site of last year's deadly demolition collapse, it's probably going to happen. It's a little disheartening that the public's ire for those responsible has neatly segued to memorializing the lost before justice has been served. But the short attention span of the media has abandoned those charged with crimes for renderings of wooden fences and trees, and who doesn't love pictures of parks more than politicians seeking cover from the stink of failing services?
So here we are.
The Philadelphia Horticultural Society provided a rendering of a proposed park and memorial garden.
Yeah, I know, right? But you can relax and rest assured that cattle fences will not be lining Philadelphia's boulevard of skyscrapers. The image is just a sample provided by the PHS of what could be, likely to show landscape designers and architects the scope of the space with which they'll be working.
A crowd sourcing effort is being used to raise funds for the site and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will be holding a competition for its final design.
In recent years the success of the Schuylkill Banks and plans for additional improvements have inadvertently called residential developers into action. The Banks is an urban Cinderella Story. Historically industrial railroad space, few ever thought the flood plain two stories below Center City would ever find itself as a role model for urban parks.
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But architecturally, the Banks poses a challenge. Through most of Center City, the Schuylkill River isn't graded with the city's built environment, it's recessed well below. Particularly between JFK and Walnut, it's recessed more like the Chicago River than a place ever meant for cyclists and joggers. In fact many early master plans for JFK, West Market Street, and 30th Street Station envisioned the river's east bank looking a lot more like its west. Rightly, developers are eager to offer residents a piece of the river, but it's not as simple as building condos on Miami Beach.
How do developers best ferry their elevated tenants to the park below without alienating recreationalists and hurting the peaceful setting the Banks provides?
Recently, three towering proposals have called this into question. In the heart of the city surrounded by skyscrapers, towering apartment buildings along the river won't diminish the park's experience in their own right. However being on a flood plain, these projects must be elevated to the streets above. Each of these proposals has remedied that obstacle by putting their tenants atop a parking podium. Unfortunately, that puts the least desirable element, a parking stump, face to face with the Schuylkill Banks.
Many have come out against these projects, namely due to the vast concrete walls that will face the river. Are foes of these projects simply echoing the the media, or should these developers be sent back to their drawing boards?
Is it possible to address the architectural need to elevate these towers without distracting from the pleasures of the park? Is there an alternative? If there is no alternative, is sending developers elsewhere for the sake of a park worth abandoning the benefits these projects offer the city above?
But really, are these parking garages that different than the built space that already faces the Banks? The park still sits on an industrial artery, beside and below railroad tracks. Anyone who's spent time on the river knows that the Central Banks often peer into the dark recesses of the city's underground.
2400 Chestnut and the PECO Tower already sidle up to the Banks, offering as much or less to the river than the recent proposals. Neither diminish the park's experience, but simply remind recreationalists that the Banks is a very urban park. Where were those agitated by the inevitable residential interest in the river when critics were gushing over the proposed Mandeville Place? The vistas offered along the Schuylkill River are directed at University City's growing crystalline skyline, but Center City's presence is incidental and always will be.
The Schuylkill Banks will not be abandoned because of a series of parking podiums, only find an increased demand by the tenants in the towers above. Perhaps more importantly, these projects will help bridge the cognitive divide between Center City and University City, creating a much greater urban core.
