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.

Escaping the Cold...Underground

Now that it's nut shriveling cold outside, your cardio routine has probably taken a hit. The Schuylkill River Trail is so much more inviting than a stationary bike next to twelve others that smell like feet.

Well, have you ever thought of taking to SEPTA's expansive underground concourse for your evening jog? No. That's insane. Your gym's foot smell is way better than that piss smell. 

But what if the concourse looked like this?

That's a rendering of Manhattan's proposed Low Line. Utilizing an abandoned trolley terminal under the Lower East Side, New York hopes to bank on the success of its High Line and turn it upside down. Skylights will filter sunshine into the subterranean park offering a bit of nature during New York's brutal winter.

As Philadelphia wrestles with the logistics of creating our own variation of New York's High Line atop the abandoned Reading Viaduct, others have proposed converting its abandoned extension sunken below the city at Broad and Noble that continues all the way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

While New York beat us to both the High Line and now, possibly, the Low Line, Philadelphia's potential is unique in that the two are already integrated. 

It's a tough sell. The Reading Viaduct Park has faced an uphill battle since it was first conceived but it's finally gaining a strong foothold in reality. But the proposition of an underground "park" anywhere in Philadelphia has been the butt of more C.H.U.D. jokes than actual praise.

That's understandable, but partially because it's been pitched primarily as an underground incarnation of the more logical Reading Viaduct Park. It seems hokey. "If we're using old tracks for an elevated park, why not make one in the tracks underground too?!" It's reactionary, not innovative. 

Obviously the best use for Philadelphia's abandoned rail - both above and below ground - would be to reopen it to subway/elevated trains carting people to black holes of speedy transportation like the Art Museum, the Zoo, and other neighborhoods in the Northwest.

Well, that's not happening. 

And to understand why an underground park is a good idea you have to stop thinking of it as a park. Even in New York, while the Low Line may offer similar plant life found above ground, it will likely find its best use as a well dressed concourse ferrying pedestrians throughout the Lower East Side during the winter and on rainy days. Clean, it will also offer recreationalists a unique reprieve from their boring gyms.

When you think about it that way, jogging throughout Philadelphia's concourse - and our own Low Line - don't seem like such a half baked idea. Philadelphia's abandoned tunnel, The City Branch Line, extends from Broad to Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not a long walk but the urban planning missteps that created Franklin Town make it an awkwardly disjointed one. One an underground concourse could easily address.

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.

Uber is Here to Stay...and It's Good For Us

Yes, please.

Say what you will about Uber, or it's more affordable option, UberX. 

Rhetoric has been compiled by an industry that has been playing fast and lose with a monopoly for decades. Around the country, Uber drivers have been accused of being reckless and harassing customers. In all likelihood those accusations are 100% correct. But the fact many seem to ignore is: taxi drivers have been getting away with this for years.

It's a double standard likely caused by a multitude of reasons. For starters, taxi cabs have been reputedly disgusting since the dawn of hired carriage rides. They're rude, they stink, and they'll take you on a joy ride if you don't know where you're going. It's easy to call out an isolated disservice in an Uber car because Uber gives you a venue to call out the disservice. 

Your Uber driver has a predetermined route to guarantee an accurate estimate. The driver cannot claim that the "credit card machine is down" to pocket the fare. The transaction takes place in the cloud. And if - worst case scenario - you have an unseemly altercation with your driver, you know exactly who's driving you. 

The gripes that don't sidestep reason seem fixated on Uber's apparent assault on a timelessly nostalgic and struggling institution, as if you're being carted around in a horse and buggy, not a twenty year old Caprice Classic with worn shocks and bald tires. 

Industries change and cabs are by no means the struggling poster child for a dying industry. If they are dying, they're dying at the hands of their owners. 

A medallion required to operate a taxi cab in Philadelphia cost $65,000 in 2005. Thanks to an uptick in transit minded residents, DUI checkpoints, and simply more reasons to be downtown, that cost rose to nearly half a million dollars. Well surprise, surprise, that $475,000 price tag is as dead as the Studebaker. The Philadelphia Parking Authority - who in a baffling conflict of interest apparently oversees Philadelphia's taxi cabs - allowed the asking price to be lowered to a paltry $350,000.

What's more mind blowing than any of this is why, when faced with an apparent rise in demand for cabs in the last nine years, the value of a static number of medallions was raised, and not the number of medallions themselves. In a giant "f*ck you" to the consumer, the foundation of the cab industry, the PPA allowed medallion owners to sidestep the very process by which competitive industries work. And now Uber is giving them exactly what they deserve: a cold, hard reality check. 

Chalet on the Delaware

The people have spoken and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation has answered. Who knew? People like being on the water. I'll set aside my snarky remarks about the torrid history of Philadelphia's Delaware Waterfront for the positive direction it's taking.

Riding the success of the Spruce Street Harbor Park, Penn's Landing is being transformed into a Swiss ski chalet this winter. The RiverRink has been a hit for years, but in the past the waterfront has offered little else in its colder months. This year, RiverRink will have to compete with Dilworth Park's much more convenient and scenic iceskating rink. And they're doing it right.

Two tents known as The Lodge will be outfitted with cozy sofas and rocking chairs, and - of course - Garces Events will be bringing the menu. Remember Stephen Starr? What ever happened to that guy?

Familiar to those who frequented the Spruce Street Harbor Park, the retrofitted shipping containers will be back and full of gifts from Art Star and arcade games.

But here's the best part, and something just so quirky and uniquely Philadelphian: salvaged materials including fireplace mantles and other architectural details outfitting The Lodge are from none other than the city's grande dame of Broad Street, the Divine Ms. L.

Can Preservation Be Proactive?

To look at Philadelphia from the river, we look like any other successful city. Office buildings dominate the skyline, historic steeples complement glassy towers, and from University City to Market East, the city continues to be redefined architecturally. 

But step inside and it's another story. We aren't a city that moves quickly. If New York and Chicago build like the Autobahn, Philadelphia's development climate can be summed up by the Schuylkill at 5PM any time of day.

We are a culture that caters to bureaucracy and neighborhood organizations that miss the mark, and it scars the landscape. As a city home to perhaps the nation's largest portfolio of architectural history and heritage, the fight to save our most beleaguered landmarks is often lost to decades of squabbles. What's worse, some of the most careless developers know this and use it to their advantage.

If you want to tear down a crumbling church for a parking lot or suburban strip mall, all you have to do is wait it out. No site in Center City knows this better than the historic Church of the Assumption on Spring Garden Street.

After years of on-again off-again bickering between developers, owners, the Historical Commission, and advocacy groups, a demolition permit has been issued to the building's current owner, John Wei. Considering all of the city's historical losses in the past forty or fifty years, placing a site on the city's Register of Historic Places almost seems like it ensures a building's inevitable demolition.

The current state of the church means it will almost certainly be demolished despite any appeals. It's just too costly to repair, at least in terms with what you could actually get out of such a space. Were it habitable, it would make a nice gym, theater, or nightclub. But its condition is not a technicality. It's falling apart.

The Church of the Assumption is unique. What happened to it, unfortunately is not. And I'm not just referring to the loss of a landmark. I'm talking about how it was lost. Call it what you want, but what happened to the Church of the Assumption boils down to a dysfunctional dinner table argument full of family members only tethered to each other by blood. While Grandpa was complaining about cell phones, the parents announced their divorce, and the daughter Tweeted the whole ordeal...the dinner rotted and ended up in the dog's bowl.

But this is a lesson Philadelphia's historical advocates are routinely offered but never learn. And it's going to happen again. The Spruce Parker Hotel was recently shut down after a small fire. It's not a historically designated building, nor should it be, but it's a beefy building on a prime corner. Without an eager buyer willing to upgrade the modest hotel, it will begin to deteriorate and we'll wind up with another surface parking lot in Center City.

Around the corner, the renovation of the Lincoln Apartments appears to have stalled. It may simply be that the logistics of rebuilding an aging structure from the inside out is too complex to show quick signs of progress. But it may also be that the effort has proven more complicated and costly than first thought. Old City recently learned the cost of letting a building drift into disrepair. As the Shirt Corner closed and promised a handsome 3rd and Market, it's twin burned leaving the corner with a vacant lot and a prime corner looking worse than ever.

So what's the point of this rambling rant? Well, for starters, true advocates need to be proactive, not reactive. It's understandable amongst community organizations. Members don't have time to be on top of every effort. They have jobs. But those charged with protecting history, being on top of the effort is the job. Fighting a fight at the eleventh hour rarely works, and this has been made painfully apparently time and time again. 

The Church of the Assumption will be torn down whether or not anyone wants to admit it. It's unfortunate, and I'm not being negative. I'm suggesting we looking for the next Church of the Assumption: Robinson's Department Store, The Roundhouse, The Health District Center. Start the fight before it's a fight. Proactively seek tenants not just with the means to preserve these landmarks, but with the desire for landmark properties. 

The City Hall Parking Lot

The west portal to City Hall, Dilworth Plaza, has been reinvented as Dilworth Park. Despite critical opinion, the public has spoken: new is better, especially when there's something to do. Now that the fountain has been transformed into an ice skating rink, one flanked by architecture as diverse as this city (take that, Rockefeller Center), it's found itself full of hundreds of tourists and locals enjoying the outdoors, even when it's brutally cold.

But prior to Dilworth's rebirth, you probably avoided its cracked sidewalks and impractical sunken plaza, the one with that piss smell. So you probably also didn't notice all the city employees who've been treating City Hall's north plaza like a suburban Walmart parking lot.

Well, someone took note. And then someone else. And then someone even started a Tumblr page about it.

Of all the quips about the absurdity of draping the city's most monumental feat of engineering with a make-shift parking lot, the best came in the comments section of PhillyMag.com of all places: "We have the walkability of Paris and the car-centric mentality of Dallas." We sure do, IR, we sure do.

It may seem petty. The city is growing as we speak. We're better accommodating bicyclists, we're keeping subway lines open later, we're even offering the unheard of notion of credit cards at transit stations. Market East is finally recognizing its potential, and will soon be rising. The same can be said for East Chestnut. 

So yeah, crying about a few (twenty) cars dwarfed by City Hall seems a bit silly. But while many Center City residents have long understood that parking is a privilege, not a right, the city that North Broad faces is largely another story. 

You don't even have to go to Vine to find ample parking on North Broad, and its side streets are flanked with additional parking. And when you finally do reach Vine, still a short walk from City Hall, you'll find Center City's dirty little secret (well, not so little, it's derelict parking lots cover acres of developable land.)

Meanwhile the cretins parking on the sidewalk around City Hall as if it's the Oregon Avenue median are pointing their middle finger at anyone who thinks they should be paying for the privilege of walking two blocks. 

Why, why, oh why, does City Hall require the overwhelming majority of new development offer parking spaces for the supposed sake of traffic and parking if City Hall doesn't require their employees to use them?

By the logic that parks City Hall employees on its sidewalks, we should have torn down the Logan Square neighborhood to accommodate employees in the upcoming CITC.

Again, it may seem petty, but it's representative of a bureaucracy that governs some of the greatest walkability in the nation but refuses to encourage it, or even accept it themselves.