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Archive: November, 2012
Developers and conservationists have been haggling for months over whether a 50-foot (or 100-foot or 25-foot) stream buffer would be a logical protection to put in place along Philadelphia's waterfront. Today, legislation to do just that finally moved out of committee — but not without one last fight.
Craig Schelter of the Development Workshop, a business coalition that has recently found itself at odds with various city-planning efforts, described a "thriving electronics recycling business" that was liable to move out of the city if it couldn't expand on its plot along the waterfront at Orthodox Street. "They could be forced to a new location," he said. "Do we really want to characterize our message to the investment community that one needs special exemptions from the Zoning Board of Adjustments" to do business? "If companies can't expand because they are hemmed in by that [waterfront-buffer rule] that would be a tragedy."
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A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Southeast Corner of Locust and Hutchinson streets -- This spot looks pretty innocent but it hasn't seen a building in over 70 years -- and probably will last another 70. This pile of shit snuck its way into existence and has managed to keep itself flat as fuck for a long goddamn time. Could there ever be a future for this lot? All signs point to "FUCK NO."
Not only is it sad that this lot goes unbuilt, it's also unmarked. This particular location is a major historical site for Quakers, African Americans and Italian Americans. The history of this lot begins with Quaker abolitionist (and badass) Anthony Benezet. This French-born motherfucker was the dude that convinced Quakers that they should be abolitionists in the first place. In 1770, at age 57 (which back then might as well have been age 400), he founded the Negro School at Philadelphia on what is now the south side of this empty lot. This was one of the first Quaker-supported public schools for black children.
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| Conjectural image of Anthony Benezet made half a century after his death. He's saying, "There can be only one." |
In 1770, this lot would have been on the far western outskirts of the city. It was probably surrounded by vegetation and a shanty-town of wooden houses. As the city developed around it, the school took on different names -- the School for Black People and Their Descendants, the Raspberry Street School (Hutchinson Street was called Raspberry then), and, after Benezet's Death, the Benezet School.
In 1864, the Quakers wanted to open a Mission in the neighborhood, and figured the front lawn of the old Negro School was a good place to put it. The Locust Street Mission Association, as it came to be known, would then inhabit the north side of the lot. The building was built to serve poor African Americans and immigrants in the neighborhood. No less than three different schools ran out of this building at once. The Swarthmore First Day School (later John S. Hilles Memorial School), which taught illiterate Italian immigrants, the Bee-Hive School for Colored Children, which taught African-American children ages 5 to 12, the Joseph Sturge Mission School, and which taught illiterate African-Americans.
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It's official: Philadelphia voters cast 27,100 provisional ballots on Election Day 2012, about twice as many as in 2008. It's not yet clear what caused the problem, which forced droves of angry citizens to use a less dependable form of ballot. But the data finally confirms what should have been obvious to local media (but was not) for nearly a week: A problem surely did exist.
By Tuesday afternoon, reports from election workers and voters citywide indicated that large numbers of registered voters mysteriously not showing up on the rolls were being forced to cast provisional ballots. City Paper's story was posted at 2:17 p.m. Not so at Philly.com, the shared e-home of The Inquirer and Daily News, which resembled the homepage priorities at Fox News: a mural about Barack Obama was accidentally not covered up at a Northeast Philadelphia school cafeteria polling place. It dominated coverage all day. All. Day. Long.
Both papers included provisional ballot stories in their Wednesday editions, but editors seemed mysteriously resistant to acknowledging the story's importance — perhaps following the lead of the City Commissioners, who downplayed the issue all day on Tuesday.
If you, like me, are a sucker for a well-executed rendering, then you missed quite the event in the basement of the Bellevue last week. The subject of the exercise in idealistic draftsmanship was a vision for the Avenue of the Arts (aka South Broad Street) from City Hall to Washington Avenue. Developer Carl Dranoff, who has been positioning himself as the Avenue's patron, plunked down the money for the design competition, run by Avenue of the Arts, Inc. Judges including Dranoff, Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger, Center City District CEO Paul Levy, and Universal Companies CEO Rahim Islam will pick a winner this week.
And, they have quite a decision ahead of them. Four different finalists each presented intriguing visions for what South Broad Street could look like. If the money materializes, it could be pretty transformative stuff.
A couple developers proposed major parks at Broad and Washington. But Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects actually envisioned the park as a rolling hill that reaches over Broad Street, offering single-point perspective views down the Avenue to City Hall. Their plan starts small with temporary, buzz-building installations like mobile light displays, steps up to streetscape improvements and greening initiatives and concludes with big projects like the gateway development at Washington Avenue, with mixed-use buildings and the park with its "groundswell" bridge and space for performing arts, farmers markets and the like.
A park that runs next to and over Broad Street, by Jonathan Alderson Landscape Architects.
Artist Bruce Munro suggested a mobile light display for Jonathan Alderson's project proposal.
Stacy Levy, an environmental artist, concocted a plan for a living screen for the Sunoco station, part of the Alderson proposal.
LRSLA, which designed The Porch at 30th Street Station, went in a different direction. "The infrastructure is already in place. What we need is something that will attract people to the Avenue again and again," says LRSLA's Julie Bush, who imagines the avenue as something like Barcelona's Las Ramblas. The plan: a "kit" of options for use by an Avenue curator, who would put together events, food truck gatherings and arts happenings. As well, they're proposing a temporary Kunsthalle at Broad and Washington, which would host exhibitions and art installations until a permanent development came along.
LRSLA's Kunsthalle idea. Imagine if more temporary exhibition spaces went onto vacant lots in Philly until they could be developed.
If that sounds highly doable, well, not everyone went in that direction. After all, the proposals were meant to be big ideas, not bound by any specific price tag. Or, as one attendee asked a presenter at the event last Thursday, "So it has nothing to do with reality?" This was in response to the presentation by Cairone & Kaupp, Inc., which suggested eliminating all parking from the street, in favor of an avenue lined with trees and "curated art bubbles" for things like farmers' markets, parks, food trucks, sculpture gardens and workout spaces. They also suggested a mixed use development called "City-Zen Hall" at the Washington Avenue end of the strip, a counterpoint to City Hall. "At this stage, you have to think big," Cairone & Kaupp's Mike DeGregorio explained.
Finally, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's presentation focused on infill development — adaptive reuse of the area around the Carpenter Street subway station with a farmers' market; a transformation of the underground concourse; a pocket park on Broad Street across from the Kimmel Center. "The concept is tho think about those areas along Broad Street that are underutilized," explained Jeff Lew. They also created a plan for a park, about the size of Washington Square Park, at Broad and Washington, with a bridge over Broad Street to connect green areas, sculpture gardens and performances spaces. The whole thing would be tied together with the burgeoning North Broad (itself about to see a $15 million makeover) with elements like light masts running north and south from City Hall creating one "unified grand avenue."
Bohlin Cywinski Jackson's idea for a park hugging Broad Street at Washington.
New life around the Carpenter Street station.
Light masts running up and down Broad Street.
Over the past few weeks, word that City Council is looking to make changes to Philly's brand new zoning code has trickled down to civic associations around the city — and not all of them are pleased. As outraged as developers were at a City Council hearing a couple weeks ago — they said the changes in Bill 120656, which would, in particular require parking for certain multifamily homes in dense areas, would potentially put the brakes on planned developments — some community zoning advocates are also worried: That developers will shy away from their neighborhoods, that the zoning code hasn't even been tested yet, and that the number of building proposals that have to go through the red tape of obtaining special zoning variances will go way up.
"That people in civic associations are objecting should tell you something, because it would give us more power," says David Goldfarb, who is on the zoning committee of East Passyunk Crossing Civic (but is only speaking for himself, not the group). "This is contrary to most of the city that's already built, which is something that zoning should never be." He said he's heard from zoning reform advocates in other neighborhoods who are also concerned: they argue that the zoning code should be reviewed after a year, as the city had planned to do when it was enacted.
The changes, outlined in great detail here, could increase the number of appeals coming before community groups. Jordan Rushie of the Fishtown Neighbors Association says his group had finally seen the number of hearings slow down after the zoning code took effect two months ago. "We were having meetings almost every Tuesday, which is way more meetings than we're supposed to be having. We were overwhelmed with the amount of variances."
The impact along Frankford and Girard avenues in Fishtown — like Passyunk Avenue in South Philly — could be significant. "This bill represents poor urban planning and a devotion to an auto-centric environment that is not appropriate to an urban neighborhood like ours," Rushie added.
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Speaker John Boehner is boasting that, Republicans having maintained their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, there is "no mandate for raising tax rates." But it might not be true that a majority of Americans voted for a Republican House: the right may have stole the House, quite legally, through gerrymandering.
In 2010, Republicans took control of a record number of state governments just in time for the every-10-years redrawing of congressional district maps. And they drew them to make it extraordinarily difficult for Democrats to win, partaking in the shameless but ancient practice of gerrymandering.
Pennsylvania's (still somewhat incomplete) congressional election results are a case in point: 2,702,901 Pennsylvanians voted to send Democrats to the House, and just 2,627,031 voted for Republican candidates; yet an astonishing 13 of 18 Pennsylvania House seats were won by Republicans. In other words, Democrats won 50.7 percent of the House vote in Pennsylvania, but just 27.7 percent of House seats.
So the Inquirer has it straight from Steve Wynn that he's ready to go toe-to-toe with Bart Blatstein over the Philly's second casino license. And he wants to put it on the property of Cramp Shipyard owner Jim Anderson, the same who fought hard to keep the city from including his property in the newly minted and already-battered Master Plan for the Central Delaware. This would frame Penn Treaty Park with a duet of casinos in a way that William Penn could never have imagined.
For what it's worth, here's an alternative idea proposed in the Master Plan for how this general area might look someday.
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
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| This piece of shit scan from a copy of the Inquirer is the only surviving image of this proposal. |
As anyone who reads my little blog knows, I hate surface parking lots with a passion. What REALLY irks me, however, is when a surface lot stays barren for years on end because of a Dead-Ass Proposal. This is one of those proposals, one that contributed to the emptiness of a high-visibility lot for at least seven years.
Back in early 2004, Philadelphians were feeling the coming mid- to late-00's building boom. The office leases of several of the city's largest companies were coming to a close at pretty much the same time. Developers jumped on the chance to capitalize on the movement of these huge companies and started proposing new office skyscrapers for the first time in 15 years. On top of that, Keystone Opportunity Zones had just come to be, satiating developers with the thought of massive tax breaks on new developments.
Three large office projects were proposed in regard to this culmination of events. Brandywine Realty's Cira Centre, Liberty Property Trust's One Pennsylvania Plaza (Comcast Center) and this, Parkway Plaza, by Oliver Tyrone Pulver Corp. Parkway Plaza was to be built at the northwest corner of 15th and Arch, just across the street from LOVE Park. This particular corner had been a shitty surface lot for over a decade at that point, ever since 15th Street was widened as part of the Vine Street Expressway project.
This proposal generated excitement from Day One. Not only was Philly in line to get new office buildings, but a long-term empty lot would finally be abolished. The building's design was described as a "European-style" glass-walled skyscraper and was created by the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the Beastchitects behind the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) and John Hancock Center. The developer tried to get the space to be designated a KOZ, but failed.
The first major tenant to show interest in the new building was Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson). They were sick of their offices in the Butt-Fugly Centre Square and were ready to move into newer, more modern digs. Towers Perrin narrowed their moving options down to a few contenders, but later just said "fuck it" and stayed in their old offices. Rumor had it that they weren't going to move if they couldn't get some money from the public teat to do it. That didn't hurt Parkway Plaza's chances, however, because another large company showed interest in the building: Viacom.
City Commissioner Stephanie Singer, who replaced decades-long incumbent Marge Tartaglione in last year's city Democratic primary and became the commission's new chairwoman was ousted today in a motion by Republican City Commissioner Al Schmidt.
The motion, which established Schmidt as co-chair with Democratic City Commissioner Anthony Clark, was supported by the latter.
The move isn't totally surprising — there's been friction, to say the least, between commissioners Schmidt and Singer for some time. Singer dismissed a report earlier this year by Schmidt claiming to have found hundreds of voter "irregularities" (none of which amount to the specter of voter impersonation often cited as a reason for voter ID), and the two have clashed over other issues as well.
(Updated: CP) Following the Commissioners public meeting today, Singer cited tension between herself and Schmidt over the salary of Deputy Commissioner Dennis Lee, who works for Singer.
Singer said today that Schmidt (and Clarke) had blocked a raise of $12,000 she wanted to give Mr. Lee when he was promoted by Singer to the position of Chief Deputy — an amount Singer says would have simply brought Lee's pay in line with his predecessor, Noel Kugelmass, whose salary Schmidt had signed off on. Singer also noted that she felt it in appropriate to pay Lee, who is black, less than his predecessor, who was white.
In an email, Schmidt countered that Kugelmass had been "Chief of Staff of the Commission," and that Mr. Lee is a "Chief Deputy Commissioner," and as such makes $10k more than his counterparts in Clark's and Schmidt's offices. Singer says that Mr. Lee does "exactly the same job" as did Mr. Kugelmass.
Check back here for updates. Follow Isaiah Thompson on Twitter.
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