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Phase III included T. Rowe Price, a 500 unit 25+20 story apartment building U/C and then construction will immediately shift to an 8-story hotel adjacent to the apartment towers.
The final phase (IV) calls for "triplet" set of skyscrapers (~500', ~400', ~300') to the immediate west of Constellation Energy building.
Harbor East has done a great job in becoming cohesive and interesting. I also like the CCentral Ave improvements.
Not intending to rain on anyone's parade, but healthy skepticism is warranted these days. Unfortunately, unless developers are held to account, I fear we'll be seeing a lot more "bait-and-switches" with pie-in-the-sky proposals that don't match reality.
I would argue this hurt "master-planned development" in suburbia more than the city.
Also, often time new developments already has enough clients before they break grounds anyway. Not good news for the building those companies moved out of, though, as those now seats empty. The latter is what will really bite. Take Baltimore - once T. Rowe Price moves to Harbor Point, it's really a big "then what" for its existing HQ building (100 E Pratt) - right at Inner Harbor, at an area that badly needs redevelopment but also facing headwinds with the issue you stated (i.e. slowed down commercial building demand).
I would argue this hurt "master-planned development" in suburbia more than the city.
Also, often time new developments already has enough clients before they break grounds anyway. Not good news for the building those companies moved out of, though, as those now seats empty. The latter is what will really bite. Take Baltimore - once T. Rowe Price moves to Harbor Point, it's really a big "then what" for its existing HQ building (100 E Pratt) - right at Inner Harbor, at an area that badly needs redevelopment but also facing headwinds with the issue you stated (i.e. slowed down commercial building demand).
State agency is moving into 100 E Pratt if rumor has it.
Up until the area around 30th Street Station took off in the 1990s, the tallest building outside Center City was this 14-story tower erected in 1926 at the intersection of Broad Street and Germantown Avenue to house the National Bank of North Philadelphia, owned by the Bankers Trust Company of New York. Renamed for one of Bankers Trust's directors, Charles Beury, in 1930, it's better known by Philadelphians now for the prominent graffiti tag visible in the Street View photo (the tags belong to two separate taggers who knew each other; the tags are reversed on the building's north facade).
I refer to the intersection of Broad Street with Erie and Germantown avenues as "the Times Square of Philadelphia" not because it's as busy as the New York intersection (though it is fairly busy) but because it resembles that intersection in form, with a diagonal thoroughfare cutting across two principal streets on the city grid just east and north of where those streets intersect.
A La Défense at North Philadelphia station (where Broad Street and Glenwood Avenue cross) isn't a bad idea, and Broad/Erie/Germantown lacks a Regional Rail stop, but personally, I think the potential is greater for that sort of cluster at the latter intersection, which also sits atop a Broad Street Line express station but is also fed by seven city bus routes (including three that will take me between my Germantown home and the subway). I think it would also be a shot in the arm for the adjacent Tioga and Nicetown neighborhoods, and it would add more employment and activity to complement Temple University and Shriners' Children's hospitals two blocks south.
The lot it sits on and most of the lots along Broad, Erie and Germantown at this intersection are zoned CMX-3, which, like CMX-4, has a FAR (floor area ratio) of 500% (the total floor area of the structure may be five times that of the square footage of the lot), with FAR bonuses available in certain cases, but a zoning overlay applied to its City Council district outlaws them. The lots at the SE corner of Germantown and Erie avenues (where Max's Steaks is located, for anyone who saw the movie "Creed") are zoned CMX-2, however, and that zoning district has a 38-foot height limit (bonuses available for certain uses but outlawed by the overlay here).
Edited to add: The properties on the block beneath which North Philadelphia subway station sits and the lot that contains the Amtrak North Philadelphia station are also zoned CMX-3 and covered by that same Council district overlay that bans the FAR bonuses. Two lots adjacent to the subway station entrances are zoned I-1 (light industrial) and I-2 (medium industrial); the block with the subway station includes two large old factory buildings.
I think the two areas are close enough that perhaps they can build into each other, but the reason why I think a La Défense sort of building around the North Philadelphia station makes the most sense because with the Center City tunnel and through-running essentially *all* regional rail trains pass through the North Philadelphia and North Broad Street RR stations alongside NJT Atlantic City and some Amtrak. Philadelphia has what's possibly the lowest hanging fruit of all US cities in terms of getting to a truly world-class and not just good among US cities mass transit system and that's via running SEPTA Regional Rail as a S-Bahn (even better if slightly expanded back out on its old diesel lines and incorporating NJT Atlantic City which can both be rapidly done with battery electric multiple units) with high frequencies. That means the Glenwood area would have transit capacity that's probably orders of magnitude higher than anything that can be managed further up at Broad, Erie, and Germantown, but that are at least close enough that they would be helped as well.
I didn't say that, I said that requiring skyscrapers make no sense. They don't build skyscrapers in Europe and it still has booming neighborhoods.
And a booming neighborhood isn't some out-innovating world beating phenomenon, it's just a booming neighborhood.
Another important barometer that I'm guessing none of the places suggested as "booming" would register on is land newly included into the official urban area (that was previously classified as rural/other). I know Austin has done this with 100 square miles.
To some, using that and residential skyscraper (where its applicable) development as a yardstick is more meaningful than "its booming because I say it is."
Another important barometer that I'm guessing none of the places suggested as "booming" would register on is land newly included into the official urban area (that was previously classified as rural/other). I know Austin has done this with 100 square miles.
To some, using that and residential skyscraper (where its applicable) development as a yardstick is more meaningful than "its booming because I say it is."
To each his own!
So you're not even talking about booming neighborhoods but new developments in suburbia? Because neighborhoods within a city are already in the urban area. And if you're taking about suburban developments, then that's pretty wild.
And to others, a booming neighborhood doesn't require skyscrapers. You know, like the rest of the world.
Well first, cities don’t build skyscrapers, private developers do. Apart from zoning laws & FAA, cities have zero control on what is proposed and built in them.
The only bar is “aesthetics”.
DC gets along just fine without skyscrapers. The end result is still hundreds of new residents a year in the neighborhood regardless of how they’re being housed.
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Those zoning laws seem pretty important though, that's why I said D.C. probably has, even for low rises, spatial zoning/parking restrictions that you wouldn't see pretty much anywhere else.
If you're a mid sized metro with perfect building conditions and no height restrictions that's hyping yourself as "booming", probably not a very good look when no one wants to build a skyscraper in your city.
So you're not even talking about booming neighborhoods but new developments in suburbia? Because neighborhoods within a city are already in the urban area. And if you're taking about suburban developments, then that's pretty wild.
And to others, a booming neighborhood doesn't require skyscrapers. You know, like the rest of the world.
Hollywood was just a suburban development at one point, annexed out of rolling hills and tumbleweeds.
Yes, that Austin took land that was rural and developed it to the point where it could be counted in the urban area is much more exciting to me than "hey look at this street south of downtown in 2008......compared to today with those bike lanes and a Dave's Hot Chicken!"
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