Philadelphia 2035 (Reading, Franklin, Gap: wages, malls, suburban)

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly

Why is Santa Monica, Ca being compared to Center City in the first place.
Center City should be able to destroy Santa Monica when it comes to mass transit. What an odd comparison to make.

Exactly. Compare CC to Downtown LA.

[drive carephilly]

... I'd rather have more mid-rise buildings before I had one or two more giant skyscrapers soaking up all the demand for square footage. When the market returns there will be more proposals for big office buildings. Personally i'd like to see the wrecking ball taken to the Gallery so the Aramark Tower could have some company. Some more height east of City Hall would be a nice balance and right over Market East Station is the perfect place.

Also - there are plenty of US cities with killer skylines that have absolutely nothing doing on the street. You can't really beat our city when it comes to scale and street life in Center City and all the neighborhoods around it.

[rotodome]

I think the Santa Monica thing just came up as a warning of the perils of overdevelopment from someone who spoke from their experience, and in that sense I don't think it was out of place at all.

Open space, parkland and recreational space needs to be developed at a proportionate rate to everything else, IMO, if you want CC to remain a great place to be. Someone subsequently brought up Manhattan as an example of a place that's more densely developed than CC, but remember that they also deliberately sacrificed a huge chunk right in the center of the island to open space when all that development was really taking off to counter it, and enormous resources have been poured into new and improved park spaces since then.

That said, I'm happy that progress has been made in recent years on improvements to the open spaces in CC, because it's a quality of life issue that does get ignored too often.

[Marius Pontmercy]

Originally Posted by drive carephilly

... I'd rather have more mid-rise buildings before I had one or two more giant skyscrapers soaking up all the demand for square footage. When the market returns there will be more proposals for big office buildings. Personally i'd like to see the wrecking ball taken to the Gallery so the Aramark Tower could have some company. Some more height east of City Hall would be a nice balance and right over Market East Station is the perfect place.

Also - there are plenty of US cities with killer skylines that have absolutely nothing doing on the street. You can't really beat our city when it comes to scale and street life in Center City and all the neighborhoods around it.

The Gallery actually has pads for several high rise structures within it, they've just never been built on. Demolishing the Gallery would be an incredibly expensive and painful task, since its basically straddling the Regional Rail tunnel and MFL. IMO, you'd do better gutting it and just repurposing the structure. Build on the high rise pads to include office and especially residential space. Turn the street level retail from an inward facing mall to outward facing shops. The upper levels, which never did well as retail, I would turn to office space. The lower level which is mainly a food court and transit concourse has probably been the most successful part of the Gallery and can probably survive as is.

Knocking down the Girard block across the street and building on the Disney Hole at 8th and Market are two other big projects on that stretch. Hopefully one day their potential is realized.

[drive carephilly]

Originally Posted by rotodome

Open space, parkland and recreational space needs to be developed at a proportionate rate to everything else, IMO, if you want CC to remain a great place to be. Someone subsequently brought up Manhattan as an example of a place that's more densely developed than CC, but remember that they also deliberately sacrificed a huge chunk right in the center of the island to open space when all that development was really taking off to counter it, and enormous resources have been poured into new and improved park spaces since then.

That said, I'm happy that progress has been made in recent years on improvements to the open spaces in CC, because it's a quality of life issue that does get ignored too often.

absolutely agreed that open space is important. we could definitely do a better job in funding the space we have but I still feel like Center City already has what it needs. Central Park was set aside, in part, to make up for the almost complete lack of preserved park space south of it.

Center City has the 4 squares, the Parkway, the expanding Schuylkill River Trail, Independence Mall and associated parks and gardens, Fitler Square, Starr and Seger Rec Centers . . . and of course we have the hardscape public spaces like Dilworth, Love Park, Penn's Landing, etc. and it's also looking likely that the Reading Viaduct is going to wind up as a combination of green space/plaza.

I don't think Center City is ever going to have the problem that Manhattan or Santa Monica has . . . but to be fair, Santa Monica has been built out for quite some time. The lack of park space there didn't happen over the last 30 years.

[kidphilly]

Originally Posted by drive carephilly

absolutely agreed that open space is important. we could definitely do a better job in funding the space we have but I still feel like Center City already has what it needs. Central Park was set aside, in part, to make up for the almost complete lack of preserved park space south of it.

Center City has the 4 squares, the Parkway, the expanding Schuylkill River Trail, Independence Mall and associated parks and gardens, Fitler Square, Starr and Seger Rec Centers . . . and of course we have the hardscape public spaces like Dilworth, Love Park, Penn's Landing, etc. and it's also looking likely that the Reading Viaduct is going to wind up as a combination of green space/plaza.

I don't think Center City is ever going to have the problem that Manhattan or Santa Monica has . . . but to be fair, Santa Monica has been built out for quite some time. The lack of park space there didn't happen over the last 30 years.

Lets also not forget Santa Monica has this framing one side of the town.

I actually really enjoy Santa Monica; one of the better places in the US in a lot of ways'



the beach in Santa Monica | Flickr - Photo Sharing!



Santa Monica | Flickr - Photo Sharing!


Santa Monica Beach | Flickr - Photo Sharing!


Even the 3rd street Promenade while not a park is very pedestrian firendly (as is a large part of the town)

3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, CA | Flickr - Photo Sharing!


And this market anywhere is a tremendous improvement in ones qualiry of life IMHO, realy is a special farmers market, sadly while good ones on the east coast this is trule special, and happens every day of the year


Swiss Chard Stems at Santa Monica Farmers Market | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[kidphilly]

http://phila2035.org/wp-content/uplo.../SummaryLS.pdf

Back on topic one of the 18 neighborhood plans for Philadelphia 2035

[rotodome]

Originally Posted by drive carephilly

absolutely agreed that open space is important. we could definitely do a better job in funding the space we have but I still feel like Center City already has what it needs. Central Park was set aside, in part, to make up for the almost complete lack of preserved park space south of it.

Center City has the 4 squares, the Parkway, the expanding Schuylkill River Trail, Independence Mall and associated parks and gardens, Fitler Square, Starr and Seger Rec Centers . . . and of course we have the hardscape public spaces like Dilworth, Love Park, Penn's Landing, etc. and it's also looking likely that the Reading Viaduct is going to wind up as a combination of green space/plaza.

I don't think Center City is ever going to have the problem that Manhattan or Santa Monica has . . . but to be fair, Santa Monica has been built out for quite some time. The lack of park space there didn't happen over the last 30 years.

Well..."complete lack" is a bit of an overstatement, as there are actually several other parks in Manhattan south of Central Park that are on the scale of the squares (sure, some of them may have been used as potter's fields and such in the 19th century...but then, so were some of the squares in Philly). New parks have been built even as recently as last year, and the riverfronts have been similarly developed to the Schuylkill river trail. Not to mention all the unconventional new public spaces, like the Highline, 6 1/2 avenue, the piers, etc that have been created in the Bloomberg era. Even Times Square has been largely given over to public space recently. But I don't think we're really arguing here.

I agree that Center City arguably has what it needs, for now (though certainly with room for improvement), but I was just saying that new development - especially residential - needs to be balanced with development of public spaces. IMO Penn's Landing and the Delaware waterfront is really the key, as it's the only great big open space that immediately borders CC. I think planners see that too, which Is why I'm really rooting for this new plan!

[RightonWalnut]

The redevelopment of Market East is very simple, and demolishing the Gallery is not the answer.

1. The Gallery needs a facelift. Possibly add signage and billboards like Times Square, and the bottom needs to be opened up with retail facing Market to add to a more pedestrian friendly experience. Here pedestrians could enter stores from Market Street or enter the Gallery.

2. The Gallery needs to be a middle class shopping and tourist destination. I'm thinking of Abercrombie and Toys R Us and Gap's, etc. in the Gallery, it does not need to be high end shopping like Walnut, but it should be middle class shopping like Times Square. Also bars and restaurants and Theaters and possibly a movie theater here would be a great addition. Like someone said before, multiple hotels in this area where tourists could walk out into a 24 hour tourist destination would be ideal.

3. I believe there are 3 or 4 palettes that can hold high rises on top of the Gallery. This is not the place for residential but I think this is a great spot for two hotels and two office buildings when the demand calls for them.

4. The entire South side of Market East needs to be redeveloped from 8th and Market to 12th and Market. I'm thinking a mix of highrise and midrise office, residential and hotel space would do the trick. There is nothing even remotely attractive or worth keeping on this stretch. Knock it all down and rebuild (except for that gorgeous building at the corner of 9th and Market, what is that place?)

5. Lastly, fill the parking lot at 13th and Market with highrise... why is this lot even here?


With this done, development can start to push outward, filling the empty lots, parking lots and underutilized lots south of Market Street as well as filling all the lots North of Market around Franklin Square and throughout Chinatown and redevelopment of that small neighborhood North of the Convention Center. Oh, and something needs to be done about that Greyhound Station just north of the Gallery.

[rotodome]

The big problem with the Gallery is that its main pedestrian level is removed from Street level, both physically and also visually. The original planning vision for Market East still had the same idea of an interior mall, with a sub-street-level main concourse which connected with transit. But it had office towers above (which, yes, the Gallery could potentially be retrofit with to some extent), and more importantly - the mall interior had a strong visual connection to the city, from within and without, which is a much better way to do a mall in the center of the city. One that wouldn't isolate itself and suck all of the pedestrian activity off of the street, as the Gallery did even before it was a dump. The trouble is that they gave the development contract to a suburban mall developer, who designed it to work like a suburban mall - engaging the surrounding city similarly to the way suburban malls engage their parking lots. That's the reason why the Gallery, even in its better days, never really did anything to improve Market Street, even after all the money that was sunk into building it. IMO to fix it now would require a major reconfiguration that might actually end up being just as difficult as knocking it down.