The 76ers Center City Arena Will Dramatically Kill Center City! (Reading: live, train station)

[skintreesnail]

Originally Posted by FindingZen

Thanks for the illustrations!

I saw the temp bus station the other day but it didn’t appear to be open from the north side where I was walking. Perhaps I wasn’t close enough to see through the window glare.

I hope that multimodal building at 30th Street does come to fruition someday.

yeah, it really seems like a good idea to me, being right next to amtrak, regional rail, trolley, the el and highway. Really hope the full vision they have for the railyard overbuild with the added park land comes to fruition. Maybe something like a new stadium could kick-start it...

[PHILLYUPTOWN]

Originally Posted by FindingZen

The Market Street portion has seen better days, I’d agree.

The word Tony doesn't necessarily mean just upscale but upscale and understated/quiet. Old City is still an upscale destination as it has been for close to 30 years. Its not "tony" in that its not necessarily the art gallery/small business retail destination as it had been....the growth of Fishtown/NoLibs quadrant has sorta took its thunder.....but its still loud, and its still a nightlife destination, still a tourist hub.


Idk, I Worked in Old City for close to 10 years in the mid 00s to the mid 10s...back when there was a Shirt Corner on every corner, and plenty of abandoned storefronts and empty lots. Old City is better now in most ways than it has ever been...most of the old warehouses are now renovated. The casualty of all that is that idk if its the same nightlife hub that it was, or if Fishtown/NoLibs took over that function; Old City is more 104.5/WMMR and Fishtown/NoLibs is more WKDU/WXPN....both "demographics" used to be in Old City. But residentally its as good as it ever was.

[thedirtypirate]

The reason why I don't respect the anti-arena people:


1. They won't acknowledge that Malls are dying which is bizarre and something most American's understand.


2. That the arena would be replace half the mall and the soon-to-be-closed Bus station


3. The very first day the arena was announced, an army of non-profit professional activists came to Philadelphia and told the people that their neighborhood would be "destroyed"


These are ghoulish and narcissistic people who have endless amounts of privilege and power who at the same time have no problem pretending to speak for working class and average Philadelphians. End of Story.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

The reason why I don't respect the anti-arena people:


1. They won't acknowledge that Malls are dying which is bizarre and something most American's understand.


2. That the arena would be replace half the mall and the soon-to-be-closed Bus station


3. The very first day the arena was announced, an army of non-profit professional activists came to Philadelphia and told the people that their neighborhood would be "destroyed"


These are ghoulish and narcissistic people who have endless amounts of privilege and power who at the same time have no problem pretending to speak for working class and average Philadelphians. End of Story.

Regarding item 1: I'm on the last day of a one-week vacation in my hometown of Kansas City right now, and as my friend and I drove around the metropolitan area, we passed the sites of four demolished shopping malls, three of which got replaced with big-box "power centers" and one of which sprouts weeds in its former parking lot. And I know of at least two other malls in this area that met the same fate.

Meanwhile, our very walkable first planned shopping center in the nation, the Country Club Plaza (begun eight years before Suburban Square: 1921, the same year the nation's first planned industrial park opened in Kansas City, Kan.), continues to do well, though most of the locally owned businesses that had been there have given way to chains.

Closer to home, while no malls have yet been completely razed in the Philadelphia area, at least two — Granite Run outside Media and Echelon in Voorhees — have been de-malled and turned into faux-Main-Street "town centers" with shops, offices and (in Granite Run's case, I think) even residences.

The Gallery makeover took place as all this was already well along, and it clearly hasn't worked out as the mall owners hoped. I don't know who approached who first, but — as I've said above — I suspect the Sixers chose this site because it gets rid of two problems at the same time. (I suspect that PREIT/Macerich actually put out the first feelers, but can't prove it.)

However, regarding item 3, some of the opposition does consist of actual Chinatowners fearful of being overrun/hemmed in further. I've spoken with some of them at Center for Architecture and Design events. These people see it in the context of a neighborhood that has been acted upon more than it has acted: a freeway along its north side that separated it from its Catholic church and parochial school, a convention center blocking any possible growth to its west, a proposal to build a ballpark across said freeway from its northwest corner, and so on. That all these moves were also opposed by Chinatown activists, that none of them have killed it*, and that the Gallery already exists, might lead one to conclude their fears are overblown, but given that each past action seems to have been taken without asking the residents for input first, maybe it's somewhat understandable.

And traffic on the neighborhood's streets IMO is a legitimate concern, given that none of them have more than two travel lanes and just about all of them would serve as access and exit routes for people driving to events (despite the site's unrivaled mass transit accessibility, I think it's a safe bet to say that not enough fans/concert-goers will leave their cars at an outlying rail station and take the trains in to avoid increasing congestion on the streets around the arena, only one of which (Market) could easily swallow the added traffic.

*and, tbh, the neighborhood has expanded northward across that freeway. Given that there's really only one block where it could expand eastward, and a subway line bisects that block diagonally, this northward growth makes some sense.

[Redddog]

Originally Posted by PHILLYUPTOWN

The word Tony doesn't necessarily mean just upscale but upscale and understated/quiet. Old City is still an upscale destination as it has been for close to 30 years. Its not "tony" in that its not necessarily the art gallery/small business retail destination as it had been....the growth of Fishtown/NoLibs quadrant has sorta took its thunder.....but its still loud, and its still a nightlife destination, still a tourist hub.


Idk, I Worked in Old City for close to 10 years in the mid 00s to the mid 10s...back when there was a Shirt Corner on every corner, and plenty of abandoned storefronts and empty lots. Old City is better now in most ways than it has ever been...most of the old warehouses are now renovated. The casualty of all that is that idk if its the same nightlife hub that it was, or if Fishtown/NoLibs took over that function; Old City is more 104.5/WMMR and Fishtown/NoLibs is more WKDU/WXPN....both "demographics" used to be in Old City. But residentally its as good as it ever was.

Agreed about Nolibs/Fishtown comparison.

My issues with OC are that we are seeing good places replaced with lesser places. Or persistent vacancies. OR redundant storefronts (Old city has dozens of Coffee Shops with 2 more announced this week. It's crazy.)

Walking up through Nolibs and Fishtown last night for Pizza Beddia, you see an area of town that is opposite of what we're seeing in OC. There are locals eating at upscale, diverse, crowded businesses. New infrastructure everywhere. Applications for liquor licenses in the few vacant storefronts.

The vibrancy is a stark difference.

[PHILLYUPTOWN]

Originally Posted by Redddog

Agreed about Nolibs/Fishtown comparison.

My issues with OC are that we are seeing good places replaced with lesser places. Or persistent vacancies. OR redundant storefronts (Old city has dozens of Coffee Shops with 2 more announced this week. It's crazy.)

Walking up through Nolibs and Fishtown last night for Pizza Beddia, you see an area of town that is opposite of what we're seeing in OC. There are locals eating at upscale, diverse, crowded businesses. New infrastructure everywhere. Applications for liquor licenses in the few vacant storefronts.

The vibrancy is a stark difference.

Back when I was there it was a thing that the old head establishment was trying to take the “heat” off of Old City. They succeeded in many ways; all the cool places are gone. I still miss Lucy’s Hat Shop…one of the only integrated bars in the city at the time.

[PHILLYUPTOWN]

Originally Posted by thedirtypirate

3. The very first day the arena was announced, an army of non-profit professional activists came to Philadelphia and told the people that their neighborhood would be "destroyed".

Absolutely THIS. It’s annoying.

[moneymkt]

The Arena would be like how MSG is in Manhattan, a place that you would catch the train or a cab to when going to a sixers game. Based on the location there would be no reason to drive to a sixers game unless you are going to a train station to park. That's why I can't understand why so many people constantly saying......"parking will be difficult"

[Hermit12]

Originally Posted by moneymkt

The Arena would be like how MSG is in Manhattan, a place that you would catch the train or a cab to when going to a sixers game. Based on the location there would be no reason to drive to a sixers game unless you are going to a train station to park. That's why I can't understand why so many people constantly saying......"parking will be difficult"

A lot of suburbanites have no interest in riding public transportation or walking a half mile through Center City to an arena.

[Pennsport]

Originally Posted by Hermit12

A lot of suburbanites have no interest in riding public transportation or walking a half mile through Center City to an arena.

I bet they will if the drive and parking process takes 2.5 hours. As mentioned above, a lot of NYC suburbanites prefer driving as well, but if you've seen Penn Station on a game day, you know that most have learned to take the subway in...