urbanSTL

^One of those in Grand Center would be perfect, especially on the parking lots near Olive and Theresa.

Apparently Philadelphia not allowing record homicides slow them down.

Oh my . . . 



https://phillyyimby.com/2022/03/permits ... lphia.html

And the building just to the right is an absolute beauty too. Just an absolutely horrendous design made especially worse by being next door to an awesome original building.

I'm really jealous of this new fossil museum going up in Philly. Cool building, cool subject matter, and an active, on-site fossil bed. 

https://phillyyimby.com/2022/03/constru ... ip-nj.html

The Philadelphia Inquirer - LIGHTS. CAMERA. CRIME.
How a Philly-born brand of TV news harmed Black America.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/inq2/more ... 20329.html

Senior living, hotel to replace St. Charles Borromeo Seminary - WHYY article
Main Line Health plans a small hotel plus condos and more for the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary site - Inquirer article

So I'm posting about this not because it's that import but just because I think it's really freaking cool and I didn't know about this campus before this news came out. I'm also concerned about how much effect NIMBYs have already had and will have to prevent this project from reaching it's potential. It's a great location between a growing hospital and a regional rail station, the existing buildings are massive and beautiful, and there's a lot of undeveloped land to work with. 

Existing: 73 acres, 2 sprawling Catholic Seminary buildings each with large main entries and chapels. The larger of the 2 buildings is an incredible unique beaux-arts style I'm slightly obsessed with.

Planned:
600,000 sq ft of medical offices, 205 senior housing units, 175 condo apartments, 600 apartments along Lancaster Ave (not sure if that includes the senior housing units), New construction boutique hotel.
So I know this sounds like a lot, but IMO, not nearly enough. Given that it's surrounded by wealthy single family homes, there's no way this project is reaching its potential.

Site:

scbstrainhospital by A P, on Flickr

The owner of the hospital to the west recently acquired the entire site. After 2024, the seminary is moving to a university further out in the suburbs. The hospital will be relocating offices and add apartments to both new and existing buildings. I'm assuming the boutique hotel will be at the southeast end of the main building; also assuming / hoping the large chapel will be used as a wedding and event venue. Unsure what they could use the smaller chapel in the library building for. The catholic church apparently requires that all religious symbology be removed. I'm hoping this doesn't include the windows, I'm iffy on the frescoes in the apse (not in the photo below). 

You can also see the Overbrook train station within crawling distance to the east. This is on SEPTA regional rail's Paoli Line aka the "Main Line" which give the affluent part of the Philly suburbs its name, think of it as Philly's Chesterfield. It's by far SEPTA's busiest regional rail line with 20k riders per day in 2019. It will likely see higher ridership after SEPTA does a significant reconfiguration of the regional rail service in the coming years. Unfortunately renderings of the project really only show very low-rise development on the southwest half of the site.

In the article, the owners site using the historical courtyards as resident spaces, which I'm disappointed with. They would work as really nice beer garden / restaurant / outdoor event spaces. I obviously love the idea of adding residential to this site but I'd rather see the historic building used as offices to allow a much more public use and interaction with the historic buildings (also loud courtyard uses at night)

The Main Building entrance:
 

Main building chapel:


Library Building entrance:


Google Maps 3D view of the "courtyards"

scbscourtyards by A P, on Flickr

Seriously, why do all the ugliest buildings end up in Philly? 



https://phillyyimby.com/2022/06/26574.h ... -Qs9TxEESA

Jesus that's horrible, Kinda a shame cause of how cool Philly is as a city. The "industrial farmhouse" style was a mistake for humanity.

omg those fake shutters.

Whoa whoa whoa...what are they doing with the SS United States though??! What does this imply... 

^They've been trying to get the SS United States moved away from that pier for years now. The SS United States Conservancy periodically tries to get some plan together to see her revitalized and used for something. And they hold fundraisers to pay for berthing fees from time to time. (It's a huge sum of money to just leave her sitting slowly rusting.) I think the current plan is to move her to New York and turn her into a floating hotel and attraction. I'm pretty sure the powers that be in Philadelphia want to see her moved.

New Center City arena "76 Place" Rendering just dropped. Much more refined than previous renderings. 
The 395 unit residential tower with 20% affordable housing is new.



https://www.crossingbroad.com/2023/08/n ... tower.html

Some more context on this: The 76ers currently share an arena with the Flyers hockey team, who are owned by the arena owner. Obviously the 76ers sense some favoritism and aren't a huge fan of the rent they pay. This arena is on the south side of the city surrounded by massive parking lots it shares with the football and baseball stadiums. This is accessible by subway and features a small Cordish development (think phase 1 of BPV) but there's otherwise very little pre-game or post game experience. The new arena would not only move the NBA games to Center City (we don't use the word "downtown" here) but also concerts. This would also be very close to the convention center, hopefully offering a relationship similar to the America's Center and the Dome. The arena will sit on top of one of the major Regional Rail stations leading to this being called Philly's Madison Square Garden or TD Garden. Direct Regional Rail trips to the arena for games and concerts will be heavily utilized. The arena will be raised to maintain the daylight that enters that station (basically storefront windows overlooking the underground station). They're promising ground level entrances and retail on all four sides. I'm hoping for a well designed connection to the existing mall at lower and upper levels. The mall and regional rail station already share a great connection and relationship.

Now for the controversy. Immediately north of the proposed arena is a thriving Chinatown, easily one of the largest in North America. If you ever visit Philly, I can't recommend it enough. There are fears of gentrification. The Chinatown community has flyers posted in every storefront window opposing it. The arena itself wouldn't cause any direct displacement, a piece of a mall and a recently vacated Greyhound station will be torn down. These fears are largely based on the construction of an arena in D.C.'s Chinatown and correlative rapid gentrification around 2000. Supporters of the arena argue that the loss of D.C.'s Chinatown was already well underway and was a result of the city's drastic change in socioeconomics at the time.

Definitely let me know if you have any questions.

Granted, this new building faces an elevated rail line, but it sure looks weird with fake windows painted on the front façade:



https://phillyyimby.com/2023/09/constru ... htown.html

I don't know. It looks a bit strange in the rendering, but I love a good mural, and trompe l'oeil can be a great effect if done right. (I love the Edison Brothers warehouse, for instance. Though at leas the windows are real enough there.)

I regret that I didn't get the chance to ride that line. Was kind of hoping too this afternoon, but there's only so much you can squeeze into a couple of days. Damn, I wish we had SEPTA grade service. Trolleys in tunnels was somewhat eye-opening. We almost had that. I'm beginning go wonder if that might have saved our trolleys. And Kawasaki cars that look like PCCs with squared off noses . . . Man, they have some nice service here.

^I've been reliably told by many that Philadelphia is what St. Louis would've been today if St. Louis didn't make stupid decisions in the mid- to late-1900s. In some pictures and videos sent to me by friends who have been there, I can sort of see it. 

I think that's at least a little bit of an overstatement, as St. Louis has never in modern history been quite the size of Philly. Not since Cahokia fell into ruins. That said, yeah, there's some obvious comparisons. And Philly has its issues, doubtless. You get out of downtown and there's plenty of poverty and abandonment. But there really don't seem to be the sorts of gaps in the core that we suffer. Nor quite the same degree of highway carnage, though they too have their highway scars. (There's one separating downtown from the river there as here.)

Chris Stritzel wrote: ↑

Sep 03, 2023

^I've been reliably told by many that Philadelphia is what St. Louis would've been today if St. Louis didn't make stupid decisions in the mid- to late-1900s. In some pictures and videos sent to me by friends who have been there, I can sort of see it. 

Everything about Philadelphia's urbanism comes down to its narrow streets. St. Louis was also done in by its requirement to separate most houses, automatically reducing density by about 1/5 - 1/3. With plenty of room for curbside parking and fewer residents competing for space, St. Louis City was primed and ready for rapid car adoption. 

^I'm reasonably impressed with their transit. Didn't get to ride all of it, but much of it really seems to be historic trolley infrastructure, much like what we once had, though shoved through tunnels downtown. Which . . . we had actually planned to do. Philly was always going to be the bigger city by virtue of its position on the coast, but we did ourselves real malice when we pulled up our tracks. We really should have incentivized the commuter trains too. Taken them over when we had the chance.

There are lessons to be learned here. But anyway, it was a most pleasant trip. And yeah, I do believe Philly really is my favorite east coast town. My memory is not playing funny tricks on me. It has its issues, just like us. I suspect there's block by block areas. (There certainly appear to be.) But it basically seemed to work. And with a few exceptions it seems comparatively unpretentious. Not a bad town at all.

^ My thought is that our failure to construct a subway/rapid transit sytem in the early 20th century when we had robust density levels similar to Philly was a big loss.  We still would've lost population from our peak, but I think the decline would have been less precipitous and the central city would"ve remained much more robust if we had had rapid transit like Philly. 

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

Sep 08, 2023

^ My thought is that our failure to construct a subway/rapid transit sytem in the early 20th century when we had robust density levels similar to Philly was a big loss.  We still would've lost population from our peak, but I think the decline would have been less precipitous and the central city would"ve remained much more robust if we had had rapid transit like Philly. 

I have no hard data to support this POV - just my basic knowledge of STL history -- but I feel like the biz and political leaders of STL in the early-to-mid 20th century were *excessively* in on the take of how the region developed with teardown and sprawl.   

At a disproportionately higher level, the biz and political leaders of STL in the early-to-mid 20th benefited monetarily from from teardowns and sprawl.  The Arch grounds demo for instance - wasn't there's all kinds of fraud or BS there? $$ kickbacks?

Related to this proposed subway/rapid transit system, the biz and political leaders of STL in the early 20th century weren't going to see enough $$ from it, so they killed it.

again, no real idea, but, well, STL was top-5 city of national importance for a long time....now we're here.

Yeah, yeah, not really about Philly but just wanted to make that comment. 

soulardx wrote: ↑

Sep 08, 2023

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

Sep 08, 2023

^ My thought is that our failure to construct a subway/rapid transit sytem in the early 20th century when we had robust density levels similar to Philly was a big loss.  We still would've lost population from our peak, but I think the decline would have been less precipitous and the central city would"ve remained much more robust if we had had rapid transit like Philly. 

I have no hard data to support this POV - just my basic knowledge of STL history -- but I feel like the biz and political leaders of STL in the early-to-mid 20th century were *excessively* in on the take of how the region developed with teardown and sprawl.   

At a disproportionately higher level, the biz and political leaders of STL in the early-to-mid 20th benefited monetarily from from teardowns and sprawl.  The Arch grounds demo for instance - wasn't there's all kinds of fraud or BS there? $$ kickbacks?

Related to this proposed subway/rapid transit system, the biz and political leaders of STL in the early 20th century weren't going to see enough $$ from it, so they killed it.

again, no real idea, but, well, STL was top-5 city of national importance for a long time....now we're here.

Yeah, yeah, not really about Philly but just wanted to make that comment. 

Regional leaders also failed in the 60s-70s when they failed to build a system similar to MARTA, BART, and WMATA, which I imagine would have caused redevelopment to start earlier in my opinion.

Now, I think we are doing the same thing with Metrolink. Dallas, Denver, Charlotte, Seattle, Minneapolis, etc. are going big on light rail and have real plans for expansion. Since the cross county debacle, we've let the local media, know nothing politicians, and every pessimist in the world tell us we don't need Metrolink expansion, but why start it if you're not going to finish the system? All this wasted time has really inflated the cost of expansion and meantime the region is becoming less competitive.