Quote:
Originally Posted by AbortedWalrus
I mean, sure, you can put up three or four year old screen shots if you want. Meanwhile Abats Auto Tags is now Jimmy Gs, the lot across the street next to Sal's is for sale, and the building on the other side is pretty if in need of work. But more importantly what people will actually be looking at is the JBJ Soul Homes which actually looks fine and will have commercial aspects. The empty lot behind the DL will obviously be cleaned up when the DL gets done, so posting it is sort of pointless, and I don't quite understand what's so bad about having the salvation army office space next door to a hotel. The former mens shelter is now Starr's catering headquarters and it's actually quite an attractive building.
Basically all this tells me is that you haven't actually been there in 2+ years.
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The divine lorraine could definitely work as a hotel that serves a function for Temple and downtown. Heck, Drexel is building a hotel. Penn has several on its campus. With the new proposal for the callowhill and broad buildings on both side of the street... something, if not a casino, happening to the Inquirer building, Blatstein's renovating building at spring garden and broad and all the investment going on in callowhill, you could say that North broad up to spring garden is going to be complete enough to support a hotel. From Spring garden to fairmount, there is a TON of single family row home development coming on both sides of broad, albeit not directly on broad. The development with two fancy restaurants on Mt Vernon and broad are great. Then the ostaria development at wallace. I think its well connected to city hall, or at least on its way to being well connected. From ridge to Temple, however, its a little of a desert of development. South of Girard will likely see growth. North of girard to temple... maybe. There is hope, but not much abuzz on the west and east side of broad north of girard, so there is less of a critical mass to make it nicer. I think north broad's potential comes when neighborhoods that surround it become safer, nicer, and more dense.
So the major impediments would probably be the large swaths of surface parking at spring garden and broad, the large green vacant land to the east, and the difficulty of development north of girard on broad. But with everything south of spring garden, the city putting tons of money in north broad, and the single family housing market to the east and west of broad south of girard, this could totally be used as a hotel.
What would probably make the most sense, however, is to make it a split like the SLS. Make half of it luxery condos, the other fancy hotel rooms, rent out the beautiful top floor as event space, and throw a restaurant or two on the bottom floor and I think they would have a better chance of turning a profit AND helping to increase density on north broad to support further developments.
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