Quote:
Originally Posted by summersm343
Madison Square Garden was built in the 60s. Why are we deciding what we do in Center City Philadelphia based off of 60s real estate trends? Terrible idea. MSG was also built in a portion of Manhattan which was dumpy at the time. Now, they're thinking about demolishing it.
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I honestly thought this was over with and was content to leave this where it was, but I just had to respond to this.
You have to be fair here and mention that every iteration of every plan to demolish MSG has involved either building a new arena on the same land as MSG with a new station beneath or building a new station at MSG's location and then building a new arena elsewhere in Manhattan.
You're acting as though the plan is to get rid of a downtown arena in Manhattan entirely. Like the idea of a downtown arena was a mistake of the 60s and now they're trying to correct that and have the Rangers and Knicks play in White Plains or something. That's simply not the case.
MSG is problematic and building a new arena in Manhattan presents all kinds of issues and is incredibly complicated. But none the less, no serious plan to move the arena out of downtown has even been floated because the truth is MSG or a similar arena is simply viewed as an outright necessity in NYC. So many people here keep ignoring the fact that there is reason why this is the case and there are some significant advantages to having a large venue directly downtown that can seat 18,000+ people.
Plus all this listing of the worst aspects of the worst downtown arenas is a total straw man argument. Saying a downtown arena is a terrible idea because it creates tons of parking, large blank walls, is dead most of the year, and is disconnected from the city around it, implies that these attributes are true of every downtown arena and must be true for a downtown arena in Philly. Simply not true.
Listen I'm not going to argue that tons of parking in Center City, or creating a structure that has large blank walls and sits lifeless most of the year would be a good thing. But why must our arena be a worst case scenario. It seems many here have a serious lack of imagination.
Does anyone realize how little room you need to create an 18,000 seat basketball arena? Not even 2 acres. To act as though there is no room for that anywhere downtown is disingenuous. Numerous blocks could support such a structure without removing streets or creating a super block or anything like that. This is not a baseball stadium we're talking about here. Unless people think we'll someday have a 500+ footer covering every inch of every block in CC, I don't see why a little bit of space can't be set aside for a purpose other than a skyscraper.
There is no reason to create a lot of parking or create a structure disconnected to the city. You could build something dynamic and lively that is accessible to public transit, capable of hosting large events, that from the street you couldn't even tell it was an arena.
In all my posts I never positioned a downtown arena as a slam dunk (pardon the pun). There are plenty of ways it could go wrong, but I think it's classic Negadelphian that we can't even imagine something like this being done correctly in Philadelphia.
Then again, maybe I'm more open to a downtown arena simply because I'm a sixers season ticket holder who lives in Center City and would love to be able to walk to an arena instead of taking two subway lines every time I go to a game.
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This is a thread about highrise development, not stadiums! 
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