PHILADELPHIA | Highrise Development Thread IX

[Plokoon11]

Yeah let's get back on topic and talk about Wendy's.

[summersm343]

One Franklin Tower - 16th and Race - apartments/office/retail

Re-cladding has started

[summersm343]

Museum Towers II - luxury apartments - 188 FT - 16 FLOORS - COMPLETE

The highrise and townhomes are complete. They are finishing up the landscaping and repaving the sidewalks. The thread will be moved to the Completed Projects Archive shortly.







Thread here:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=7657418#post7657418

[summersm343]

Took a ton of photo updates today

Enjoy and Happy Holidays to everyone.

[ScreamShatter]

Originally Posted by that1newjerseyan

That would be a good place to put the Temple stadium

A stadium on North Broad is a terrible idea, especially in Temple's area. Temple's pending proposal is going to have 35k people parking on the west side of Broad, crossing Broad to east campus for tailgating, and then walking down a tiny Pollet Walk to cross Broad again to get into the stadium. After the game, all those people will have to navigate getting out of north philly on all those tiny one-way streets to the nearest interstates which are 2 miles away north and south.

I really don't understand the infatuation with stadiums and arenas. They make areas borderline unlivable or unfriendly for residents. I'd rather see money spent on making neighborhoods in the city more livable for the people who live here as to best retain residents in the long run.

[allovertown]

Hey, it's your resident downtown basketball arena apologist here to chime in and say I hate the Temple Stadium idea. The Linc is a world class facility and received very generous tax payer funding and tax breaks with the understanding that it would be used as a football field for our lovely state university. If the terms of Temple's new lease are really as terrible as they claim, then the city and state should step in and explain to the Eagles the situation. There is a great template for the what the Eagles should do on the other side of the state as the Pitt Panthers apparently have a beautiful relationship with the Steelers and the Rooney family and a very fair lease. The Eagles should basically match that lease or it should be explained to them that they are considered in violation of the agreements that brought them the money to build the stadium, and efforts will be made to take back every single dime of taxpayer money that was contributed to the Linc by any and all legal avenues available to them. Let's see how willing Billionaire Jeffery Lurie is to damage his relationship with the city and the state over a few million dollars, i'd guess, not very.

As far as Temple goes, I doubt the terms are as bad as they make them out to be, because it is clear they are so enamored with the terrible idea of building a stadium on campus. Placing a stadium on Temple's campus is an objectively terrible idea. As has been explained, the difference in size between a football stadium and a basketball arena is enormous. And while a basketball arena would be used somewhat frequently for it's main purpose, it would also be useful in hosting everything from conventions to concerts, a college football stadium isn't really good for anything beside college football games of which there are only a handful a year. So it really would sit empty most of the time. When it is used it would also be hell for neighbors and Temple football games have large rowdy tailgates. That's not really the case for Basketball, as Londonee pointed out and I agree with, basketball really is different than the other sports. It's definitely the only of the 4 major Philly sports teams where there is basically no tailgating culture, it's just a much more refined experience.

Plus it disheartens me that Temple is even trying to do something like this. It shows the current leaders of the school are trying to emulate other universities across the country instead of embracing how unique Temple is. If a prospective student cares a lot about going to a school that has a big football stadium on campus, they have hundreds of choices across america, that all basically look the same with the same boring rural campuses. Not many schools are located in the heart of one of the largest and most exciting cities in America. And while packing onto a subway line with your fellow students to head to your school's football games is not the common experience of most american college students, I don't see why it's objectively worse. Hell, when I went to Temple the team was terrible and yet I still look back fondly on the experience of the electric atmosphere of subway rides filled with Temple students singing and partying and having fun all the way down to the stadium. Temple is great, Philadelphia is great, embrace the one of kind nature of it all.

[jjv007]

I live at Temple and know I would definitely frequent more football games if not for the subway or bus ride to the Linc and back. It's simply a matter of convenience and time and turns a 3 hour affair into 5 or 6 hours. A serious student sometimes can't afford that.

[ScreamShatter]

Originally Posted by jjv007

I live at Temple and know I would definitely frequent more football games if not for the subway or bus ride to the Linc and back. It's simply a matter of convenience and time and turns a 3 hour affair into 5 or 6 hours. A serious student sometimes can't afford that.

They said students would frequent basketball games too when the Liacouras Center was built, but the attendance numbers have proven that wrong.

Let's also call it like it is -- student attendance to football games don't bring in revenue to the university to fund a stadium. So they'll be trying to bring alumni to campus. All good and noble. The problem is most of them will likely drive and that area isn't built to handle that. And then people having to walk back and forth Broad St is just a poor idea.

I have no problem with the idea of a campus stadium, but I think that location at Norris and Broad makes no sense.

[Boku]

Bringing this up because it was a topic of (civil) discussion last month when some of us questioned the president-elect's campaign promises to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and how it might affect urban areas such as Philadelphia.

Trump's commitment to infrastructure vow is being questioned

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20161220_ap_42810cc7616d44028f91259711a117ba.html

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to tamp down expectations last week, telling reporters he wants to avoid "a $1 trillion stimulus." And Reince Priebus, who will be Trump's chief of staff, said in a radio interview that the new administration will focus in its first nine months with other issues like health care and rewriting tax laws. He sidestepped questions about the infrastructure plan.

In a post-election interview with The New York Times, Trump himself seemed to back away, saying infrastructure won't be a "core" part of the first few years of his administration. But he said there will still be "a very large-scale infrastructure bill."

He acknowledged that he didn't realize during the campaign that New Deal-style proposals to put people to work building infrastructure might conflict with his party's small-government philosophy.

"That's not a very Republican thing - I didn't even know that, frankly," he said.

[thisisforreal]

Originally Posted by Boku

Bringing this up because it was a topic of (civil) discussion last month when some of us questioned the president-elect's campaign promises to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and how it might affect urban areas such as Philadelphia.

Trump's commitment to infrastructure vow is being questioned

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20161220_ap_42810cc7616d44028f91259711a117ba.html

Thanks, I wasn't quite depressed enough already.

Well, I came to this thread to post something from a NY thread that made me chuckle. I think you all will appreciate its snarky vibe.

Concerning shadows that skyscrapers cast over Central Park

[thisisforreal]

And then just now from the NY Times Upshot, a look at shadows of NYC (this is actually really cool to scroll through).

[TempleGuy1000]

I was listening to 97.5 this morning and Adam Schefter was on. He said that NFL officials had some planning meetings yesterday in the city and that they were a little upset because basically every single hotel room "in the region" was already booked due to multiple events going on that week.

Seems our hotel projects can't finish soon enough.

[Londonee]

Originally Posted by TempleGuy1000

I was listening to 97.5 this morning and Adam Schefter was on. He said that NFL officials had some planning meetings yesterday in the city and that they were a little upset because basically every single hotel room "in the region" was already booked due to multiple events going on that week.

Seems our hotel projects can't finish soon enough.

A 30 seconds Hotels.com search of hotels in Center City reveals this to not really be true at all?

[Redddog]

Originally Posted by Londonee

A 30 seconds Hotels.com search of hotels in Center City reveals this to not really be true at all?

I can't remember seeing more rooms available than right now.

[allovertown]

Originally Posted by Boku

Bringing this up because it was a topic of (civil) discussion last month when some of us questioned the president-elect's campaign promises to rebuild the nation's infrastructure and how it might affect urban areas such as Philadelphia.

Trump's commitment to infrastructure vow is being questioned

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20161220_ap_42810cc7616d44028f91259711a117ba.html

Very disappointing. Though hardly unexpected.

"That's not a very Republican thing - I didn't even know that, frankly," he said.

This guy would be a real crack-up if he wasn't leader of the free world.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by Londonee

A 30 seconds Hotels.com search of hotels in Center City reveals this to not really be true at all?

Originally Posted by Redddog

I can't remember seeing more rooms available than right now.

Just passing on what I heard! Lol. Maybe just trying to stir people up to book sooner than later.

[1487]

One franklin tower looks really different, it's going to be major improvement when completed, especially if they can do something decent with the ground floor retail.

[jsbrook]

Originally Posted by Schn3ll

If I wanted to hear a bunch of liberals clutching their pearls and fear mongering about our president I'd just turn on CNN.

Can we TRY to keep politics out of this architecture website? The Gawker network is that way --->

How do you know they're not conservative Republicans horrified at massive expenditures and unfunded tax cuts that will drive the deficit up Yugely? Plenty of people of all political ideologies are plenty concerned about PEOTUS. And this is not an "architecture website" per se. But, yes, let's try to avoid political discussion and try to stay focused on buildings and development. As for infrastructure, I was for infrastructure initiatives, but there's a need to do it right. Putting aside its economic impact (staying on topic, here, heh), building new roads to nowhere that will see little use is not really the type of development that most people on these forums look forward to. Or at least come here for.

[jsbrook]

Originally Posted by Londonee

A 30 seconds Hotels.com search of hotels in Center City reveals this to not really be true at all?

You don't know what week is at issue. TempleGuy did not identify the week in question. Just because there happen to be vacancies this week or next week doesn't mean there's not an under supply. When there are multiple events going on, Philly hotels often do fill up. Certainly desirable ones in locations near the event or where people want to say in core center city.

In the hotel business, it is standard to have some weeks with highish vacancies in most cities.

[1487]

Originally Posted by Schn3ll

If I wanted to hear a bunch of liberals clutching their pearls and fear mongering about our president I'd just turn on CNN.

Can we TRY to keep politics out of this architecture website? The Gawker network is that way --->

skip the thread and/or site altogether if you are that thin skinned. Problem solved.