Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbrook
Sometimes CDR (and community opposition) successfully shames developers into improvements. But Toll is probably shameless. I'm not sure what other system could work. Outside of extreme cases, an "aesthetic review" gets very subjective. I do agree that Philly is turning out a lot of bad buildings unfortunately. I'd like to figure out a way to address it. But it's hard to regulate taste in any tenable way.
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In 20-20 hindsight the City dropped the ball a long time ago on two fronts – by keeping the block zoned CMX-5 and by not designating it as a small historic district. The zoning is probably the most important element, since it's so easy to get historic designations overturned for hardship and some of the buildings might have been considered non-contributing (within a Philadelphia historic district you have 3 classifications: significant, contributing and non-contributing).
A historic district is a collection of historic resources that are linked geographically or thematically. Every resource within a historic district is classified as Significant, Contributing, or Non-Contributing. The classifications are listed in the inventory of the historic district. When the Historical Commission reviews a building permit application for a Significant or Contributing resource within a historic district, it seeks to protect the individual resource as well as the historic district as a whole. When it reviews a building permit application for a Non-Contributing property within a historic district, it seeks to protect the historic district but not necessarily elements of the Non-Contributing property.
http://www.phila.gov/historical/register/Pages/districts.aspx
Interestingly, the Society Hill Historic District abuts Jewelers Row and even includes the single block of Sansom east of it and the block of Walnut parallel to Jewelers Row. True fact®. See map linked below:
http://www.phila.gov/historical/PDF/Society%20Hill%20Map.pdf
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