Quote:
Originally Posted by mPhilly
Why is the roof top idea so bad? There are enough residences here alone to keep a restaurant or two a night in business. I would personally love to have a destination like this two stops down on the Broad Street line.
And as Londonee has pointed out, this will be the most urban thing around if it gets built. How can you knock it for lack of urbanism?
I totally agree in CC proper this would be terrible, but at Broad and Washington, this seems perfect.
These residences will fill in the current climate. I think we all know that. The south side of the Broad Street line is convenient and underutilized and this location is excellent for city dwellers wishing to keep a car or with a reverse commute.
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First off. You should rework your math on those restaurants. Even if I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assume that there are 2 small restaurants on roof that only seat 40 people each and each residential unit is packed with 3 people, for these restaurants to be successful every resident in the building would have to eat at one of the restaurants about once every 2 weeks. Most people don't eat out that often, and those that do, don't tend to go to the same restaurant every time they eat out.
So no, while 1,000 residential units would certainly help fill demand, these restaurants could not be sustained by the residents alone. And judging by the proposal, Blatstein is expecting more than 2 small restaurants up there. Any restaurant on this roof is absolutely going to need to bring in people from elsewhere in neighborhood and the city if they are going to survive. And honestly the restaurants on the roof are the least of my concern. A restaurant on the 4th floor of this building with a big balcony where people can sit outside is a really cool idea. It's certainly a gamble, but it's at least a sound gamble, if done right, I could definitely see something like that becoming a destination.
The issue is there aren't just restaurants on the roof, Blatstein wants a whole damn Village up there. And while a destination restaurant or two with unique amenities and views could survive without a street presence and foot traffic, small retail boutiques absolutely will not. The idea that they could is so absurd it's hard to even contemplate what Blatstein is thinking. Retail is such a tough competitive business and foot traffic is key. Even on established retail corridors like N 3rd Street in Old City that see a ton of residential and tourist foot traffic, businesses struggle to survive. The idea that Blatstein thinks he's going to bring even half of that foot traffic to his rooftop Village on a beautiful summer day is unlikely. In the winter? Are you fucking kidding me?
I don't knock it for a lack of urbanism in the sense that it isn't large or urban enough. I appreciate the scale and ambition of this project and this corner right here is perfect for a huge large scale project like this to take advantage of subway access and energize these neighborhoods. What I'm talking about here is really more about poorly executed urbanism, ignoring basic principles of urban design.
It's not just that the rooftop village is a bad idea. It's also not a very productive idea. Let's say the village is more successful than it has any right to be. What does that even do for the vibrancy of the area? With everyone on a roof? Instead of bringing people and activity to street level to energize the area, this project actually sucks people off the street and replaces a barren parking lot with a nearly equally as barren blank walls of a big box store.
Too often I feel Philadelphia projects lack ambition, that isn't the problem here. But it's even more frustrating for a design with so much ambition to get so much wrong.
All that said, I'd take it over this parking lot in a second. Which brings me to the reason I hate it the most. It's not getting built. No way, no how. He had a CMX-5 zoning here and he built something that needs variances anyway and has its tallest parts of the building hovering over a high school and a residential neighborhood. He's in for a fight with neighbors, and his recent track record of accomplishing anything in this city is worse than the Sixers. Zero confidence he builds this. Color me shocked if a shovel breaks dirt here within 5 years. This embarrassing lot will continue to mar this city, likely until blatstain sells it because he's clueless and perhaps went insane drinking wine in a Village in Provence.
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