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Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
Different strokes for different folks. You want more Waterfront Square type development to appease your height boner.
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WFS is 3/5 complete and the develop never built the Horizon nor the Tides due to the 2008 recession. I'd love for WFS to be fully complete someday, as it seems like the economy is stable for such a project. Will it look the same, probably not, but it should complement the remaining towers.
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Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
I own property in both Northern Liberties and Fishtown. I want a functioning neighborhood that connects to the waterfront.
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Don't we all!!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
This is 1000% better than Bridgemans view and the World Trade Center. Also, can you stop waxing poetic about projects that were proposed in some cases decades ago and are literally completely irrelevant and were never economically feasible.
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Yes, different strokes for different folks. It's unfortunate that all the riverfront projects were proposed around 2007-2008 before the 2008 recession and the reason why those projects were cancelled was because they were all residential projects and since the recession made it harder to secure mortgages with lower interest rates and borrowing money was the hardest during that time, it made no sense to build Bridgeman's View, Trump Tower, Mandeville, etc.
I liked the concept of World Trade Square, even though that project never got properly planned and it was on it's way to the heap of never built projects, Mandeville looked very cutting edge and if I had to choose one of those cancelled projects I'd love to bring back, it would probably be the Mandeville, and Bridgeman's View was a project which aspired to bring height to the Delaware Waterfront.
My biggest concern is will Philadelphia ever grow to 2 or even 3 million people? While Chicago and NYC are seeing a slowdown and in some cases a decline, Boston, DC, and SF are experiencing double digit growth, Atlanta and Miami are still booming, and even cities like Phoenix, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston are currently exploding in population as high rise commercial and residential projects in those cities are elevating those cities to new heights as well as increasing their densities.
The project I just displayed does connect to the waterfront, but I'd rather see it in another part of the city than at the waterfront. Sometimes I believe that the planning the city makes is a liability for the city in general as well as the near future. I wouldn't be surprised if the Philadelphia city limits, the MSA, and the CSA gets knocked out of the Top 10 in 10 to 20 years. Part of it is commutes from outlying areas (Lehigh Valley and Lancaster County), another part is population growth, and the final part is the local economy. There are boosters in every city and Philly is no exception but sometimes you have to stop drinking the Kool-Aid at every project and be critical at times if you want to improve. I wouldn't be surprised if this forum had a lot of Inga Saffrons and she's probably one of the worst architectural critics I've ever heard of.