Quote:
Originally Posted by McBane
This seems a little far fetched. Why would anyone build a giant parking garage at Broad and Wash? . . . . . What are the major attractions near Broad and Wash that will fill up a multi-level full square block parking garage? I'm not buying this theory.
|
Certainly no more farfetched than building a Provencal rooftop shopping village in the middle of a semi-blue collar neighborhood.
Why would Bart build a garage smack in the middle of an empty lot in the middle of NL? People live near by and parking is getting harder, I guess.
Mainly, though, I think he thinks that the only way to attract big box retail in South Philly is to have hundreds of parking spaces. He's convinced that people in South Philly remain car dependent. So if he builds the garage - or gets the rights to build the garage - then he'll be able more easily to build a giant cheap generic stacked up big box center, or flip the concept.
I could see him building the garage and a cheap multi-story big box retail cube himself. But I imagine the residential tower will be pushed off to a distant future phase that may well be flipped to somebody else.
It's just my gut says Blatstein really has no intention of developing the residential tower anytime soon as he thinks of this mainly as a cheap car-oriented (albeit multi-story) big box retail center. he knows how to do that kind of stuff fast and cheap.
He's clearly not interested in creating a good urban design. i think he wants a car-oriented development because they're relatively easy to pull off cheaply or flip to other cheap developers looking for a relatively quick easy buck.
Blatstein is really becoming a negative influence in this town. He's just incredibly tasteless.