Why We Can't Trust On-Line Polls

There was passion aplenty in response to my Friday column on Fox Chase Cancer Center's efforts to take over a third of Burholme Park so it can expand its medical operation. While it's all well and good and desirable for Fox Chase to grow and prosper, I took the position that it shouldn't do so by gobbling up public park land, especially when that land was bequeathed to the people of Philadelphia "forever" by the Burholme estate's former owner, Robert Waln Ryerss.

When I wrote that column, I assumed - naively, I guess - that I was pretty much arguing for the equivalent of mom and apple pie. Who could really take a hard-line in favor of paving over 20 acres of park?
Well, lots of people, it seems. If you read the on-line comments, you'll see many people think I am evil incarnate for favoring a park over a cancer treatment center. (Actually I think we should have both.) I was particularly surprised to see that the on-line poll the Inquirer sponsored favored Fox Chase's expansion by a landslide - 73 percent for Fox Chase, 27 percent for keeping the park intact. How interesting that so many people are willing to to get rid of a park. That bucks the conventional wisdom.

Then I received an email from a Fox Chase employee that made everything clear. It was sent out Friday afternoon by Fox Chase 's president. Remember it next time you look at one of those on-line polls.

Subject: Note from the President...Express yourself to the Inquirer

Dear Friends,
Some of you might have noticed an opinion piece in today's Inquirer that spoke negatively about our expansion into the park. Currently the Inquirer is conducting an online poll that will allow you to express your opinion as to whether we should be allowed to expand into Burholme Park.
I encourage you to log on to http://www.philly.com/ and cast your vote!
Sincerely,
Michael Seiden

BTW: The Sledding painting above is by Rob Lawlor, whose artwork is inspired by Northeast scenes.

Planning Starts for Downtown Casino

The Nutter Administration

isn't wasting any time in laying the planning groundwork for a Center City casino. No sooner did City Council approve the creation of a Market Street entertainment district yesterday , then the Planning Department and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. posted advertisements seeking five separate consultants to help the city prepare for the expected arrival of a Foxwoods slots parlor in the western end of The Gallery.

The job with the greatest implication for the city's future is the one listed third, calling for a firm capable of developing a strategic plan for the Market Street East corridor, from the Convention Center to Independence Mall, Chinatown to Wash West. The big reason that a Gallery-based casino has drawn such wide support is that many are convinced it will be the catalyst for new development on that tired street. Writing in the Center City District's Fall newsletter, Paul Levy argues that the casino will enable the city to use a special financing mechanism called a TIF to pay for infrastructure, transit and streetscape improvements, which would presumably make the street more attractive to hotels, retail and other development. It's astonishing how that once great shopping street has been allowed to languish. Poor Strawbridge & Clothier has been waiting for a suitor for well over a year. Which, of course, is nothing compared to the lifespan of the empty lot at 8th and Market - over 30 years. In the last few months, the number of empty storefronts has been increasing at an alarming clip.

Ideally, the development of the city's strategic plan will be accompanied by a vigorous public debate about how Market Street should evolve, similar to the open and lively conversations that occurred during the Penn Praxis study of the Delaware waterfront. Several people, including Levy in the Center City District newsletter, have been floating the idea of turning Market Street into Philadelphia's answer to Times Square, and allowing the same kind of exuberant lighting and signage. Just recently, the head of the Redevelopment Authority, Terry Gillen, who has been advising Mayor Nutter on the casinos, raised the possibility that SugarHouse may ask the city for a Market Street location - the obvious choice being the big empty lot at 8th and Market.

While Nutter says he strongly opposes a second downtown casino, it's not too early to start worrying that he could reverse that position. One casino, located on the third floor of the Gallery's anonymous box, is something, I believe, the area could absorb. But add a second, purpose-built casino and you start to create a gambling district. Better to talk about other uses that could be compatible with Foxwoods, like hotels and shops. It's not even unreasonable to imagine someday - after the current bust subsides - some residential towers creeping onto Market Street.

Caution Ahead: Council Votes on Foxwoods

Take a look of these photos of Harrah's New Orleans casino and tell me what you don't see.

Okay, I'll answer that. You don't see any big, revolving, neon, roof-top signs. Sure the building has decorative night-time lighting and signage. But what they have is surprisingly low-key and tasteful, the kind of lighting that you might find on any urban civic building. Even the hotel tower, shown to the right of the casino, has very minimal signage. Harrah's branding of its downtown casino largely amounts to a pair of its globe logos on pedestals flanking the entrance. There are also a pair of globes on the roof of the porte-cochere, visible in the photo below.

You know how Harrah's lighting scheme differs from the average casino? It's pitched to the pedestrian, not the car. You only need a revolving roof-top sign if you're trying to lure motorists off the highway.

I bring this up now because tomorrow City Council is scheduled to vote on the Commercial Entertainment District legislation that will pave the way for Foxwoods to open a slots-only casino in the Gallery shopping mall, at 11th and Market Streets. And that bill will allow way more intrusive lights than those allowed at Harrah's - including animated and revolving signs. The bill also says nothing about requirements for landscaping - one of the things that makes the New Orelans casino so attractive - or transparency at street level.

New Orleans is currently the biggest city in America with a downtown casino. If Foxwoods jumps from the Delaware waterfront to the Gallery, Philly will gain that title. As I argued in a recent column, I think the move makes the best of the bad hand that Philadelphia was dealt by Gov. Rendell and the state legislature when they legalized slots-only gambling.

That said, I'm starting to worry that the Nutter Administration and City Council are moving too fast to facilitate the move. There are still lots of issues that need to be clarified. Signage is one. As I wrote in my column, Nutter has a responsibility to assure Chinatown that it will be protected.

How will the mayor prevent this great neighborhood - the last in the city where people live, work and shop - from being swamped with pawn shops and check-cashing outlets? What kind of planning and streetscape improvements can be made to buffer Chinatown from casino-related nuisances? How does the city expect to control traffic flow and parking to minimize the impact on Chinatown? Of course, the city doesn't have all the answers yet. That will take serious planning and traffic studies. But the city should be able to provide a general overview of its strategy.

Administration officials insist that it's still early days. They say the zoning bill is merely a first step, and that Foxwoods still must win approval for a Plan of Development from the Planning Commission. Part of the problem, I think, is that Chinatown bet the house on keeping Foxwoods out of the Gallery, rather than negotiating for protections. Now that it looks like they lost that game, it's crucial that the neighborhood representatives start negotiating with city officials for guarantees. And it's crucial that Nutter Administration and City Council respond in good faith.

Weak Market Hits MoMA Pre-Fabs

Not that we need any more evidence that the real estate market is frozen, but it appears that the architects who participated in this summer's widely-praised MoMA show on pre-fab design can't sell their model houses. So reports New York Magazine . Only the smallest of the bunch, the MicroCompact House (watch the video) managed to snag a buyer. Meanwhile several other architects are slashing prices. Not Philly's own Kieran Timberlake, which listed its Cellophane House for $1.75 million. They're disassembling the see-through house and will store it till they get their prices. Any collectors out there?

Green Light for Transit

Navigating Philadelphia's underground transit system has always been a challenge, particularly for occasional users. SEPTA's underground offers riders an abundant, but confusing, choice of "modes" - that is, subway, trolleys and regional rail lines - not to mention connections to Jersey's Hi-Speed Line. Then there is the diabolically confusing nomenclature for the services. Are you looking for the trolley to West Philadelphia or the Subway-Surface Line or the Green Line? My greatest sympathy goes out to the poor out-of-town souls struggling to find their way to the exact right spot on the right platform for the right regional rail train going in the right direction.

In the hope of standardizing the system, the Center City District commissioned a bunch of new signs, which were unveiled last week. They're doing a trial run to see how people like them. So in addition to any comments you leave here, be sure to register your two cents at the district's special website.

The District's goal is to mark every underground transit entrance, and every bus and trolley stop, with the lighted green T sign you see in the first photo. The poles can take up to four vertical signs identifying the lines that are accessible from that entrance. The designers - Joel Katz Design Associates and the Bresslergroup - have standardized the colors. Blue is Market-Frankford, Orange is Broad Street. Additionally, the district wants to dispense with the various names for the trolleys and identify those lines exclusively as....Trolley, which gets a green sign.
In some respects, the system is similar to what's there now. (see second photo). But the designers cleaned up the graphics and presentation. They've also ditched SEPTA's familiar, patriotically-colored, double-chevron logo. I agree it's high-time to retire this Bicentennial hold-over. I like the look of the green T, with its stylized rail lines, though I do worry it won't work as well at bus stops. The last we need is two identifying markers.
If you wander near SEPTA's concourse entrances at 15th and Market, you'll as see some additional signage. You may
recognize the look of these wayfinding signs from the green destination signs that you see around down. Katz design created those too.

The idea of standardizing and color-coding SEPTA's various service seems like a good idea, but I wonder if it's as simplified as it could be. If you're a tourist, the words "Market-Frankford" and "Broad Street Line" might not be all that illuminating. (Especially when you're told that you have to go downstairs to get to the El.) Would we better off if every rail, trolley and bus line were assigned given a number and a color?

I also believe that bus routes remain one of SEPTA's closely guarded secrets. Yes, you can view a schematic image of each route if you go to SEPTA's site. But those pitifully scanned versions of their paper schedules are hard to decipher. Why can't SEPTA at least post these schematics at the bus stops, as New York does, so you can figure out where a particular bus goes at the stop? And would it be too much to ask for SEPTA to show the points where you can make connections to other bus and rail routes?

Smaller Casino is a Better Casino

To the surprise of no one, City Council's rules committee gave its blessing Saturday to a bill that would rezone the Gallery shopping mall for gambling and a Foxwoods slots parlor. The next step is for the entire council to take up the measure, which would create an overlay for an entertainment district on Market Street, between 8th and 12th Streets. Although it appears that the city is eager to smooth the way for Foxwoods, to get its planned casino off the Delaware Waterfront, City Commerce Director Andrew Altman says that the gambling operator still must clear several planning hurdles before it can move into the western block of the mid-'70s shopping mall, a joint design by what was then Bower and Fradley (nowB LT) and Cope Linder Associates.

In Friday's column, I suggested that one of the city's key demands should be the right-sizing of Foxwoods to fit more comfortably onto Market Street. Events have been happening so fast since Gov. Rendell announced that he would consent to the downtown location that there hasn't been any serious reconsideration of what sort of casino Foxwoods should operate at 11th and Market. As I argued on Friday, and in a similar vein back in September, it's dumb for the state to think you can "simply move a replica of Foxwoods' waterfront slots parlor to a downtown location." Foxwoods, like all the slots barns in Pennsylvania, was conceived as a stand-alone, highway box with 5,000 slot machines and a massive parking garage. (See my column on Harrahs Chester.) Altman and the rest of the Nutter Administration already acknowledge that a casino garage probably won't be necessary downtown, since the Gallery sits the region's best mass transit nexus. Now it's time for them to tell the governor that 5,000 slots isn't necessary or desirable either.

Best Little Rowhouses in Philly

There are times when your eyes start to glaze over at the sight of yet another pseudo-historic, boxy brick rowhouse going up on the streets of Philadelphia. But the latest offering from the Onion Flats collective guarantees the reverse effect. Your eyes should pop when you get a look of its new eight-unit Thin Flats on Laurel Street in Northern Liberties.

I reviewed the project in my column on Friday, and took the liberty of calling it the best new rowhouse project in the city. The way that architect Tim McDonald creates a sense of movement in the facade of Thin Flats struck me as an updated version of the strategy that Baroque church architects once employed. That undulating, textured facade "dances with the exuberant boogie-woogie rhythms of a Mondrian painting," I wrote.


But this isn't just another pretty, edgy face for Northern Liberties. Thin Flats is on track to receive the highest rating (platinum) from the U.S. Green Building Council for its package of energy saving materials and low carbon footprint.
In the photo below, you can glimpse the roof deck, with its water-draining plantings. You can't see them here, but there is also an array of solar thermal panels which McDonald says are capable of providing all the heat for hot water and the underfloor radiant heating system.

Look Who Else is Building Underground

When I saw that the New York Public Library hired Norman Foster to carve out a new library space under the celebrated reading room of main 42nd Street building, my trend meter lit up. That's the exactly the strategy that the Philadelphia Museum of Art is following for its expansion, which is being designed by Frank Gehry. Based on the report in the New York Times, the library project is going to be even more complex than the art museum's because Foster will have to remove some of the underground book stacks, which double as supporting columns. The art museum merely intends to push out underneath its front plaza.
In case you've been wondering (I certainly have been) how that project has been progressing since I wrote about the plans a year ago, you may be able to glean some details when an exhibit on Frank Gehry's design process opens Nov. 8 in the museum's Perelman building. Gehry will be in town Nov. 7 to deliver the annual Collab lecture and receive Collab's Design Excellence Award.The exhibit focuses on his unbuilt design for Peter Lewis' house, which is seen as a precursor of Gehry's groundbreaking Guggenheim Bilbao museum.
Gehry was chosen for the Philadelphia museum job partly because he is a master at getting light into underground spaces. Foster, who was seriously considered for the Free Library expansion (which is supposedly starting construction in December), will have a much harder challenge working in the cavernous vault below the New York reading room.

The Dynamos of Philadelphia Architecture

What does it tell us that just four firms over-whelm-ingly dom-inated the local AIA design awards that were announced last week? Or that the winning projects were inno-vative, con-temporary designs that would look smart not just locally, but anywhere in the country? Perhaps that Architecture - with a capital 'A' -has clawed its way back to Philadelphia. It's only too bad the boom has run out of steam.

Once again, Kieran Timberlake walked away with more prizes than it could carry - four to be exact. The architects, who were named firm of the year last year by the national AIA, won the Gold Medal for Cellophane House, (photo and story) their astonishing demonstration project for MoMA's recent Home Delivery show (story) on the history of pre-fabrication. They also took honors for the recently completed Yale Sculpture Building and Gallery and a multi-family project in Ann Arbor, as well as the housing prototype they designed for Brad Pitt's New Orleans reconstruction effort, Make it Right. (story here)
It's to be expected that Kieran Timberlake would have a good showing at the awards, so the bigger surprise is that the young Kensington-based Interface Studio took home three awards, all for unbuilt projects - a Girard Avenue supermarket (which I reviewed, right), a gallery design and a proposed 100k house. They won a Silver medal in 2006 for their Sheridan Street affordable housing design (reviewed here), which happily broke ground this summer.
Right behind Interface was Wallace Roberts & Todd with two awards. Largely a planning firm, they were the obvious choice to receive the Community Design/Planning award for their work on the Penn Praxis Delaware Waterfront vision. But they also picked up an honor award for their downtown transit center in Charlottesville, Va.
The fourth familiar face was Erdy McHenry, for its charming cafe on Independence Mall that finally began providing sustenance to famished tourists this summer. I'm happy to say I also reviewed that one.
Rounding out the group of familiar faces was DIGSAU, which won for a training and education center in Wilmington, and John Milner Architects, in the Preservation category, for its work on Nemours Mansion. Two architects, Darryn Edwards and John Cluver, shared the Young Archtiect award. Arlene and Dan Matzkin received the John Harbeson Award.

When you think about it, it's been an amazingly good year for Philadelphia architects.

The Look of Penn's New Med Center

Since it was impossible to tell anything about the new Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine from the Inquirer photo that ran with my Friday column, here are a couple of my own humble pics.
Basically, I have two beefs with this building, designed jointly by Rafael Vinoly Architects and Perkins Eastman: its aesthetics and its lack of urbanity. The $302 million design weirdly surrounds a gigantic, 110-high cube-shaped glass atrium with the most banal of ribbon-windowed suburban office buildings. I describe the look variously as an "architectural car crash" and a "python strangling its fragile prey."

It's bad enough when a building of this prominence (it replaces the much loved, art deco Civic Center) looks bad, but it's even worse when it thumbs its nose at the general public. My column takes issue with the massive driveway and porte cochere that dominates the entrance, which perpetuates the unfriendly street environment of Penn's hospital district.
A couple of emailers wrote to take me to task for begrudging the seriously ill an easy drop-off at the front door. Just to be clear, I never suggest there shouldn't be a drop off. What I argue for is a drop-off that also respects the thousands of people who work at the hospital complex (as well as the occasional pedestrian that might dare to enter through the front door.) Since CAM had a huge, cleared site to work with, it could have located that drop-off in any number of places. I suggested making it part of the large, underground garage, since it's just as easy to access the medical offices from there as from the front lobby. But the drop off mighthave been on the side of the building, which is a less traveled pedestrian street.

So why didn't they do that? If you examine the siting of the building, you'll notice it doesn't respond to the curve in Civic Center Boulevard. Rather, the structure is angled to be seen from 34th and Spruce. Pushing the front door back, behind the driveway, helps position CAM so it can be admired from the corner. if you look at the picture on the right, taken from the South Street Bridge, you'll note that the designers also made a point of showing a good face to Center City. I can only deduce that branding is more important to Penn's medical center than the well-being and comfort of its workforce.