Political Machine: Build a tower, not a park, at site of building collapse
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Philadelphia magazine’s Liz Spikol is right when she argues that the site of the building collapse at 22nd and Market streets needs development more than it needs a memorial park.
With trolley-station access right there and a zoning designation favorable to building an enormous skyscraper without (much) political interference from City Council, the economic importance of this piece of land can’t be overstated.
In addition to the real-estate-tax yield from a skyscraper, its location near so many transit lines presents an opportunity to add thousands of new people, homes and jobs to Philadelphia’s most important economic center without inviting much extra car traffic congestion. It’s also an opportunity to improve pedestrian and bike connectivity with the fast-growing University City area which is getting a skyline of its own.
Getting more people walking and biking across the Schuylkill is going to require more buildings with active ground-floor uses on the west end of Market Street in Center City. Today, that area is a dead zone for pedestrians, pockmarked with surface parking lots and low-slung buildings of the sort that fallen Times Square porn king and Philadelphia real-estate speculator extraordinaire Richard Basciano was getting around to demolishing on that fateful day last June.
It’s been frustrating watching the narrative of the building collapse focus the blame so narrowly on city inspections and demolition regulations, rather than on the whole suite of city policies that coddle speculators who treat buildings and land parcels like financial instruments. And it would be even more frustrating if the excruciatingly long wait for Basciano to do something with this parcel resulted in a mediocre park that does nothing to improve cross-river pedestrian connectivity, or Philly’s real-estate-tax base, or transit ridership on the El.
What we need is a memorial of a different sort — a skyscraper with a ground-floor memorial installation. We can comfort the families of the victims, and all the people who still carry with them the trauma of that day. But we can also build a monument signaling our resolve to triumph over the bad guys who’ve been emboldened to hold so much of our great city in disrepair for far too long.
