Tag Archives: development

Two local blogs I fol­low dogged­ly now are Plan Philly and Brown­ston­er’s Philly branch. I real­ly got into the for­mer when I start­ed notic­ing bylines from my online bud­dy Bri­an James Kirk. I noticed that the site real­ly picked up steam and was on top of all the cool devel­op­ment issues and the not-so-cool ones, too. Same for Brown­ston­er. They do the thank­less work that green reporters do: attend zon­ing hear­ings and watch real estate trans­ac­tions to see who’s buy­ing what and why. I’m real­iz­ing in this moment that this is why I love Foo­booz’s restau­rant death­watch so much.

As I’ve said like 1,000 times before, I got a degree in urban polit­i­cal econ­o­my before I found myself get­ting a steady pay­check for know­ing things about folks like Bey­once and Rihan­na. Stuff like this, bor­ing as it may seem, real­ly excites me. And some­times those worlds collide!

Such is the case with talk of a new music venue not so far from my home here in Port Fish­ing­ton or Olde Rich­mond as our sil­ly neigh­bor­hood asso­ci­a­tion likes to call it. It strikes me as a com­plete non-starter, not only because that stretch of road is some of the most des­o­late with­in walk­ing dis­tance, but also because why in the hell does Philadel­phia need anoth­er music venue that size? Do they know the live music busi­ness is cra­ter­ing all around us? Is Live Nation real­ly that des­per­ate to find a new and cre­ative way to lose mon­ey in a mar­ket they already lost?

Aes­thet­i­cal­ly, Gras­so’s design looks like World Cafe Live! on steroids, which is to say, a venue I don’t vis­it often on steroids. (For the record, I’ve been to World Cafe Live! twice and I’ve nev­er paid.) I’ll grant that there’s an off chance it suc­ceeds if artists like Rihan­na, et. al. feel like the Bor­ga­ta is insuf­fi­cient to their “pre­mi­um expe­ri­ence” demands. But I have a hard time believ­ing that the hard luck crowd hit­ting Sug­ar­House is going to schlep up Rich­mond for a big bucks con­cert lat­er in the evening.

It’s inter­est­ing to read David Gras­so’s own com­ment on Philebri­ty, where I’m sure many folks hip to the scene heard of this for the first time. Gras­so address­es the gaunt­let he alleged­ly threw down at the Elec­tric Fac­to­ry, the venue most like­ly affect­ed should his new project go for­ward. You can read his defense here.

I’ve been in Philadel­phia and on the music scene for a sol­id sev­en years. I’ve seen the rise and fall of great music venues, includ­ing the North Star and the Khy­ber. I’ve seen the res­ur­rec­tion of the Tow­er. I’ve watched as Clear Chan­nel strug­gled once they lost their monop­oly on the mar­ket. I’m hon­est­ly sur­prised to see Sean Agnew hav­ing the suc­cess he has, and I’m hap­py for him. Does that mean that Gras­so deserves to build a music empo­ri­um that would direct­ly com­pete with a venue like the Elec­tric Fac­to­ry? Hardly.

I know lots of folks think that the only solu­tion to “save” the Philadel­phia water­front is to devel­op it as intense­ly as pos­si­ble, with­out care for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. I strong­ly dis­agree. I think that if there are areas worth pre­serv­ing, or even reclaim­ing, as pub­lic space, then that should be the rule, rather than arbi­trar­i­ly auc­tion­ing tracts of land to devel­op­ers who don’t seem to under­stand the future of their busi­ness. I’d hate to see this become the fan­ci­est dol­lar store in Port Rich­mond in five years.