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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Developer unveils $100M plan for Spectrum land
Architect's rendering of the Philly Live Project. Image courtesy Warren Strovel Design Collective

A plan to bring life to the vast asphalt desert at Philadelphia’s sports complex took another step forward today when a Baltimore developer released drawings for a $100 million entertainment center connecting the Wachovia Center to Citizens Bank Park.

The glitzy architectural renderings, which were presented to the city Planning Commission, showed a two-block-long, diagonal street running between the two sports venues, across the land now occupied by the Spectrum. Modeled on such destinations as Boston’s Quincy Market and Baltimore’s Power Point Live, the street would be lined with restaurants, bars and shops.

 

The project would replace the Spectrum, which is scheduled to be demolished early next year. It is being developed jointly by Comcast-Spectacor and the Cordish Company, the developer behind much of the nightlife at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Posted by Inga Saffron @ 6:01 PM  Permalink | 81 comments
Friday, July 17, 2009
How to Hide a Big Brown Refrigerator

 

Society Hill residents still haven't accommodated themselves to the huge brown signal boxes that began appearing on street corners last year. The boxes, which I chronicled in a December column and blog post, are almost six feet and have been jammed against some of the city's oldest, most historic houses. But one resident I wrote about, Marjorie Amrom, is trying to make the signal box next to her house fade into the woodwork. She painted it to match her house's lovely cerulean blue paint, and topped it off with what appears to be a trompe l'oeil painting of vines and flowers. The Philly Design Blog thinks residents ought to get the Mural Arts folks to paint all of them. But that may be going a little too far.
 
Meanwhile, those boxes, which are used to control traffic lights and will eventually be fitted with camera equipment, aren't the only big brown boxes bugging the neighborhood. Some Society Hill residents are equally appalled at the new big belly trash compactors that the city is installing as a replacement to old-fashion trash cans, according to an article in the July/August issue of the Society Hill Reporter. I can't say these bother me as much. They're almost always near the curb, rather than adjacent to the houses. And they replace an existing street furnishing, the trash bin. Plus they're much neater and better for the environment, since they include a recycling bin.
 

 

Posted by Inga Saffron @ 11:00 AM  Permalink | 5 comments
About Inga Saffron
Inga Saffron believes there is architecture and there are places, and you can’t write about one without writing about the other. Since becoming the Inquirer’s architecture critic in 1999, she has been just as likely to turn her eye toward Philadelphia’s waterfronts and sidewalks as to the latest glittering skyscraper. She is drawn to projects of all sizes and shapes, but especially those that form the backdrop of our daily lives.

Inga Saffron came to architecture criticism after five years as a foreign correspondent in Russia and Yugoslavia, where she covered two wars and was a witness to the destruction of two great cities, Sarajevo and Grozny. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2004, 2008 and 2009.

Read previous entries on her Skyline Online blog.

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