On the eve of the new year — and just in time for your back-to-work economic doomsday light reading — PlanPhilly posted a piece by Thomas J. Walsh wondering aloud which development projects currently on the books in Philadelphia will or won’t fall prey to This Thing We Are In Now. And while Walsh doesn’t go so far as to say which projects he considers most likely fucked, he does give a good overview of what exactly is at at stake. So with all apologies to Mr. Walsh, let’s pick up where he left off, and play a nice lil’ round of Armchair Developer. Cool? Cool:
American Commerce Center aka “The French Tickler”: Hard to say which way this one will go. The City Planning Commission gave it the go-ahead in November, but maybe only because they secretly knew it was never gonna happen anyway? In any case, our gut says no: The likelihood of getting lenders to back this thing is like nil, unless it becomes part of some Obama Admin city-bailout program.Stamper Square: Will totally happen. For the good of Society Hill, it kinda has to. Plus, unlike the ACC, its non-office purposes (hotel, condos, retail) are the very things that the city probably won’t be bleeding over the next few years.That Thing At 16th & Vine Where Whole Foods Was Supposed To Move That We’ve Been Talking About Since 2006: We’re still talking about this? Shit or get off the pot already, David Grasso. Jeez Louise.Bart Blatstein’s Onging Schmidt’s Site Stuff: Totally happening. Already half-built if not more. Stay tuned for more on this from us. We’ve got pictures!“Philly Live” aka The Undead Spectrum: Something tells us this one could either shit the bed or just take forever to get done, but on the other hand, none of us Philadelphians seem to have any problem whatsoever spending money in sporting environments, even in the face of things like no job, no health insurance, no rent money, etc. So, yeah. This will happen. And it will suck.SugarHouse: The whole historical site thing plus the whole Depression thing just might outrun this fucker. Here’s hoping!Foxwoods @ The Gallery: Too fucking ridonkulous to not happen. Get used to it, Chinatown. It’s on.So there you have it. There just might be some things that were supposed to be there after all!
PlanPhilly: The “Happening” [hat tip to Changing Skyline]
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pm.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I’m curious to see what happens with the convention center. It was wildly over budget before the floor fell out.