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The Construction Project Formerly Known As Philly Live! Is Now Known As Xfinity Live!


Also, there’s no way it actually looks anything like this, right?

According to Philly.com, what was once to be known as Philly Live!, the entertainment complex/eatery/mall thing, is now going to be known as Xfinity Live!. The name switch is fitting, since Comcast’s name is gonna be smeared all over this thing anyway. More features just announced for the complex include:

>>>An Xfinity On Demand Theater, an outdoor viewing experience that will feature everything from sports games to family movies.
>>>The NBC Sports Arena, featuring an indoor 32-foot diagonal, 6 mm, million-dollar Sony LED screen
>>>The NBC Sports Field, which will play host to numerous outdoor activities and sports leagues
>>>NBC Sports Fantasy Board with stats
>>>NBC Sports Game Experience, in the Broad Street Bullies Pub, featuring video games
>>>A 100-foot LED Comcast SportsNet Ticker inside a venue called the Philly MarketPlace, a gathering place with food vendors including the Original Philadelphia Cheesesteak Co., Chickie’s & Pete’s, and Nick’s Roast Beef; more will be announced.

All of this is added to the already announced free parking on nonevent nights, Spectrum Grille (an upscale restaurant) and Victory Beer Hall. The long-in-production complex will open April 5th, and will immediately become your premier nightspot to run into those dudes who got cut-off in the 5th inning and want more drinks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2011 at 12:33 pm.

  • arcticsplasher

    guess The Piazza at Douche’s wasn’t as catchy.

  • Poster Nutbag

    i have to say, i’ve been against this project since the get-go. however, reading the information released today, i must say that i am rather pleasantly surprised with the amenities. i still don’t think the project will be any good, but at least they have programming for non-game nights and, what on the surface appears to be, decent drinking and dining options. may we hope and pray on the ghost of arthur kade that this is successful.

  • heatmiser

    “PBR Bar & Grill, a country-western themer based on Professional Bull Riders; Tex-Mex cuisine served during the day and a country & southern rock party at night (featuring a mechanical bull)”

    WTF? Are we in Texas?

  • schmapty

    I’m not so much against this project as I am offended by the location of CBP. It should have never been built in parking lot land. Building this place will be tacky and probably not my thing but it certainly is an improvement over the parking lots.

  • the_ill

    i can’t wait to avoid it like i do other strip malls, regular malls, chain restaurants, etc.

  • Adam_B

    Sounds like GE’s answer to Disney/ESPN/ABC’s Wide World of Sports down in Florida…

  • http://eatthebabies.com/ BradyDale

    At least it would finally be mixed use down there. Putting all the stadiums together was a very dumb move. Each of them could have been an anchor for a part of town (as the stadium on Lehigh once was for that neighborhood).

    Now of course we are putting all our arts venues together, which was also ill advised.

    Hasn’t anyone in this city ever read Jane Jacobs?

  • CityMaps

    Heatmiser, do you ever go to Irish pubs in Philadelphia? Oh, well then “wtf? are we in” Ireland?

  • EmptyTipJar

    BradyDale gets the 2011 Mr. Arrogant/self-righteous award.

    How do you even get the chance to read The Death and Life of Great American Cities when all the pages are stuck together from your jizz?

  • http://eatthebabies.com/ BradyDale

    Umm, well said, EmptyTipJar. I don’t know how you get “self righteous” since there’s not really a moral that I’m espousing.

    I do, however, think it makes a lot of sense to plan neighborhoods so that there is activity around the clock rather than limited to one specific activity. The stadium areas are dead unless there’s a game on. I know people who remember the old stadium at Lehigh. They say that was a real neighborhood (like Wrigley Park in Chicago). It really hopped when there was a game on, but it was alive all the time.

    Clumped together like that, the stadiums don’t even do each other any good. It’s just logic.

    Similarly, the art museum district along the Parkway is only going to show life from 9 to 5. Whereas if The Barnes (for example) had been placed somewhere else (say, where the Piazza has now gone, or near it), it would have served as a hub and an attraction in a neighborhood that’s coming back to life. But no… the Barnes will only add traffic to the PMA, and not much else.

    Short-sighted.

    My apologies for having an opinion.

  • EmptyTipJar

    Your apologies for having an opinion yet you regurgitate Jacobs philosophy.

    Not that its one I disagree with Jane Jacobs but when people follow the words of someone else by a robotic T it becomes a little ridiculous. Clustering the stadiums is not something I like but you aren’t going to get one plunked in a neighborhood. Its not some whiny shrill “only in Philadelphia” diatribe. It is all over the good ole US of A and last time I checked Philadelphia was still an American city. Name me some ballparks or football stadiums placed in existing neighborhoods over the last half century. All the modern downtown ones were placed there because those cities have dead downtowns. As far as scattering art sites I get what you mean but I’m not gonna check out a Matisse painting at 11:00 in the evening and doubt most people would. Should transportation to BFP be more accessible to the public? Of course. At least on the BFP the largest concentration of art is a stones throw away from the 4 largest transit hubs in our region: 30TH Station, Suburban, Market East, & City Hall.

    Get some of your own ideas by being more pragmatic.

  • rk

    stadiums don’t really revitalize a neighborhood, and when they do, it’s the same awful type of schlock that is getting built in the Xfinity Live! (lol) area. So I’m happy that crap will be down in deep south philly, far, far away.

    Placing the stadium in a neighborhood also would displace residents, create significant traffic problems for local residents, and once again not actually help anyone small make money. it isn’t really a good “anchor” institution for a neighborhood a la Jacobs because stadiums attract outsiders for brief periods of time–that’s not how jacobs’ neighborhood was supposed to work.

    also, the barnes is part of why that section of fairmount is revitalizing, seeing a lot of new restaurant activity, and can even be connected, arguably, to the developments on north broad around mt. vernon, for better or worse.

    it isn’t the 60s anymore. the stadium in neighborhood model is nostalgia.

  • http://eatthebabies.com/ BradyDale

    No of course you wouldn’t go see a museum at 11PM. That’s the whole point. The neighborhood would be alive because other things around it would be open. People stop going to the museums after 5 because they close, but if museums were built in another part of town that would be the time when folks started coming there because there were homes (and they were coming back from work) or for the restaurants and bars. No one institution can keep a whole area a live around the clock, but they can serve as nice anchors.

    I probably spend about .01% of my life thinking about Jacabos, but her observations made a ton of sense and they have stood the test of time, yet we keep doing silly things the wrong way.

    Just because stadiums are seldom built in residential/commercial areas (we have plenty of residential areas that aren’t downtown in this town – Lehigh sure wasn’t and isn’t), doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be (I tend to agree they shouldn’t really be built at all, but SO LONG AS THEY ARE, why not maximize them). But as long as you asked.

    Where has a major stadium been built in a big city in the last 50 years:
    Cleveland – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Field
    Built 1994. Best ballpark voted by Sports Illustrated in 2008.

    Again, tho… doesn’t have to be downtown. This city has LOTS of places where we could build big new institutions (like the Barnes, like stadiums, like convention centers) that could use it, have highways nearby and would really pop if they had an anchor to bring people in.

  • BovineJoni

    yeah but… have you been to Cleveland? I’m pretty sure the NFL / MLB / NBA stadiums are all located relatively close to one another, in very close proximity to downtown, but guess what:

    Cleveland is and has been dead. D-E-A-D.