Community shows support for Lincoln Square development at Broad and Washington
The scene from community meetings for Bart Blatstein‘s massive Broad and Washington project is vastly different than the scene at last night’s South of South Neighborhood Association meeting. The developers behind the Lincoln Square project being proposed for the northwest corner of the intersection presented an informational presentation to the community.
The nine-story, mixed-use development received generally positive feedback from the neighbors in attendance. At Blatstein’s recent Hawthorne Empowerment Coalition meeting, it was mostly negativity about the “superblock” he plans to create and the general scale of the 32-story development. The developers of this project definitely took notes from the feedback on Blatstein’s project, creating plans for a development that is much more accessible and to-scale withe the already-existing structures in the neighborhood.
This project is currently proposed to be nine-stories, with 356 apartment units, a planned grocery store of about 300,000 sq. ft. and various other retailers filling the seven or so commercial spaces. One of the possible retailers noted during the meeting was that of a liquor store. To create community accessibility, this development has a walkway being called “Lincoln Walk” that cuts through the middle of the development as an outdoor space to sit and enjoy food from the grocery store or potential restaurants, or simply to carry your groceries from the store to the parking garage.
That brings us to the parking situation. The plans include 350 or so parking spots, for use by both residents of Lincoln Square and shoppers visiting the grocery store or other retailers here. This includes one level of parking below ground and two more above ground. Bike parking is also included.
One resident, Harvey Schloss, expressed that he hopes that this development will help continue what the Avenue of the Arts has started. Beyond a few questions about the development, feedback was positive with residents commending the plans, calling it a “transformative and beneficial” improvement to this lot.
If all goes well with the ZBA this summer and the Civic Design Review later in 2016, this project hopes to break ground in early 2017. It would then take 18 to 20 months for the development to be completed, meaning that it would be expected at some point in mid-2018.
Take notes, Bart.
I don’t get Blatstein. I haven’t heard one positive thing about what he’s trying to put in at B&W — when literally everyone with a public voice is telling you your idea is dumb, at what point do you start to listen?
Every one of his crappy ideas gets roundly criticized — this one, his delaware ave projects… in the case of the piazza, it was bad enough that he went ahead and started over from scratch. And yet every time he has a piece of land to develop, he comes up with another crappy idea.
I mean, this process has repeated itself over and over — at what point do you maybe think about this from the beginning and next time, hire someone to design something that doesn’t suck from the get-go?
Have you seen the size of the man’s head? They could put a rooftop village on the top and park 600 cars in his mouth.
First of all is Braod and Washington Graduate Hospital? I really don’t think so.
But although the scale of this is 1000x better than the Blatstein proposal, why is it so ugly? Do Philly developers have something against architects? Do they not realize they can get higher prices for a beautiful building?
Um, yes, it’s absolutely Graduate Hospital, this one corner of it at least.
If the supermarket is not the South Philly Co Op I’ll burn it down.
This is the correct answer.
Like.
Not to mention getting my co-op equity $$ back.
The Supermarket space is about 30,000 sqft and the coop doesn’t want anything more than 5000sqft so doubtful that it’s going in here.
No word on the potentially most exciting (and namesake?) element of this project – the depot? I have imagined this space as a market where food trucks can take stalls at the loading docks, along with communal seating a la a traditional beer garden, and significant outdoor spaces spilling towards Broad Street.
The tower is bland but the project is a home run if something like this is realized.
Agreed. Something like Copenhagen Street Food on Papirøen would be incredible!