Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbrook
The problem is there really is no clearly stellar use on the Waterfront right now. The portion at and adjacent to Chestnut through Walnut, where the cap is looking like it will knit it together to the city, is one thing. But the rest of it, separated by I-95 and Columbus, still seems to me to be a hard sell.
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The difference in NoLibs/Fishtown is that Columbus and I-95 do not rub up against one another. The river turns NE, the city gets wider, and the highway rises above grade, the result being that there's more blocks of actual city east of the highway. Really starting north of the BFB, there's enough land east of 95 to imagine that if you fully developed the parcels on all sides, it would feel like a cohesive neighborhood and the highway would not really be a consideration. While nothing super exciting has happened, you can see this playing out north of Spring Garden where dozens of townhomes have sprouted and a 5-story apt building is under construction at the Spring Garden MFL stop. Until more of this happens, development on piers will feel quite removed, which could be seen as a con, but it's also very quiet near Penn Treaty Park, so I could see waterfront townhomes feeling like a reasonable choice.
The issue with every pier except for Festival Pier is that they are tiny, so there's limited options for anything of scale. I'd argue that more important than whether we see low, mid, or high-rise projects on these smaller piers is whether they cooperate with granting easements for a continuous trail on the water's edge, and whether they greet Delaware Ave decently. If those two things happen repeatedly up and down, the long-term goal is achieved: continuous recreational access from Penn Treaty Park down to Penn's Landing and beyond, and an unoffensive streetscape on Delaware. Of course, in NoLibs/Fishtown, the linchpin is Festival Pier: if this moves forward and delivers on its promises, it creates a fantastic precedent and strong anchor that will instill confidence for development nearby. We shall see.
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