Philly Live! Construction Update-- August 5th

Philly Live!

1100 Pattison Avenue

Ah jeez, here it comes. 
                     I don't even know why I'm bothering to talk about this highly unnecessary pile of dogshit. Philly Live! is a huge entertainment complex planned to fill almost the entire space between the Wachovia Center and Citizen's Bank Park. The part they're building now is "Phase One", which in Philadelphia, usually means "Only Phase".
Still waiting for Phase II
                
Stuck on Phase 1.5
                  Philly Live! grew out of the need for an entertainment venue that suburbanites who were too scared to walk around Center City could go to and spend money before and after games. Developers noticed that other cities who don't have whiny-ass civic associations up the ying-yang were able to build their stadiums downtown, causing local commercial establishments to reap the benefits of suburban visitors. The solution? Build a Downtown Simulator in the middle of that sea of surface parking that would serve as an attraction for before and after games.

The original plan from 2008. Notice they don't show a daytime scene.
                 The original plan was pretty ambitious and seemed to be absolutely massive. Many who looked at this wondered who the fuck was going to go to this thing, and even more stymieing, plans called for it to be open on non-game days as well. What is this? Gallery South? Pier 70: Landlubber Edition? I don't fucking get it.
                 When the economy started to tank, the plan got smaller.

They didn't even need to knock down the Spectrum for this one!
                        This is what we'll probably end up with if we're LUCKY and all the phases get built. The construction photo at the top of the article is for Phase One only, which is pretty pathetic-looking.

That's IT. There's no daytime rendering for a reason.
                       Face it, this will be the only phase that is built. I can't understand why in a million years they would ever want to build this thing. So it's a suburban half-stripmall with bars and restaurants and shit next to the stadium and it's called Philly Live!?!? What's with the exclamation point? There's no need for punctuation in the name of a building. Live? Live what? This thing will be dead from day one. There's nothing "Philly" about this. It should be called Greenwich Island Live!, since that's technically where the Sports Complex is located. Fucking morons.

Blank wall facing Pattison Ave. sidewalk. Dead trees.
No it won't.

Blog Archive