building a 40 story building or even a 20 story building on Headhouse square sounds like a terrible idea to most anyone who knows that area well. perhaps something more to scale with the area (like an Old City 108 design-type on arch street) would be met with a bit more support.

unfortunately, we have a situation in philadelphia that is creating some herculean conflicts across the city--a real estate boom. developers who own prime parcels of land in the city (eager to see a handsome ROI) are going to look at ways to get the biggest bang for their buck. and this means building UP. in this instance, a developer is never going to build a 4 story brick townhome with ground floor retail that is perfectly in scale with the surrounding neighbourhood. it's not going to happen. he is going to build UP, use the site's location as a prime selling point, and charge potential buyers a crapload of money for each unit...

that's the developers side. then we get the nimby's side who understandably feel that this building might be a bit out of place in this area of society hill. and the two battle it out. in the meantime, the rest of us are left with an ugly grassy /dirt parking lot that is an awful eyesore. these battles could last for years. if the nimby's win, we are stuck with that ugly lot indefinitely. if the developer wins, we may get a building (but then again we may not). but it all comes at a price of a lot of money spent on litigation and a lot of time looking at parking lots. everyone in philly wants the best building built at every location/lot in the city. but it's impossible to ever really know what that is.