The reason that Philly has the port business that it does is because of the food terminals. There's an entire refigerated chain that's taken 70 years to build and food comes from all over the world to the docks in Philly and Camden because they have the equipment to handle it.

The cranes you see hanging over the docks and the refrigerated terminals along Packer Ave. are part of the same operation. You can't separate them without destroying the business. New Jersey offered to build and pay for most of a new terminal in Camden, and in that case, your plan would've been a lot more likely to come to fruition but the businesses over here politely declined the bribe. Aside from South Camden, Chester or Wilmington (assuming Wilmington has the room), there's really no other good place to put it and still keep those jobs in the region.

Do you think there is room for 6 St. James type buildings (at 1/2 height) on a block? Also expecting it go for 15 blocks seems way excessive. 7 blocks would seem to be the max before hitting the existing food distribution uses, plus the arenas take up 3 of those blocks, reducing the zone to 4 blocks.

Residential towers wouldn't have to happen immediately if ever, but should be planned for. Like how the wonderful Hilton Garden Hotel sits above the Gallery II parking garage. The infrastructure to build that hotel sat quietly built into the garage for decades before being utilized.

Right now we have nothing but arenas and large blacktop parking lots. Let's get started with some tiered parking garages with ground level retail that have the structure in place to support possible future residential towers. Fill the ground level retail with bars, restaurants, movie theaters, a Philly Sports Hall of Fame, and athletic activities like indoor rock climbing.

Add in some sort of public transportation linking the 2nd Street El Station via Columbus Bvld/Delaware Ave to Pattison subway station. An Atlantic City Jitney set-up using multiple independent operators running a set route at a set price could be a solution if PATCO or SEPTA can't or won't step up for that.

Four blocks of parking garages with retail should not be too big of a challenge (especially if Comcast is given some way to screw people on it). Penn's investment in University City is an example of how if you built it wisely, the residential towers will come.

The first tower to be built over a parking garage would probably be a hotel. The set-up mentioned above should be a tourist magnet. If Phillies, Eagles or Flyers were playing at a city with such a set-up, many of us would wind up there at some point for a long weekend.

One key to all of this is to keep it tastefully and pleasantly walled off from the neighborhood to the north.

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"Things are starting to get interesting right about now"

All comments made by me on his board are given freely and probably worth what you paid for them.

1) One man's "waste" is another's livelihood.

2) Pier 98 Annex is well to the east of both the stadia and the Jetro warehouse. It's even east of I-95, which Jetro is not. You were arguing that a warehouse at Pier 98 Annex was an inappropriate use. If it's not appropriate there, where the hell is it appropriate?

3) You argue that Southwest Philly is a suitable alternative site. Highway transport does make more land suitable for industrial purposes than would otherwise be the case, but even then, not all land is equal: land with easy access to high-speed highways will be more valuable for warehousing, manufacturing and distribution functions. Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. (Inquirer and Daily News) moved their presses to Conshohocken because the location was near the junction of two major freeways, which in turn promised faster delivery of the day's paper to more of the region than could be obtained from the press facilities at 500 North Broad (now School District HQ).

Look at that map above again. Notice a central feature near its bottom right corner -- the interchange between I-95 and I-76 at the foot of the Walt Whitman Bridge. No location in Southwest Philadelphia has this kind of highway access, and there is no port activity of any kind anywhere near the area. Had either of these two conditions been met, it's quite likely that you would already see warehousing in the area. Because neither of them are, there isn't, and simply saying that because the land is there and it's empty won't make it ideal for these purposes. As long as waterborne commerce travels up the Delaware, and as long as that commerce is heavy on the transport of foodstuffs (which it is), it is far more logical to place the facilities from which that food will be distributed close to the places where it is offloaded from the vehicles carrying it.

Understand?

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Jazz and blogging are both intimate, improvisational, and individual -- but also inherently collective. And the audience talks over both." --Andrew Sullivan, "Why I Blog," The Atlantic, November 2008