The Broad Street Subway tunnel does veer to the west to avoid City Hall Tower's foundation, then back to the east; City Hall station sits beneath City Hall's southwest quadrant.

But the tracks are two levels below the street from Spring Garden to Snyder stations. The Market-Frankford Line crosses above the BSS at City Hall station's midpoint, and there are concourses above the tracks. In the Municipal Services Building concourse (on its south side), there is a stairwell leading down midway between where the passageway to Dilworth Plaza crosses the MSB concourse and the sunken plaza to the MSB's east; this stairwell leads to the now-closed North Broad concourse to Race Street. The south end of the concourse is used as offices for the SEPTA Transit Police.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising." --Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

I thik my overall point on this is that we have a semi-functional area that needs a litle TLC and some touching u to become useful.

We have a very expensive to maintain underground comlex going to waste.


WHa I woud do.

Light up the current Dilworth Plaza. Cut of the lowered sections (with air allowing gates) from the sub concourse and place cafes)

Trim Trees, light from underneath.
Rip up selected sections and replace with grass.

1/20th of the cost.



Second.

Do something similar to the depression along MSB with maybe covered vines...


Ya don't have to blow the bank to fix this.


You also don't need to gut everything in a city with 80% of it in disrepair (outside of CC)


To me this is a total case of ignoring major issues outside of Center City to gloss up a bullshit area that will see litle use due o it's mostly 9-5 commerical activity and no residential that would use it (as the res. is wealthy)

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It's too tall..! it ruins the feel of the city..! It casts massive shadows..! It's an architectural nightmare..! We should stand together and fight this monstrosity that threatens our homes..! ...but amazingly no one tore down the Eiffel Tower.

or.. why we shouldn't always listen to "neighborhood groups" and critics.

Actually people were debating the appearance of the dillworth plaza design, and as usual people like you have strewn the conversation in another direction by doing a poor job at acting distressed over the plight of the human race.

And while your defending the rights of humanity and chastising e. chestnut with homosexual questions, may I remind you that your own ignorance constantly makes jokes about the asian community, which you seem to find acceptable because you are asian? Pot meet kettle.

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Magellan2's prescription:
ATTENTION ALL READERS...
DISCLAIMER: Alesis is a South Street business owner
(keep that in mind when reading his or her responses)

Oh, one more thing:

You who are complaining about the costs of making the Dilworth Plaza space and the concourses immediately beneath ADA-compliant will probably blanch at what it will cost to bring City Hall station itself into compliance.

A rebuild of City Hall is high on SEPTA's capital wish list. But adding to the expense will be the requirement that the station remain open throughout the rebuild.

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Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
"Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising." --Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

I work with a company that does business with SETPA so have seen blueprints for their tunnels around city hall and MSB and can tell you that the costs to build ANYTHING above the game piece plaza will keep anything from ever being built there. Under that depression/concourse you have the BSL line tracks and the center city commuter rail tunnel underneath that. The BSL follows the 'old' path of Broad St, which as someone posted earlier took a different path around city hall. So from a purely engineering standpoint you would have an extremely complex engineering project here involving building a new structure atop two submerged heavy rail lines... 8 tracks in total plus non-public access tunnels that are there as well.

Aside from that the new Dilworth Plaza idea is interesting... This and the total removal of the family courts/rehab centers complex across from RTM on Market Street/12th would be a blessing in removing a large amount of the riff raff from the area.

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"i live my life in the city"

I'm suprised, but I really agree with Zur.
It gets a lot of flak, but the plaza really is built with quality materials, is solid, and if it was used by people who showered at least once a week I can see it being a great place to relax. It's large enough so that if we were to emulate, say, what Paris' Town hall does and have concerts there and the like, it would be very nice.
I agree (with me). Clean it up, and for god's sakes, use it for something besides peeing on, and the place would work wonderfully pretty much the way it already is. Take a good look at it next time you are there - it really has so much potential in it's current state. A microcosm, if you will, of illadelph.

At some point Arch was either two way or one way the opposite direction in that block, and I think east of Broad as well, maybe as far as RTM if not further east.

My vague recollection is that the street would change direction during the day (or become two way). There were red/green lights above each lane indicating what lanes were open.

Anyone else remember this? It must have ended in the 1970s.

That's going back much further than I remember. In the late 80's, Arch was two-way to Broad.

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Seth Williams for District Attorney

Raider.Adam for Mayor, 2011

MUCH further than YOU remember?

I thought you could recall when dinosaurs still roamed the earth?

What a shill.

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“Man who run in front of car get tired.”

I have a high level of pragmatism. So sue me.



Pfft whatever. I had to Fabreeze the front door to my building this morning because a homeless idiot urinated in the vestibule last night. I'm spending thousands of dollars a month for this?


I didn't know the poor hungry huddled masses all had Phillyblog accounts.

Get real. I help out Project HOME. I've sent that homeless celebutaunt Sr. Scullion money. I call the homeless hotline when there is a bum sitting on a steam grate that needs to be picked up.


And yet again, Cappogiro on 13th and Sansom has had to ask the City to reinstall the steam-tube over their vent grate because of the homeless losers keep using it as a butt-warmer.


I already put up a solution for housing. We have the SS United States sitting right there across from IKEA. It can house 2,000 people. Seems like there's a perfect opportunity sitting right there.

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Don't forget:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUJF...eature=related