Iiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnteresting.

You know, the Hale Building actually could be one of Apple's most grandiose architectural achievements to date if they decided to take the building and make it their own. Done right, it could be regarded on the same WOW factor as the new Glass Cube Store.

Imagine the entire building completely kitted out as an Apple store and warehouse sitting next to West Elm and Lucky Strikes. This building is the only blight remaining on the 1300 block of Chestnut.

Apple could come up with something creative for the elevators (displays embedded in the door panels and walls while the rest of the elevator keeps its antique look and feel?).

What to put inside it? Maybe an Apple Lounge? A training center for Apple certs? A Nike+iPod proving ground? A repair shop? An internet cafe and coffee bar for tourists? Apple's brand has such a widespread appeal and is embedded with the words "young" "artsy" and "student", having a major location next to the University of the Arts and a quick trolley ride from University City would mean that building would be busy all the time when it's open.

Apple could unbrick the windows on the upper floors and put transparent LCD screens inside the panes and use them to throw illusions on pedestrians from above. Looking at the building from street level, the window screens give the illusion that there's a sunny sky inside the building, or a rainstorm, or whatever else you want to show up on the windows.

Apple prefers nice large, flat, clean spaces. In the Hale Building, it can go completely opposite from this and create an environment with the Apple look, but get customers lost inside the building with the feeling that they need to explore it all. In a multilevel store, that's necessary to keep traffic coming in from the ground floor to reach the higher selling floors.

The wide eastern wall could be shored up, cleaned and new windows installed to let as much ambient light as possible into the building. The inside could be a combo of old and new. Display panels embedded into the floors and walls that react to touch, hi-def sound in every room...

BRB, I need to take another hit from my bong.

__________________
Buh-bye.

The down side Apple will probably do this to the building:

__________________
If you can't take the Politics forum...Don't spam the other forums with your political threads.

That actually sounds really cool.

__________________
You know, the homeless make desperate, passionate lovers. But they will rob you blind.

Personally, I have a couple of candidates:

1) The old Beneficial Savings Bank, on 12th and Chestnut. They'd have plenty of space in there if they built a cool minimalist floating mezzanine inside the old double-height lobby. And the facade would look really hot with a good scrubbing and a few minimalist Apple logos.

2) The retail space on the ground floor of the Packard Building on 15th and Chestnut. I know that restaurant is supposed to go in there, but I'll believe it when I see it. Imagine what they could do with the old vault!

I think Chestnut would be a better fit for Apple than Walnut, with its larger buildings, dramatic architecture, and slightly funkier, edgier feel.

Great choices.

So is it time to start an email campaign? It's not like we don't have a sizable number of universities or students, among others.

__________________


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCiKCxfYqE

"If we can't learn from our mistakes, what's the point of making them!" ...my friend Richard.

"You are protected by the enormity of your stupidity." Mother to son Victor, in "Notorious"

Oh yeah. Believe me, I've emailed them a half-dozen times already. And I was just out in Ardmore last week, getting some work done on my laptop, and when they sent me a link to an online survey to rate my experience, I laid it on thick that they should open in Center City.

Yes! lets all email! I will use my jersey annoyingness with full force!

Would an online petition work? Is someone on here good at that sort of thing and could make one up and provide the link? We could then forward it as a sign of the intense interest here.

__________________


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCiKCxfYqE

"If we can't learn from our mistakes, what's the point of making them!" ...my friend Richard.

"You are protected by the enormity of your stupidity." Mother to son Victor, in "Notorious"

If the ACC tower gets built, Apple would make for a flashy retail anchor. It'd be nice to get a store before then, of course, but I don't think Apple is in any hurry.

__________________
"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred." — Woody Allen

(Avatar stolen from this nifty project.)

The ACC could work, but given the hot things that Apple's done with modernist renovations of historic spaces, I'd love to see them take a stab at one of Philly's underloved treasures.