There's an article in the 8/24 Inquirer about how business owners and residents in Old City want to cut down on the opening of new bars and restaurants. Currently, north of Market Street there is a zoning overlay which requires that people who want to open a business that does not meet the requirements of that zone msut seek a variance (a stringent process). The Old City NIMBYs want to extend that to cover all of Old City.
Now I understand why they have concerns. Compared to jsut a few years ago, Old City has become less and less classy. It used to be bohemian but now it is like Delaware Avenue brought into an urban area and attracts much of the same crowd. However, these zoning overlays have done nothing but stifle business and kill off the life of a neighborhood. Old City north of Market is a ghost town at night. Supposedly the zoning overlay was to keep Old City north of Market a nice residential area (similar to the areas around Rittenhouse) but the effect has been to make it dead. If they do the same to the rest of Old City, new businesses will jsut go elsewhere (perhaps to Jersey). Look at what happened to Manayunk when the NIMBYs there imposed thier ill-thought out restaurant moratorium which banned the opening of new restaurants and bars. That pretty much ended Manayunk's rise and passed the baton to Old City. Even after Manayunk lifted the moratorium in 2002, it is still struggling to get back to where it was. Now Old City wants to effectively do the same.
NIMBYism has some good but in this city it seems like NIMBYism has gone into overdrive and has contributed to making this city business-unfriendly. It almost seems like people are more willing to accept ugly parking lots or empty lots rather than see something get built on them (witness the pit in Old City left behind after a building burned down and people blocked a condo developer from filling it up and the gravel lot on Walnut just off of Rittenhouse Square jsut because the NIMBYs refuse to accept a movie theater/restaurant/parking garage complex). The NIMBYs ought to form a group called "Citizens for Empty Weed Chocked Crack Lots and Abandoned Buildings with For Lease Signs".

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Currently, north of Market Street there is a zoning overlay which requires that people who want to open a business that does not meet the requirements of that zone msut seek a variance (a stringent process).
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Getting a variance is a stringent process? Um, the PA supreme Court & several lower courts have repeatedly chastised the zoning board because they give vaiances at the drop of a hat! There is a strong tendency for political favorites to sail through, while others get a thorough review.


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Look at what happened to Manayunk when the NIMBYs there imposed thier ill-thought out restaurant moratorium which banned the opening of new restaurants and bars. That pretty much ended Manayunk's rise and passed the baton to Old City.
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Not from the rumors, which were that many of the existing restaurant owners were quite fine with a cap on restaurants, since they were already limited by parking, by garbage collection.

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NIMBYism has some good but in this city it seems like NIMBYism has gone into overdrive and has contributed to making this city business-unfriendly. It almost seems like people are more willing to accept ugly parking lots or empty lots rather than see something get built on them
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I don't know, I don't think the background level of resistance to new projects is that much higher inside Philly than outside. Everyone hates new ideas initially - people hated city hall, people hated the Art Museum,
people didn't want boathouse row built. However, sometimes the best defense against a bad idea is make it run the gauntlet of neighborhood common sense.

When the community sets a high standard, they often get someone who builds better. My gut reaction to an initial

http://www.plannersweb.com/articles/look32.html


I've always though that a commnity's reception of a developers initial proposal is actually quite like mom & dad's reaction when thier 15 year old daughter announces she's in love and eloping- you don't doubt they really believe what they're saying, but you also know that waiting a little while will clear things, and they are certainly going to do all they can to stop anyone from consumating anything.

Running ahead with a totally pro-business regime isn't always an answer.
What if Manayunk hadn't had the restaurant moratorium? Well, those nice Neil Stein restaurants that went bankrupt would be on Main Street, rather than Walnut. Main Street may have lost a boom / bust restaurant, but it got a more stable diversified business instead.

Hey, we spent a ton of money on 8th & Market, but atleast we've cut the lossses. Of course, when you do rush in to build something, you many not get the most stable result - a great example is our BRAND NEW mega buck hotel The Ritz- going bankrupt.

http://www.phillyweekly.com/article.asp?ArtID=6035

Sometimes fools and developers rush in where angels and NIMBY's fear to tread.

Hal

I agree with cc. It's this anti-development, anti-growth, anti-change spirit in Philadelphia that separates this city from others. While other cities are trying to figure out how best to grow and change, Philadelphians are trying to figure out how to try to kill growth and change (ie Liberty Place, developments in Manayunk, new restaurants, tall buildings in Center City, new apartment houses on R. Square, etc.)

not so sure, i think this is common in many cities it's just that we have less encouragement. of course, in nyc they demolished a lot of what makes philaelphia appealing. NIMBY's can do good but it needs to be balanced.
http://dhcd.dc.gov/services/home.shtm
in addition, firs time home buyers can get up to a $5k credit on the purchase of their new home.

That's the thing - it is not balanced here. It seems like people fighting a project, regardless of how ludicrous their claims, can fight a project and thus delay it until time comes when the developer just throws in the towel and gives up or the window of opportunity for building the development closes. A great example is how residents in Old City fought the development of condo buildings along the Delaware (the buildigns wouldn't even be in their neighborhood). The developer conceded to them and lwoered the hegiht of hsi buildings but hey still fought. Since then the economy has slowed and the developer appears to have given up. Same goes for the developments around Rittenhouse. With the boom and bust cycle of the economy, it is important for developers to develop when the economy is good. The NIMBYs have a tactic of stalling everything until the economy is bad and then the developer is no longer interested. No wonder things don't get built easily here. Of course there is the argument that if the developer gave up, it was likely that the building would ahve been empty anyway because of the economy. But this isn't true. The St. James, the Grande, the Phoenix, and all these other developments which the NIMBYs did not squelch are filling up fine. You build it and they will come. You don't build it and they will never come. If this city is to grow, the NIMBYs have to be cut off at some reasonable stage. They shouldn't *unreasonably* delay and obstruct progress.

the NIMBY's are only part of the problem in philadelphia.

I don't realy hate NIMBYers, but I personalyy don't think they're doing a lot of good for this city. Look at the Northeast and the Northwest parts of this city. The Northwest parts of the city are rich with culture and history, with the Morris-Dresher House, Germantown Town Hall, Chestnut Hill, Manayunk, and Awbury and Morris Arboretums. In the Northeast, about a third of Philadelphia lives there, plus you have Pennypack Park and Franklin Mills, and the problem is that they're not even connected by subway. Sure they're connected by commuter, but $4.00 just to get to CC for one way is too much!!! And there are people in the NE that don't want the trains to come to the NE because they're afraid that there will be a "bad element" added to their neighborhoods if the subway becomes extended to the NE, despite the fact that both the NE and SEPTA will make a lot of money from the subway. And the NW can convert their rail line to subway lines, but there's no effort being made to do that, and those lines would make more money as subway lines than what they currently do as commuter rail lines, if we ran them conveniently. But the city has a way of killing itself, meanwhile other cities are trying, and with sucess, better their cities, and their infrastructure. We don't even know what to put in Penn's Landing, for crying out loud!!!

I have to agree w/ cc on this one---even though Hal and ElDondre as usual make good points....

This is an issue my colleagues in the Design Advocacy Group (DAG) discuss all the time....

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SPM

I usually laugh at those who decry "nimbys" since most of them do their decrying from a different neighborhood.

So, let's ask this. Why shouldn't those people in a neighborhood control (within limits) what gets built, started, etc. in their own neighborhood. Afterall, it is their lives, their investments, etc. that are affected.

Every once in a while, there may be some sort of major project that cannot be built anywhere else and probably should go ahead for the "greater good." But, where do you draw the line.

Is it important that Old City have more bars, more restaurants, etc. when it already has the highest number of liquour licenses per capita of any area in the state. Is it important that Old City become your playground because you don't want bars and restaurants (and thousands of partygoers) in your neighborhood.

And why should we allow developers more say in the quality of life of a neighborhood - whether it is a bar or a thrity-five story apartment complex which adversely affects the quality of life of a neighborhood.

What is a neighborhood other than a group of people living together for their own common good.

In Old City, we had a governing principle that we welcomed all new development as long as it didn't adversely affect those people who were already there.

Not a bad rule of thumb.

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“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” - Jane Jacobs

I definitely agree that the current residents should have major input. Good rule of thumb too Chris.