April 22: East Market project could get 250 more units | Perch Pub billboard spared | Bike share station placement guide

National Real Estate Development is seeing stronger housing demand than they initially anticipated for 11th and Market, reports Jacob Adelman, so they’re considering adding an additional 250 units to their East Market project. “The new units would add about 20 stories to what has been intended as a two-story retail building at the corner of 12th and Market Streets, [Daniel] Killinger said. The company already plans a 322-unit residential tower as part of the project.”

Inga Saffron thinks all the new housing and retail planned for Market Street adds some urgency to the kinds of street design changes Old City District’s Vision 2026 plan recommends. She also mentions that Brandywine Realty Trust is considering converting the lower floors of the underused parking garage they built to serve the IRS building into a food market, similar to Reading Terminal Market. 

The billboard atop Perch Pub at Broad and Locust lives to blight another day in the latest renderings of Pearl Properties’ Cambria hotel, reports Curbed. The Naked Philly blog had previously questioned why Pearl would demolish the parking garage but keep the two-story corner building, speculating that differences over the billboard’s fate might have played a role. 

Juliana Reyes digs deeper into some of the behind-the-scenes tensions at the City’s Office of Innovation and Technology that spilled out into the open recently with the exit of two prominent civic technologists. “[W]hat we are seeing is competing views of what a municipal tech department should be. Should it be akin to a startup, a high-profile, talent-grabbing powerhouse? Or should it be more like a services shop, a behind-the-scenes team that helps the rest of the city shine?”

Jen Kinney at Next City shares some highlights from the new NACTO guide to bike share station placement. “NACTO research shows that bike-share stations placed within a 3- to 5-minute walking distance of each other throughout a contiguous service area are essential to a system’s success.”