This could be a terrific development if the two investors follow through. It also provides an important lesson in why a city should not be overly eager to help bankroll a project whenever tax breaks are sought. The plan proposed two years ago required far too much public investment.
Clear Channel, which will put up most of the money, clearly sees the economic potential on West Chestnut Street, where new trendy restaurants and modern condominium and apartment buildings are sprouting. In the last two years, the private rush to revive the thoroughfare to its once-proud status as a show street has been startling.
Chestnut Street, only a couple blocks from elegant Rittenhouse Square, where multi-million-dollar condos are in the works, was foolishly ignored by developers for years while more challenging neighborhoods on the fringe of Center City started sprouting comebacks driven mostly by residential demand. Yes, a 10-year tax abatement for new or office-to-residential conversions did help. But the appeal of living in Center City is now luring private investment in the residential market, if not office buildings.
It is dumb luck that the city's original art-deco, first-run movie theater has survived so many turnovers, bad runs and revivals. The Boyd's first major makeover occurred when it became a Cinerama theater in 1953. It returned to a regular movie house in 1958, then had a short stint as an adult theater in the late '60s.
By 1971, it was part of the Sameric chain of theaters, named after owner Sam Shapiro and his grandson, Eric. The theater barely survived the wrecking ball after the Philadelphia Historic Commission failed its mission by denying the building historic certification in 2002.
Now the city should cooperate as much as possible to help the Boyd's new investors restore and revive a surviving vestige of old Philadelphia.
