Atlantic City Facing Unprecedented Economic Collapse

full-state map (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Atlantic City region is on the brink of a short-term economic disaster.

Atlantic City made history 36 years ago when it opened the first legal casinos in the United States outside Las Vegas.

Now it’s doing so again as casino employment – which for years exceeded the number of city residents – drops precipitously after a decade of steady decline.

The closing of three casinos, starting with Showboat and Revel this weekend followed by Trump Plaza two weeks later, and the rapid-fire loss of 5,700 jobs, draw historic comparisons to longer-term collapses of U.S. industries such as steel.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20140831_Atlantic_City_facing_unprecedented_economic_collapse.html#GmfpHBJZ5OpDgeaJ.99

Changing Skyline: Apartment Towers Growing Toward Philadelphia’s West

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Philadelphia County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

High-rise construction in Philadelphia comes in waves. The last big crest a decade ago brought in a handful of pricey condo towers, mainly clustered in established neighborhoods around Rittenhouse and Washington Squares.  This time, the tide is rolling westward, from Center City out toward the universities, and it’s looking like a tsunami.

Five apartment towers are or will be going up along Market and Chestnut Streets, between 20th and 38th, one glassy slab after another.  The total grows to seven if you count two clever retrofits where developers have piled extra floors on top of existing buildings, turning height-challenged mid-rises into full-fledged high-rises.

This stretch – from the tattered western edge of Center City to the University City Science Center – has long been an ill-defined territory, not uniformly academic, commercial, or residential.  The arrival of a couple thousand residents can’t help but make these blocks feel more lived-in, and the bustle should advance the goal of knitting together the two sides of the Schuylkill.

Read more:  http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20130621_Changing_Skyline__Apartment_towers_growing_toward_Phila__s_west.html

In San Francisco, High-Rises By The Bay

The San Francisco Peninsula (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ROUGHLY two decades ago, during an earlier Internet start-up boom, many entrepreneurs and fast-typing coders and engineers set up shop in a still-gritty area of this city:  South of Market Street.

The young tech crowd rented — and sometimes bought — in commercial buildings in this former warehouse area, converting them into “work-live” spaces where they operated their nascent companies and slept (once in awhile).

The boom-and-bust cycles in the tech sector move quickly, and the pace of constant reinvention and innovation is relentless.

The same is true of tastes in real estate.  Today a new generation of tech dreamers is back in the South of Market area.  But this time they are breathing life into a start-up wave not previously seen in San Francisco:  high-rise condo living.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/realestate/in-san-francisco-glass-and-steel-condos-rising-by-the-bay.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hpw