Why I Like the Cira Centre

The Cira Centre is a brand-new skyscraper above 30th Street Station in
University City. Thanks to its status as a tax-free zone, it will be
inhabited by companies who will benefit the most from such breaks:
high-end service providers like law firms and financial advisors.

People disagree on whether its architecture is sleek or sloppy, but
that's not the conflict I want to talk about. There has been a lot of
opposition towards this project from its inception, and as one who
knows of the people who have brought it into being and heard their
rationales, I want to offer my reasons why I like the project.

But first, the dissenters. On the one side, you have the
left-wingers, for whom this looks like a huge tax break for the rich,
much like the tax-free zone at 17th and Market is benefiting Philly's
biggest big boy, Comcast. On the other side, if you're a libertarian,
you're protesting that government subsidies distort the free market's
ability to efficiently arrive at the optimal mix of firms and
locations. Then you have owners of other Center City office
properties, who (correctly) assume this new building will attract
existing downtown tenants rather than drawing new business tenants
from outside the city.

I appreciate the agendas of both the left-wingers and the
libertarians, and the potential loss of business by the other Center
City property owners, and yet still I am in favor of the project. My
angle is that many of these Center City firms would, absent a project
like the Cira Centre, move to the suburbs – if not now, then
eventually. Instead now, they'll be downtown, where they and their
clients and other visitors have easy mass transit access to their
offices. So not only is the city stemming some of the bleeding of
activity and tax base, but the region is stemming some of the swelling
of sprawl and congestion and pollution.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write about why I like the Comcast project. In
the meantime, left-wingers, libertarians, and Center City property
owners, please put forth your arguments so I can learn from you.