Post Brothers’ Pod Park includes giant robot statue, lots of food

Helping revive the Piazza

By Anna Merriman@Anna_Merriman Jun 7, 2019, 12:30pm EDT

A new Northern Liberties pod park aims to draw visitors to the neighborhood and the long-suffering Piazza with local art, activities, and (the primary draw) lots and lots of Philly food vendors.

The 35,000-square-foot Piazza Pod Park, which sits across the street from the Piazza courtyard, at 1075 Germantown Avenue, opens tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. After Saturday, the park will be open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The primary goal of the park is to be an outdoor space for eating, drinking, and shoping with 14 local vendors in repurposed shipping containers around the park, according to a statement from Post Brothers this week. Some of the vendors’ shipping containers have dining areas, but the park also has a two-story dining pod with a roof deck.

But there’s more than just dining available at the park. A big draw (or at least one of the first things visitors are likely to notice) is the 33-foot-tall wireframe robot sculpture named “Bebot,” that sits in the middle of the park. Bebot was created by London-based artist Andrea Greenlees for the 2018 Burning Man Festival and was named, the “biggest, weirdest and most radical art from Burning Man 2018,” by Art World.

Another art installation will be the “Thinkcubes,” an 800-foot-long piece comprised of 185 connected water storage containers and LED lights illuminating the paths of the park.

Reviving the Piazza

The Piazza Pod Park was created by Philly-based group, Post Brothers, who purchased a stake in the neighboring Piazza from Kushner Companies over a year ago, and aimed to bring more locals to the spot.

“Our goal is to create the thriving community hub that the Piazza courtyard has always tried to be.” Post Brothers CEO Mike Pestronk said in the statement. He added that the Piazza has long struggled while the rest of Northern Liberties grew.

It’s a sentiment many Philadelphians have echoed over the years. Kushner Companies bought the Piazza back in 2013 for an undisclosed figure (though BillyPenn reports it was worth around $130 million), and attempted to rebrand it as “Schmidt’s Commons.” The effort was a result of a declining number of retailers since the space opened only four years earlier. But the new name did little to help the success of the Piazza, and Kushner Properties sold the Piazza for just over $44 million in 2017. Now, Post Brothers hope they can do for the Piazza what no one else was able to: revive it.

“By physically moving the community hub across the street, and shifting the attractions so they speak to the neighborhood, we want to make The Piazza reach its potential. Our intention is to make this a community hub, not a tourist attraction,” Pestronk said.

As part of their goal to revive the Piazza and surrounding area, Post Brothers plans to renovate eight buildings around the Piazza courtyard, and, “shift the Piazza’s focus from the interior European-style courtyard to facing the streets—including Germantown Avenue, between 2nd and Hancock,” they said in a statement. That includes turning many restaurants, bars and retail, which have long looked inward at the courtyard, out to the street.

“Piazza Pod Park will open and aid in creating this vibrant corridor that will ultimately connect The Piazza and Piazza Terminal,” they said, adding that man events traditionally held in the Piazza courtyard, will instead be moved to the Piazza Pod Park.

Which food vendors to expect at the park: