Feb. 4

By Kellie Patrick
For PlanPhilly

Philadelphia can have a vibrant waterfront, intrinsically connected to living, working and playing here, said experts who gathered Saturday to share the stories of their own cities’ waterway resurgences.
But it won’t come quickly, easily, or cheaply, they said.
The Philadelphia City Planning Commission and Penn Praxis had brought the experts from Camden, Portland, Boston, Washington, New York and Seattle to the Seaport Museum to give Philadelphians a glimpse at what it would take to turn an isolated, under-used section of the Delaware into a popular destination. And they laid it out honestly:
There must be lots of talking with residents, business owners, environmentalists and others who care about waterfront development, because people who have a say are more supportive.
A long-range plan is needed to guide the project through a series of small steps toward its final destination. 
A creative funding plan is necessary – particularly at a time when the competition for public dollars is fierce.
Do not shut off greenways from some commercial uses.
It helps to build cooperation between city and state leaders. (The audience chuckled a bit at that one.)
And law and policy makers willing to do their part can make the project easier.
“We’re talking 20 to 25 years,” said Paul Levy, founding chief executive of Center City District, during a discussion that followed the presentations. “If I learned anything today, that’s how long it will take to get things done.”
Here are The Future panelists’ stories:
NEW YORK
Connie Fishman, president of the Hudson River Park Trust  www.hudsonriverpark.org, said the evolution of the five miles of riverfront her organization manages began in 1973 - after a truck fell through the bed of an elevated highway. This highway was the Hudson’s version of I-95; built at a time when the riverfront was a busy, smelly and sometimes dangerous industrial place, it split residents from the river. The barrier remained long after the industry left.
Fishman said the state and city first planned to rebuild by way of a tunnel that would be buried along the river. Residential units would be built on top. After ten years of lawsuits, primarily by environmental groups, “they gave up.”
Another highway was built – a ground-level boulevard with much landscaping that is still a barrier, but not as much as what it replaced. Many meetings with residents were held. In 1998, the Trust was created.
The park’s first phase – 40 percent of the five-mile stretch - opened in 2003. Rotted wooden piers have been replaced with concrete ones, designed for different recreational purposes. There are children’s playgrounds on some, while others have athletic fields used by children and adults. “But we have natural lawns for passive uses,” she said, showing a colorful photograph of sunbathing New Yorkers, with little grass left showing.
The park encourages fishing and recreational boating. It has paths for those who walk, jog, rollerblade or bike. The park contains a marine sanctuary and quiet, shady tables suitable for resting or reading.
“What is there is what the community wanted,” Fishman said.
The city and state have each put up $130 million to build the park, but the Trust generates the $12 million it takes each year to operate and maintain it, and puts $1 million aside annually toward handling its own capital expenses in the future, Fishman said.
Much of this money is raised through commercial ventures within the park, including commercial sports and recreation facilities, a spa, convention space and a driving range. The Trust is landlord to a harbor cruise line and a passenger ship terminal.
“Requiring no public money to maintain the park is a key to success,” Fishman said.  The success has sparked a real-estate boom, she said. “The city is reaping the benefits in real estate taxes.”
CAMDEN
Tom Corcoran, CEO of Cooper’s Ferry Development Corp., www.camdenwaterfront.com  didn’t have a highway to contend with, but despite the fact that Camden is essentially an island surrounded by rivers, residents have had no access to the waterfront. The neighborhood streets just don’t extend that far.
Since its start 22 years ago, the Development Corp. has coordinated more than $500 million of investment in the Camden waterfront.
Some of its more visible projects include The Tweeter Center, Campbell’s Field, the rehabbing of the Victor Building, and the RiverLink Ferry, which Corcoran said will carry New Jersey residents over the Delaware to play at a Philadelphia casino.
A ferry terminal with restaurants is in the works, as well as additional residential development. There are plans for more entertainment venues and an aerial tram that would take people back and forth between Philadelphia and Camden via a cable suspended over the river.
Camden’s waterfront and Penn’s Landing – a portion of the Delaware River that is further along in development than other sections of the Allegheny to Oregon swath Penn Praxis is working on – have developed with each other in mind, Corcoran said. The idea is that Camden and Philadelphia will one day promote two cities with one waterfront as a singular destination, he said.
Much of Camden’s riverfront development has fronted its downtown area. The planning meetings were not well-attended, Corcoran said. “There were no real existing residential neighborhoods when we started,” he said. “Most people didn’t think anything would happen, so they didn’t care.”
But as plans for development encompass other parts of Camden’s waterfront, those closer to its neighborhoods, there are meetings “in church basements” to help with grassroots planning, he said.
One key future element: Extending neighborhood streets down to the water, so that residents can enjoy the river.
Corcoran said plans for recreational trails have been made much easier by a Department of Environmental Protection rule requiring any development, public or private, to include 35 feet of public access near the water. “That one simple rule makes a lot of things easy in the long term,” he said, encouraging Philadelphians to press Pennsylvania for something similar.
Camden is one of the nation’s poorest cities. One project that would have used eminent domain to replace much of Cramer Hill, a poor but very stable neighborhood, with commercial development and much more expensive housing was abandoned after public outcry and legal battles.
But Corcoran is hoping riverfront development that includes residents will turn Camden’s economic future around by attracting residents, tourists and commerce to serve them. “It will take many years, but we’ve already begun,” he said. “At the end of the day, Camden will be a very different city, and it will have done so by connecting its neighborhoods to the water,” he said.
SEATTLE
“The road ahead is a political road as much as anything,” warned Peter Steinbrueck, a Seattle city councilman who is an architect and chairs the Urban Development and Planning Committee.
With large numbers of architects, designers, and residents who live near the water, Philadelphia has a “golden opportunity” to restore its waterfront, he said. But the city needs to get a plan together. “Planning is the thing that saves you from the politicians,” he said. “You have some self-determination about what happens decades ahead.”
Steinbrueck said he was surprised to learn that Philadelphia has no current, city-wide comprehensive plan. “Spot zoning and ward politics are not the way to build a city,” he said.
But even with those things, building is difficult.  Seattle is now contending with a lack of political will for an expensive part of its river-front plan – replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct, a double-decker freeway that was damaged during a 1995 earthquake, with a tunnel, Steinbrueck said.
“We thought we had everything going in that direction,” Steinbrueck said. But then some in state government decided the tunneling would be too expensive, he said. And some environmentalists worried that it would simply flood with rising water levels due to climate change.
Voters have their say on March 13. Steinbrueck said he’s hoping the eventual plan will be a compromise. He doesn’t think the expensive tunnel is needed, he said, but he would “stand in front of the bulldozers” to prevent another elevated highway.
During the discussion after the presentation, Levy, of the Center City District, said it was vital that a corporation be formed to raise money for the waterfront effort, because funding from foundations and any government sources can terminate.
PennPraxis director Harris Steinberg said setting up such an entity is part of PennPraxis’ duties.
Steinberg  said  the meeting was “not about finding the answers today, it’s about asking the right questions.”
In March, after more discussion, the first “broad strokes” of possible riverfront design will emerge at a three-day visioning workshop. Design professionals will listen to the ideas of citizens and community leaders and sketch out the first possibilities for a new waterfront.

Kellie Patrick is a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter.