July 14


By Steven Ujifusa
For PlanPhilly

Old age, alterations, and neglect have left the South Street Bridge a shadow of its once-elegant self. Its four watch towers have been lopped off, and the drawbridge mechanisms and grating are sealed with concrete. Patches of rust scar the bridge’s beams and railings. Occasionally, chunks of spalling concrete break loose and fall onto the expressway; or shower into the Schuylkill River.

Bicyclists, cars, and pedestrians all fight for space on this two-lane structure. The northern sidewalk is closed. During rush hour cars leaving the University of Pennsylvania clog the onramps to the Schuylkill Expressway. According to the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, cyclists make up about seven percent of all traffic on the South Street Bridge - about 1,000 bikes per day. The competition can be especially harrowing when bikers climb the sharp, steep kink on the east side. Some cyclists avoid the roadway altogether, pushing their way into the one open sidewalk and choosing (illegally) to fight for space with pedestrians.

As the Streets Department prepared to unveil its replacement for the South Street Bridge in late 2006, many community groups hoped to see a new bridge that carefully balanced the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and automobiles. What groups such as the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition did not want to see was another highway style bridge such as the one built for Walnut Street.

When it opened in 1990, the Walnut Street Bridge had four traffic lanes, narrow sidewalks, and no bike lane. At the opening ceremony, members of the Bicycle Coalition laid their bikes on the pavement in protest. A single bike lane was later added. But for many community activists, it was too little, too late.

“PennDOT created a highway bridge right in the middle of the city,” said John Boyle, Advocacy Director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, in a June 19 interview. “When driving over Walnut Street Bridge, drivers forget they are in a city and reach forty, fifty, even sixty miles an hour on a span connecting two urban neighborhoods.”

In December 2006, after years of anticipation, the Streets Department released renderings of the new South Street Bridge at a meeting at Greater St. Matthew’s Church on Grays Ferry Avenue. Designed by the engineering and architecture firms of Gannett Fleming and H2L2, the bridge’s main span is five lanes wide at its widest point. There are three westbound lanes at the intersection of the bridge span and the Schuylkill Expressway ramp. Two of them are turn lanes (right and left). The center lane continues through the intersection to West Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania campus. Under this plan, drivers turning onto both the north and southbound ramps will have a much greater turning radius than before, mitigating the hazards posed by the so-called “death ramps.” Eastbound, there will be two lanes of traffic rather than just one. At the bridge’s widest point (at the ramp intersection), the three automobile lanes will be 10 feet, 6 inches across. The two bike lanes will be 5 feet wide, and the flanking sidewalks 8 feet, 11 inches.

The engineers anticipated a huge increase in the number of cars using the bridge over the next decade or so, largely due to the grand plans the University of Pennsylvania has for the west banks of the Schuylkill. Brandywine Realty has already broken ground for Cira Center South on the site of the old post office annex. The César Pelli-designed skyscraper is being pitched to prestigious, high-paying employers. On the old postal lands south of Walnut Street, a group of high rises containing dining, hotels, and conference facilities will form a new Penn campus oriented towards Center City.

Joseph Syrnick, who headed the Streets Department at the time and is currently President and CEO of the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, is proud of the design. He feels the plan combines beauty and functionality. Its four glass-and-steel towers, which will be brilliantly lit at night, are meant to be visual reminder of the original structure’s now-lost guard towers. “H2L2 designed the Germantown Avenue Bridge at Chestnut Hill, and everyone’s been raving about it,” he said in a June 11, 2008 interview. Pointing to a rendering, he continued, “People thought the Eiffel Tower was ugly, but now look what they say. This bridge will be the knight in shining armor, shimmering down there with those towers. I think it will look spectacular!”

But many Center City and West Philadelphia residents were concerned. They felt their desire for a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly bridge had not been addressed by the Streets Department and PennDOT. Rather than a thing of beauty, they saw a concrete funnel for moving traffic onto I-76. “We heard members of the community say over and over again, ‘It better not be another Walnut Street Bridge!’” said Sarah Clark Stuart of the Schuylkill River Park Alliance. Syrnick and colleague Lane Fike at the Schuylkill River Development Corporation deny charges that the bridge was sprung on an unsuspecting public. They cited community meetings that took place three years ago during the design phase. “It’s totally unfair to say there have been no community meetings,” Syrnick recalled on June 11, 2008. “I know it’s been a long time since then. Just because we had the meetings doesn’t mean everyone was happy with everything about the bridge.”

“Federal funding required that we had public meetings,” added Fike. “They took place in the afternoon and evening, but they were not well attended. We advertised in The Inquirer and expected hundreds, but we had very low turnout. The biggest concern of the people who attended was the ramps going to the expressway. The most common comment we’ve heard was ‘you’ve got to get rid of those ramps.’ PennDOT said that was totally out of the question. It would cost more to replace the ramps and close down the expressway than to rebuild the entire the bridge. The impact would just be astronomical. That was really the only complaint we couldn’t address.”

On the heels of the public outcry, journalists entered the fray. In February 2007, two months after the design was released, Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron weighed in. “The engineers have dutifully outfitted the proposed span with bike lanes and a ramp connection to Schuylkill Banks Park,” she wrote, “yet there isn't an ounce of poetry in its steel bones. After a decade of tinkering with its design, the bridge promises to be little more than a chute for efficiently moving traffic onto the most frightening of the I-76 entry ramps.”

City Paper columnist Bruce Schimmel, who also had written caustically about the proposed bridge, said in a June 10, 2008 interview that he is “concerned and saddened about University of Pennsylvania’s silence” during this controversy.

* * * *

One of the concerned community members who attended the December 2006 presentation was James Campbell, a partner at the architecture and planning firm of Campbell Thomas. Campbell had been one of the leaders of western South Street’s shopping and dining renaissance. He has been active in the South Street Neighborhood Association (SOSNA), and his firm designed the new, multi-million dollar lighting scheme for South Street. In his view, the transition between the bridge deck and the row houses, streetlamps and shops of South Street should be as seamless as possible.

The Campbell Thomas office is perched above the intersection of South and 15th Streets. The South Street that Jim Campbell knows and loves is pedestrian-friendly, humanly-scaled, full of impromptu meetings and conversations. He hoped that the new South Street Bridge would respect this ethos. The prospect of another Walnut Street Bridge, he remembered, “looked scary to an awful lot of people in the neighborhood."

That reaction, Campbell felt, was rooted in the perception that the Streets Department had failed to incorporate the community’s design suggestions, much like the Walnut Street Bridge designers had done nearly two decades earlier. “It became increasingly evident that there was a mismatch between what was being proposed and what the neighborhood expected,” he said in a June 12, 2008 interview. “We hoped the Streets Department would come up with a bridge that was new, but reasonably scaled, with good pedestrian sidewalks and bike lanes. We were expecting traffic calming on the bridge. We were also hoping for a structure that would make a better connection between Center City and University City. The I-76 ramps would remain as they were but maybe something could have been done to them to make them safer.”

The narrow sidewalks and lack of protected bike lanes especially troubled Campbell, as did the stainless steel LED lamps. “They did not relate to South Street’s new streetlights, for instance,” said Campbell. “We had just spent millions of dollars on a new South Street lighting scheme.”

In response to the Street Department’s design, Campbell and other community leaders formed the South Street Bridge Coalition. After some heavy political lobbying, they managed to secure funding from Senator Vince Fumo and cooperation from the city. Cash in hand, the South Street Coalition partnered with the well-known architecture and engineering firm of Wallace Roberts & Todd to come up with a “community-based” vision for the South Street Bridge. They hoped to produce not just a bridge of the future, but also one that fitted into the neighborhood’s historical context. They felt the needs of the bicyclist and the pedestrian, not just the automobile, should be among guiding forces of 21st century Philadelphia infrastructure planning.

As president of the South Street Bridge Coalition, Jim Campbell needed an advocacy infrastructure to get the word out about their alternative vision for the bridge. He approached the Schuylkill River Park Alliance and told them about his group’s concerns about the approved plan.

Campbell knew that the SRPA had a proven advocacy track record. The SRPA’s most recent campaign had been to secure two grade crossings - at Locust and Race Streets - across the CSX tracks to allow users to access the trail at street level rather than using the bridge stair towers. In order to win public support for these crossings, the SRPA used email alerts and other internet tools to mobilize people to come to rallies and write public officials. The approach worked, despite strong resistance from CSX. Ultimately, CSX agreed to the grade crossings as long as a connector bridge was built in between the South Street Bridge and Locust Street over to the older Schuylkill River Park at 25th and Spruce Streets.

They agreed. “We used our resources to help get the word out to the people who use the trail about their campaign,” said Sarah Clark Stuart of the SRPA. “We understood their need to mobilize people.”

SRPA’s main concern about the bridge is how it enhances the user’s enjoyment of the trail. “We look at everything from the park user’s point of view,” said Russell Meddin, a colleague of Stuart’s, during an interview on June 18, 2008. “We want to make it as easy as possible for someone who is going to be using the trail by bicycle and by walking to make the change from the bridge down to the trail.” Like the SRDC, Meddin and Stuart’s organization wants to see the trail extended “all the way down to Fort Mifflin and connected with a much larger trail called the East Coast Greenway.”

After Meddin and Stuart examined the Streets Department’s design for the bridge, they came to agree with Campbell that it placed too much emphasis on car traffic and not enough on pedestrians and bikers. “Yes, it did have a sidewalk. Yes, it did have a bike lane,” says Stuart of the original design, “but are they the best they can be to accommodate the large volumes of those kinds of users? We agreed it wasn’t the best it could be. It could be improved without shattering the project, and we really think this is doable.”

One of their main concerns was a lack of a median at the crosswalk between the proposed northern ramp and stair tower on the south side of the bridge. Under this design, said Stuart, “bicyclists are faced with hauling their bike on three stories of stairs versus going across traffic lanes to get to the ramp. It’s that kind of planning and thinking that really needed to come to bear on the bridge, and we think a solution is doable.”

When asked about what was perceived as the lack of community involvement in the initial design process, Stuart states that the South Street Bridge should stand out as a lesson for both the city and the community groups. “Community engagement is very tough stuff,” she said. “From my perspective, this was a case in which this was not handled as well as it might have been. There are lots of forces bearing down on the process: PennDOT rules, federal rules, timelines, deadlines that were missed and passed and had to be caught up with. I don’t think community involvement was a top priority.”

In helping the South Street Bridge Coalition, SRPA used the same strategy it had used for securing the grade crossings. As Stuart described, “we built a webpage for the South Street Bridge coalition so that their own constituents could write numerous political officials and let them know what they thought about the South Street Bridge, and we informed our mailing list about the Coalition’s efforts and sample letter.”

Like the original South Street Bridge of 1923, the new structure is being built during what many feel is a turning point in urban planning priorities. During the twentieth century, the horse, the pedestrian and the streetcar - the principal users of the original bridge - were shoved aside by the automobile. Today, the pendulum might be swinging back toward a human-scaled approach that emphasizes foot and bicycle traffic, a nineteenth century approach with a contemporary twist. “There has been huge shift in urban planning and thinking about streets and bridges and roads and how they accommodate multiple kinds of users,” said Stuart.

Meddin felt that the current design was a capitulation to doing things on the cheap, and represents a step backward in Philadelphia’s urban planning outlook. “I think there’s been a pervasive feeling throughout the city that we need to do things on the cheap. But occasionally a developer or city does not do something on the cheap. Liberty Property Trust’s Comcast Center was not done on the cheap: it’s first class, and it’s emblematic of what Philadelphia can do.”

Stuart and other community advocates believed that the recent energy crisis will have a drastic effect on the number of cars versus the number of bicyclists and pedestrians that will be using the South Street Bridge. “The advent in the past six months, especially of high gas prices and a radical increase in bicyclists and pedestrians using city streets, has brought to bear the issue of how the bridge is going to accommodate all those users.”

Meddin and Stuart did not buy the argument that all of the development planned for the westbank of the Schuylkill means the bridge must be built to accommodate as many automobiles as possible. “To use a Hollywood aphorism,” added Meddin, “if you built it they will come. If you build a bridge for cars, cars will come. If you build a bridge for pedestrians and bicyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists will come. We want to see an accommodation of both, in the safest manner possible.”

* * * *

When the South Street Bridge was completed in 1923, Philadelphia and other major American cities were undergoing a radical shift in transportation needs and city planning policies. The span was originally built as a drawbridge that allowed two-masted schooners and other sailing craft to pass through its span. The crews would unload their cargos of lumber, coal, and sand on the Schuylkill docks, and then sail back down to the Delaware River. The mechanism was controlled from the now-vanished watchtowers.

Although clashes between horses, pedestrians, and cars had concerned many residents as early as 1900, by the time the South Street Bridge opened automobile traffic was still relatively light. Comparatively few middle and working class Philadelphians owned cars. Those that did drove small Model T Fords, and did not use them simply to make a jaunt across the river. Horses continued to pull delivery trucks through Philadelphia’s streets well through the 1930s.

When the South Street Bridge opened, the streetcars were probably its heaviest users. Each morning, streetcars carried thousands of commuters from the row houses of semi-suburban West Philadelphia to the commercial hub of Center City. From 1870 to 1910, developers such as P.A.B. Widener transformed West Philadelphia from farmland to one of America’s most attractive middle class streetcar suburbs. The bridge engineers planned accordingly. Originally, streetcar catenaries lined the bridge deck, and the wires had gaps to allow for the raising and lowering of the bridge. At the same time, the designers made provisions for pedestrian usage by adding built-in barriers that protected walkers from a trolley that might jump the tracks. Or possibly even a runaway horse.

In the early 1920s, the river and its banks was far cry from the tree-lined haven for joggers, bikers, and rowers we know today. It was arguably the least desirable waterfront real estate in Center City. Slaughterhouses, freight wharves, and warehouses lined its muddy, desolate banks. On stifling summer days, the far-reaching stink offended the moneyed residents of Rittenhouse Square and the working class families of Grays Ferry.

In recent years, however, the Schuylkill River Trail, now extending from Locust Street all the way to Valley Forge, has greened and civilized this once desolate landscape. From dawn to dusk, the tree-shaded trail is dotted with scores of bikers, joggers, roller bladers, and walkers. Couples sit on the benches and watch the sun set behind the University of Pennsylvania’s skyline. On summer evenings, people sprawl out on the grass at the base of the Walnut Street Bridge to watch movies projected onto a big screen. Today, it is estimated that 16,000 people per week use the trail. Many reach the trail using the ramps and stair towers on the Market, Chestnut, and Walnut Street Bridges.

The force behind transforming the east bank of the Schuylkill River from industrial wasteland to urban paradise has been the Schuylkill River Development Corporation. Joseph Syrnick, who headed the Philadelphia Streets department before moving to the SRDC, has a very simple mission for his organization, one that dovetails with that of Stuart and Meddin’s Schuylkill River Park Alliance. “Our job is to get the trail down to the Delaware River,” Syrnick said in a June 11 interview. “The connection between Locust Street and the South Street Bridge is next to go. Since the railroad gets closer and closer to the river bank as you go south, the next section of the trail is going to be a boardwalk out into the river, with a concrete surface. In order to connect it to South Street, the ramp we have designed will go from the new South Street Bridge to a point on the river bank to a part of the trail that doesn’t exist yet.”

About three years ago, the SRDC secured a federal grant of $1.5 million to design and build a bicycle ramp that will connect the trail to the new South Street Bridge. The trail extension at the foot of the bridge will be a causeway extending out into the Schuylkill River.

However, a series of delays have prevented construction from starting on schedule, and Construction and labor prices have escalated sharply. Syrnick and Lane Fike are now worried that this grant will not be nearly enough to cover the cost of constructing this crucial link between bridge and trail. “We have $1.5 million for this grant,” said Syrnick. “If prices escalate to $2 million we have nowhere to get the additional funds.”

In the meantime, the old South Street Bridge continues to shower concrete chunks into the river, and onto the expressway. Many worry it might not last another winter.

* * * *

The South Street Bridge Coalition’s plan, titled Design Recommendations for the South Street Bridge, prepared jointly by Wallace Roberts & Todd and Campbell Thomas, was published in April 2008. The report grew out of a community charette that took place in November 2007. About 100 people showed up at the meetings. “There were people from all walks of life,” Campbell remembered, “predominately members of the surrounding residential community, as well as a lot of people who live in Center City, work at the University, and walk and drive across the bridge almost on a daily basis. There were also lot of people from the Bicycle Coalition and users of Schuylkill Banks trail.”

In the community plan, the South Street coalition outlined the following objectives for a new South Street Bridge:
• Moves people and cars well
• Wide urban sidewalks (10-13 feet wide)
• Provides a barrier between cars and pedestrians
• Has bus stop safety islands.
• A crosswalk at Schuylkill River Trail
• Open overlooks with seating
• Landscaped safety medians.

A revised cross section shows the bridge’s sidewalks widened to 11 feet, 1 inch wide - an increase of two feet from the original plan’s specifications. Eastbound traffic will still have the use of three lanes at the intersection with the Schuylkill Expressway ramps. The center lane will remain 10 feet, 6 inches wide, but the right and left turn lanes will be reduced by six inches to 10 feet wide.

East bound traffic will have the use of only one 10 foot, 6 inch lane versus the two lanes of the original plan. This was based on the assumption that the majority of car traffic on the bridge, especially during rush hour, is bound for the Schuylkill Expressway, not South Philadelphia, and will be coming from the University of Pennsylvania. The deletion of the second eastbound lane opened up room for two six foot wide bike lanes, each protected from automobile traffic by 1 foot 9 wide inch barriers. The barriers will be ornamented with traditional street lamps, hanging flowerpots, and banners, and the bridge deck will be enlivened by colorful patterns. In addition, a green median barrier will be placed on the eastern “kink.’ This median is more than just decoration; it will be a visual cue for drivers to slow down as they approach the narrow, one-lane confines of South Street.

Of the proposed ramp that the Schuylkill River Development Corporation has engineered for the bridge, the community plan notes that the Schuylkill River, once a wasteland, has become a popular destination, and that “while a proposed ramp from the bridge will provide future access to the trail, the current design does not anticipate the large number of people who will be traveling on foot or on bicycle to this location.”

According to the South Street Bridge Coalition’s plan, “recent data shows that the number of bicyclists has grown at a rate of twelve percent per year since 1990 and twenty four percent from 2005 to 2006 alone … the current bridge design may be deemed adequate for past levels of bicycle activity, but is not prepared for future increases.”

At the end of the day, Campbell feels that an additional few months spent reconfiguring the bridge will be well worth any additional financial costs. “The overwhelming issue is that we do this bridge right,” he said. “This is a $60 million project, with a result that will last fifty, seventy five, maybe a hundred years. We need to spend our money wisely and end up with something we would all be proud of.”

Campbell and other backers of the community plan feel that their design is a bridge of the future. Urban design principles will be dictated less by the needs of cars and more by those of pedestrians, bikers, and mass transit. In their view, the proposed design is a throwback to the 1950s designs produced under the reigns of Robert Moses and Ed Bacon. “This isn’t the roaring sixties, with its cheap gasoline,” he said. “We will see that the increasing cost of gasoline will lead to an increased emphasis on public transportation, on biking, and on walking. The neighborhood consensus is that this should be a contemporary bridge, not something designed by last century’s parameters.”

When the report came out, Syrnick and Fike stood by the replacement bridge as originally designed. During the June 11 interview, they pointed out that the Arts Commission and Historical Commissions have approved the structure. They are confident that its five-lane wide span will relieve future backups on the I-76 “death ramps.”

“In a few years when Cira Centre South is finished and cars are backing up on a bridge that can’t handle the traffic, people will be complaining about how we didn’t do something about it,” said Fike. “We’ve done the best we can do. You’ve got to take care of the pedestrians and bikers, and we have. I don’t think there’s need for a redesign.”

Syrnick and Fike also disagreed with many aspects of the community design. Speaking as a design professional and not President and CEO of the SRDC, Syrnick said that the community plan simply does not take future development and traffic growth into account. In order to make the community plans feasible and safe, the bridge deck would not just have to be rearranged, but widened to properly accommodate lane widths that match state and federal requirements. To accept the community’s design suggestions would involve a complete structural redesign, and hence an even longer construction delay, further eating into the ramp grant’s buying power.

“The Campbell group’s lane widths are substandard,” said Syrnick. “The traffic rules are there for a reason. If lanes are too narrow, cars are going to be sideswiping each other, and that’s not going to serve people well in the future.” He then added, “I say the numbers don’t work. It’s magic. They are creating lanes that are substandard. I don’t believe they would be approved, and I don’t believe they should be approved. The city would build in segregated lanes if they could. The city isn’t stupid. We initially had the bike lanes sharing the sidewalks, but the bike coalition put the ka-bosh on that because they claimed that they are vehicles and that they deserve our own space on the roadway.”

Regarding the green plantings on the median, Syrnick said, “Realistically you can’t do green on a bridge. The plant people at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society said that on a bridge, flowerpots like those were originally going to put on the JFK Boulevard bridge are going to freeze in the winter time and cook in the summer. On a bridge, it is not a good idea.”

* * * *

Following the release of Design Recommendations for the South Street Bridge, the Streets Department has reentered negotiations with the South Street Bridge Coalition and other advocacy groups to come up with changes to the design. Right now, discussions are still underway, and the Streets Department and the design firm of H2L2 have declined to discuss the matter publically at this time.

David Hollenberg, university architect for the University of Pennsylvania, also could not be reached for comment.

As the days passed and the negotiations continued, supporters of the South Street Bridge Coalition’s plan hoped that the mayor would weigh in on their side. Their hopes were raised in a June 17 speech, when Nutter declared his vision for the future of Philadelphia planning: “We are a walkable city, increasingly home to bicycles. We want to preserve our urban form. We do not want the automobile and its design requirements to dominate the landscape.”

But other politicians also kept mum. “We are meeting with the city about all the design modifications from WRT report,” said Democratic ward leader Marsha Wilkof in a June 13 interview. “The city has been terrific, and we are going through a process with the City and PennDOT to go through all of the recommendations. What I can tell you now is that is the process is going phenomenally well.”

Community groups are waiting for the outcome. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the advocacy group supporting the interests of the city’s burgeoning cyclist population, has closely watched the South Street Bridge for the past several years. John Boyle is less strident in his objections about the original Streets Department design than other leaders, but he still feels there is significant room for improvement. “We sort of signed off on what was presented because we got our bike lanes off the sidewalk,” said Boyle when discussing the current Streets Department design. “We still felt the idea of a physically separated bike lane was better, but we were impressed that the street department was working on a solution for dealing with the conflict issues at the intersection, such as bike boxes where bikes stop in front of the cars, bicycle only signals, an advance pedestrian-only phase signal. But, the idea of creating a better bridge is something we at the Bicycle Coalition like a lot.”

To architect Tim Kerner, co-chair of Center City Residents Association’s Streets Committee and head of Terra Studios, the South Street Coalition’s plan is completely doable and will require no extensive reengineering of the bridge’s structure. Like others in the community, he remains very optimistic about the negotiations currently underway between the South Street Bridge Association and the Streets Department.

“The plan is just re-allotment of space in the new plan,” Kerner said in a June 13 interview. “It’s fairly straight forward; that is unless you had the viewpoint that a lane must be a certain size. The designer’s approach to the original bridge design was that it was a traffic engineering project. All the concerns of the street department are all very legitimate concerns, but simply moving traffic is a very limited objective. We need to take a little bit of that space allotted to traffic and give a little bit more to pedestrians and bicyclists, and meeting that goal seems like an easy thing to do.”

After Senator Vince Fumo agreed to sponsor the community design charette in late 2007, Stuart and Meddin of the Schuylkill River Park Alliance have found the Streets Department to be much more open to community input than they expected. In fact, they were pleasantly surprised.

“I thought the Streets Department did a great job,” Stuart said. “They attended meetings, and were very professional and very genuine.”

Rina Cutler, Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities could not be reached for comment. In an email sent to Center City Residents Association member and architect Timothy Kerner on April 21, Cutler stated that the Streets Department was now considering the following revisions put forth in the community plan:
• Sidewalk Treatments – The use of tinted concrete and the addition of diagonal score lines to simulate sidewalk pavers;
• Removal of the Towers – Deletion of the four decorative towers at the pedestrian overlooks;
• Crosswalk Enhancements – Use of imprints, inlays and/or color to highlight the pedestrian crossings at 27th Street and Convention Ave.;

• Modification Traffic Signal Timing – Additional modifications to the timing sequences to maximize pedestrian movements;
• Benches – Installation of benches at the four pedestrian overlooks;
• Banners and Art Work – Installation of banners on the light standards and placement of artwork on the bridge.
• Bicycle Stop Bar – Installation of advance stop bars for bicyclists;
• Guide Rail Modification – Replacement of the mesh and accent lighting with decorative panel inserts or vertical pickets.

Cutler noted at the end of her statement that, “although the physical constraints of this project are extremely tight, we will make a full and honest effort to incorporate changes that benefit pedestrian and bicycle users of the new South St. Bridge.”

Looking ahead to the outcome of the design negotiations, Sarah Clark Stuart remains very optimistic. “I’m very hopeful they will do their best to make the bridge as accommodating and safe as possible. It was an unfortunate chain of events that hit everybody. The lesson is that when you have project like this, a proactive community engagement process is the best way to have substantive and inclusive results.”

Steven Ujifusa lives and works in Philadelphia. A native of Chappaqua, New York, he received his masters from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design in 2005 and his B.A. in history from Harvard University in 2001.

Contact the reporter at steven.ujifusa@hotmail.com

• SSBDesignedReportpart1.pdf
• SSBDesignedReportpart2.pdf

April 16

Previous coverage

By Thomas J. Walsh
For PlanPhilly

The ghost of Ed Bacon loomed like one of I.M. Pei’s Society Hill towers in a crowded conference room atop Three Parkway on Tuesday and at ornate City Hall chambers Wednesday during lengthy meetings of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and City Council. Just the way the legendary planner would have liked it.

Bacon’s name and planning work was invoked at least a dozen times by advocates and opponents alike during two detailed debates about re-zoning for the proposed Stamper Square project, between Front and Second streets at Pine. The hotel-condominium development would soar above the surrounding neighborhood, filling what is now a long vacant tract that was once home to the troubled NewMarket.

In the latest of a series of proposals going back 20 years, the commercial re-zoning would allow the construction of a 15-story luxury hotel with 150 rooms and 80 condos. The Planning Commission says the design is “consistent with and respectful of neighborhood context, provides a high-quality design using appropriate materials, and provides significant public benefit, namely the ‘green mid-block path’ that continues the neighborhood’s long-established greenway network.”

Nonetheless, the staff’s recommendation to the commissioners was to ask City Council to hold off on final passage of the remapping ordinance. The idea is to give the Planning Commission more time to approve a binding agreement – or a deed restriction – to make sure the developer builds what is approved, and to establish a one-year sunset provision for the re-zoning. After much discussion and comments from more than a dozen Society Hill residents and officials, the commission accepted the staff’s recommendation.

So much for holding off.

On Wednesday, City Council's Rules Committee heard more pro and con arguments concerning Stamper for four hours before quickly approving councilman Frank DiCicco's amendment to allow for a rezoning of the 1.3 acre property from C-2 to C-4. The amendment could go to the full council for ultimate approval as early as next week.

On Tuesday, Planning Commission Chairman Andrew Altman and Vice Chairman Alan Greenberger agreed with the idea of a sunset clause for changes in zoning. Developers should not receive de facto “entitlements,” they said, or the immediate ability to re-sell property where the value went up due to the zoning changes.

“What the planning staff has proposed is an important point,” Altman said. “In some ways the re-zoning is sort of an imprecise tool in terms of what we want to accomplish.”

What the new commission wants to accomplish is broad, but early efforts have been consistently hamstrung by hitches in the city’s tortuous procedural systems and complicated jurisdictional structure. In this case, the role of the Historical Commission was in question.

“City Council has given full jurisdiction to the Historic Commission [for the Stamper Square project,]” said John Gallery, executive director of the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia Tuesday. The latter has not yet acted, he said. Gallery told city council Wednesday that the Historic Commission would not likely get to the Stamper issue for several months. He cautioned council on approving zoning changes prior to Historic Commission check off. 

“I think the Planning Commission really needs to give serious consideration to how ... it coordinates with the Historic Commission. [You] should not be acting prior to the Historic Commission making a decision. We see developers coming in all the time, saying, ‘Oh, the Planning Commission approved it.’ This is premature coming here. ... You are asked to approve zoning. Zoning is a tool. In recent years, the Planning Commission gave excessive zoning changes to any developer who walked in through the door.”

It wasn’t the first time Altman and his colleagues were scolded for the real or perceived sins of past commissions. And it was just so very far from being the last time. “Is it a new day or is it business as usual?” On Tuesday, Gallery asked. “You can answer that question today.”

Representatives of Stamper Square’s development team, Bridgeman’s Development LLP and Starwood Hotels, were on hand at both meetings, including an architect and a lead lawyer. Amid dozens of renderings and drawings, Bacon’s master plan for Society Hill, engineered in the late 1950s and early ’60s, was cited twice. The project includes a green space that would be open to the public and connect Front Street with Second Street via a garden pathway. It would be similar to the well-known Three Bears Park and continue the greenway that Bacon designed to meander through his revitalized neighborhood.

Also, the developers insist that having a high-rise cheek-by-jowl with signature Philadelphia brick row homes is consistent with Bacon’s Society Hill Towers, along with condos on or near Washington Square and more recent buildings on the river, like the Dockside development. Recent long-term plans from PennPraxis, which include tall buildings up and down the Delaware River waterfront, were also cited, showing structures that would dwarf the Stamper Square hotel tower.

But Gallery said he was old enough to have been there, done that, and knew what the plan was from the Bacon days (Bacon was head of the Planning Commission for two decades, from the late 1940s to the late ’60s). Gallery said there were allocations for only two high-rise locations – the food distribution center (Society Hill Towers) and Washington Square.

“You have no plan here,” he said. “It’s spot zoning.”

The community is split over the issue. Normally, it’s the opposition that has the upper hand during public meetings about development issues, but a surprising number of residents in favor of the project also spoke for their allotted two minutes.

Tania Rorke, immediate past president of the Society Hill Civic Association, said she was in favor of Stamper Square and that Bridgeman’s “did everything they could” over the course of more than 50 meetings with residents. She said the officers of SHCA are split down the middle on the issue.

But Benita Fair Langsdorf, also of the SHCA, said the group’s zoning and historic preservation committee is overwhelmingly against the plan.

And that’s how it went for two days. Impassioned speeches for both sides took the microphone, but the years that have passed were showing. There was no yelling, no chanting or stomping of feet. Just the words of the well-heeled and articulate members of one of the most historic neighborhoods in the country, one that is situated among a decaying South Street retail district and a slowly changing waterfront.

“What we’ve got today is a big empty hole in the ground,” said one resident. “We’ve had that for 10 years.” As for Ed Bacon’s plans, he said he was no expert, but that “I’m sure none of those plans involved a big empty hole on the ground for 10 years.”

Paul Boni, an attorney and another member of SHCA, said the project was listed for consideration by the Historic Commission last week and was pulled from the agenda the day before. “I don’t know why,” Boni said. “But I think they first wanted it to go the political route” by making an end-run around the commission and going straight to City Council. A lawyer for the developer denied the accusation.

After Wednesday's council action, Boni said there may be legal challenges to council's potential approval of a zoning variance for the Stamper Square project.   

The Irish on Walnut

Also before the commission Tuesday was an “information only” presentation by Castleway Properties LLC, an Irish developer with an ambitious skyscraper hotel project for the 1900 block of Walnut, encompassing Moravian Street (and possibly privatizing it) and reaching back to Sansom and 20th streets.

Final specs, approval for the demolition of two historic buildings, financing, partnerships with neighbors and other pieces of the overall picture are months away or longer, but it was an example of something Altman wants to see more of. “This is something we are very much looking forward to,” he said. Bringing projects forward early when they are in the pipeline, especially massive ones that will impact many residents and businesses, establishes the lines of communications and gives the public a formal means of input, he said.

“The northwest corner of Rittenhouse Square needs revitalization – it’s the dead spot on the square,” said Castleway’s Mark King, while delivering a 20-minute overview in a crisp brogue. A “tall, slender, elegant building” would rise on the back end of the development which “steps back up into the city” as you look upon it from the horizon. Western-view drawings of its silhouette illustrate how the tower would accompany the taller Two Liberty. The building, King said, is “not imposing” and “doesn’t impose on the square.”

Plans for the front of the building, next to 1901 Walnut, call for a height that is less than half that of the hotel portion. The development calls for 150 condos and high-end retail on Walnut Street.

To “strike” Moravian Street in that block is what the developers would prefer, but that would need approval from every single of the nine neighbors that share the street there, just to get the ball rolling.

Altman and Greenberger, in a scenario that is becoming familiar, asked direct, if polite, questions. Good cop, bad cop they are not, but persistence is proving to be slightly devilish in its details. Where are you on circulation, traffic impact and collaborations with the Streets Department? Altman asked. “Our desire is to have an agreement with [the Center City Residents Association] that will show effects of overall conditions.” Said Greenberger: “Can I strongly suggest that you figure out restrictions” and that you work with staff?

Here, too, Altman suggested that the re-zoning process be tied to a specific project (Castleway was heard before the Stamper Square presentation). There is a time frame for performance, Altman said, and to avoid “some sort of entitlement into perpetuity” on the site, an agreement needs to be struck that is a sort of template for these kinds of issues.

Trying to fundamentally change the way the Planning Commission does business, within the “gray area” leading up to a new zoning code and the accustomed, ingrained means of navigating the city’s ways seems like a catch-22 to new observers of the body. Developing this much space with this many moving parts on the 1900 block of Walnut “is obviously a very bold project,” Altman said. “When are you coming back?”

Answer: By mid-June.

Hotel at 15th & Locust

A new limited service Starwood brand called the Aloft Hotel, aimed at the business traveler, is slated to be built at 1501 Locust Street. The Planning Commission staff recommended approval with some design caveats, which was accepted by the commissioners. The recommendation was forwarded to the Zoning Board of Adjustment for a hearing later April.

Contact the reporter at thomaswalsh1@gmail.com

April 14
By Alan Jaffe
For PlanPhilly
 
Invite a couple of hundred people to become critics, and you’re bound to get mixed reviews.
 
That’s what the Kimmel Center and PennPraxis heard tonight from citizens who had been invited to respond to proposals by students of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of the Arts for redesigns of the public portions of the performing arts building.
 
The students’ ideas ranged from the whimsical (a huge rock-climbing wall) to the possible (a sidewalk café) to the inspired (a rooftop oasis with a translucent aqua floor).
 
The reactions ranged from excitement to apprehension to rejection. But it was obvious that the proposals offered much to embrace and build upon.

 
Kimmel officials began the conversation about enlivening the center’s public spaces last fall, explained executive vice president Natalye Paquin.  While its Perelman and Verizon Halls have drawn crowds and a degree of success since the building opened in 2001, it had never realized the goal of becoming a cultural mecca for events that are not performance-driven, Paquin said.
 
So the Kimmel partnered with PennPraxis, the Penn Project for Civic Engagement, and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Great Expectations program to initiate a “dynamic dialogue” with city residents about the overall space, she said. Four public discussions, involving about 200 people, were held in January to develop guiding principles for rethinking the exterior and interior spaces. That input was combined with online suggestions to serve as the foundation of the undergraduate and graduate students’ redesigns.
 

Cafe Corner

“Tonight’s ideas are preliminary,” said PennPraxis executive director Harris Steinberg, “and they are part of an ongoing dialogue about achieving excellence in design, with the Kimmel at the heart of it.” The goal is to make the building “a beacon and an icon” for future audiences, but the ideas may take years to achieve, he said.
 
One group of students attempted to humanize the Kimmel’s public spaces, seeking ways to make portions of the grand center more intimate. Among the group’s more dramatic suggestions was a stairway that wrapped around the Perelman Hall and around a new elevator to the rooftop. The garden at the top was transformed into a sculptural playground. Comfortable lounge seating was introduced in the Commonwealth Plaza for lingering and wifi use. Large graphic signs and maps directed visitors to the seldom-visited corners of the Kimmel. A new entrance was created at Spruce and 15th Streets, and glass was added along Spruce to invite passers-by inside.
 
The second group of students tried to reconnect the center to other forms of art. A tower was erected in the middle of Commonwealth Plaza with stairs that connected to the tiers of the building. The plan also called for the creation of small performance spaces, a reflective pool on the rooftop, and a hanging mobile in a glass enclosure at Broad and Spruce.
 
The third group added sensory dimensions to the center. The rooftop floor would be glass, with water flowing underneath and into a seven-story water wall. A vertical garden with plush greenery and a rock-climbing wall to “invigorate the entire body” were among the other creative suggestions.
 
In smaller group discussions, the audience offered their critiques.
 

Humanize Perelman stairs

Many applauded the proposals to open a second entrance to the Kimmel and increase the use of glass on the ground floor to bring the inside out and the outside in. “I like anything that brings in more light,” said Sheila Rosenbloom.
 
But Rosenbloom was concerned about the cost of some of the student ideas, and she wondered if any of the young planners had attended events at the Kimmel that attracted large crowds. The proposals for new furnishings and architectural additions might work for daytime audiences but would be intrusive in the evening, she said. “The space has to accommodate the primary purpose – the concerts.”
 
Identifying herself as a psychologist, Ruth Harvey emphasized the need for spaces and uses that would take advantage of “interactive qualities,” and “not interactivity with a computer.” The rock-climbing wall was one of the few activities proposed that “people could do together.” Rather than reflective, meditative interior spaces, the Kimmel needs to create opportunities “where people can involve themselves with each other, and make connections with each other,” she said.
 
Marsha Moss was opposed to the proposed tower for Commonwealth Plaza, a vertical structure that would “undermine the integrity” of the building, which she described as “a work of art.”
 
Josepha Gayer, an opera singer, agreed that the tower was “imposing,” but she liked the idea of stairs emanating from the tower that linked the many levels of the interior. Other participants in the group discussions liked scaled-down versions of the students’ visions.
Large graphic signs would interfere with the architecture of the Kimmel, many said, but most agreed that more signs are sorely needed.
 
“I’ve been here 100 times,” said Beth-Ellen Kroope. “But I’ve only gone up to the roof once – on a tour,” because it is so hard to find. “We need easy access,” she said.
 

Water and vegetation elements

Thomas Morr liked the proposal for a water wall, but not seven stories high. He suggested a smaller version behind the bar to “create visual interest in that space.” Marsha Moss suggested a “meandering, human-scale” stream of water would be more appropriate.
 
A younger member of the discussion group, Donald Maley, cast his support for the “bolder ideas.”
 
“To me, they are more exciting. Speaking for the 20-something crowd, I like the large, bold outdoor signage” proposed by the students, which would inform him when there is a concert he’d like to attend while he was walking home from work.
 

Spruce Street facade

Maley’s friend and peer, Clinton Randall, noted that 70 percent of the Kimmel space is not used. “It’s not about adding, but repositioning what’s already here,” he said. “I like the idea of subtle modifications, which help people realize there’s more space than they’re using.”
 
A still younger participant, 10-year-old David Bulack, would like the Kimmel to add more stores to the retail space and add more color in the windows. Colors, rather than signage, could lead guests through the building, suggested his mother, Patty Bulack.
 
“We should think of this space as a hotel,” said Morr, “with many uses that can accommodate many kinds of interests.”
 

Plaza tower

Adding a closing note to the group discussion was Jack Nixon, who revealed that he is the director of engineering for the Kimmel Center. “There needs to be something to do when you get here,” besides attending a concert, Nixon agreed. “We realize there are things that need to change – and can change. There are some relatively simple things, like better seating and more programming. Anything that attracts people into the building is good.
 
“I’d like to think that this is going to be here in 100 years.”
 
Over the next three weeks, the Penn and University of the Arts students will incorporate tonight’s public feedback into a process book that will be presented to the Kimmel Center for its consideration. The contents will be made available online at www.planphilly.com.
 
 

Rooftop playgrounds

Contact the reporter at alanjaffe@mac.com

• KimmelDesignPrinciples_web.pdf

March 31

 
By Alan Jaffe
For PlanPhilly
 
Over the last 18 months, the city has had a case of “civic engagement” fever. The symptoms are a rash of Sharpie-wielding facilitators, an outbreak of breakout groups, a yen for cold cuts and cookies, and contagious debates on the future of Philadelphia.
 
• PennPraxis asked communities to rethink what can be done on the Central Delaware Riverfront.
• Great Expectations sessions were organized by The Inquirer to figure out how to make us the next great city.
• Multiple city agencies and organizations led Green Plan discussions on how to improve the environment.
• The City Planning Commission set up a circuit of Imagine Philadelphia roundtables as the first phase in drawing up a new comprehensive plan.
 
And there are more requests for your presence coming down the pike. Anyone with a mind to share an opinion has had a choice of soapboxes and a variety of willing ears.
 
But what is behind the recent spate of invitations and concern for public input? Just how much longer will people show up before they sink into civic engagement fatigue? And why does the city seem so damned democratic lately?
 
Athens, Rome, Philadelphia

Coordinating the civic engagement programs for both Great Expectations and PennPraxis has been Harris Sokoloff, director of the Center for School Study Councils at the University of Pennsylvania. Sokoloff traces the framework of that work to the senates of Athens and Rome.
 
“In every decision-making process we have where people come together in some sort of equal terms, we use some form of deliberative model,” going back to those early republics. “The tools we’re using are different; the ideas are still the same. It’s still a matter of: people get together, find a way to identify the issues, what the pros and cons are, the different ways of understanding the issues and the different forms of action, and use that in the decision-making.”
 
As in ancient Rome, “power politics” always play a part, Sokoloff adds, but there are ways to keep the process transparent and the public an important partner.
 
Beverly A. Harper traces her involvement in modern civic engagement to the early 1970s. Harper is founder, president and CEO of Portfolio Associates Inc., the agency that managed the series of Imagine Philadelphia meetings held in neighborhoods around the city over the winter.
 
Back in the ‘70s, Portfolio Associates conducted a study for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that examined how and where citizens could become involved in the transportation planning process. The agency surveyed the 50 state transportation departments around the country, then took an in-depth look at four departments’ experiences with civic engagement.
 
“We found that in the Boston area there was almost a billion dollars in projects that had been stopped because of public involvement,” which occurred at “a very late stage in the projects,” Harper said.
 
“Involving the public early in a realistic way – and realistic means letting them know all of the different factors that will go into the decision-making – does help a project have a smoother development,” she said. “If you involve them early enough and know the kinds of issues and concerns that they have, you can do things to mitigate some of those concerns.”
 
Civic involvement programs continued into the 1980s, according to Harper, then trailed off for the next 10 years or so. The resurgence in Philadelphia is the result of several factors, she said.
 
“I think that part of it has to do with federal guidelines related to the National Environmental Policy Act,” the 1970 measure that required federal agencies to prepare Environmental Impact Statements before taking action and then sharing the information with the public. “Many government-funded projects and public agencies use those guidelines to identify the projects where they need engagement,” Harper explained.
 
Another reason for greater public involvement is governments’ limited funds and resources, she continued. “So one of the ways to help identify what should be done, and how it should be done, is by engaging citizens.”
 
The third factor is increased sophistication on the part of the citizenry, Harper believes. “Thanks in part to the Internet, they can find out what’s going on. When there are things they don’t like, they know how to get involved and who they should be contacting.”
 

Sokoloff’s plunge into the deep end of civic engagement came in 1995, in partnership with Inquirer editorial page editor Chris Satullo. Each year Sokoloff and Satullo took on a new topic that included civic engagement initiatives, from national to local issues, on everything from health care to the needs of a particular school building.
 
Over the past year, their collaboration on Great Expectations was part of a larger effort, the Penn Project for Civic Engagement, which also included the Delaware waterfront project led by PennPraxis executive director Harris Steinberg. Sokoloff, Satullo and Steinberg had worked together four years before on the attempt to find a developer and the right development for Penn’s Landing.
 
Sokoloff said the civic trend is due to the realization on the part of government leaders and agencies that “those who must be involved in supporting or solving a problem or challenge ought to be involved in naming and framing the problem, and in helping to find a solution.”
 
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, for example, recently acknowledged that he can’t do anything without the support and involvement of other people, Sokoloff said.
 
“The leaders can no longer say ‘do this’ and it happens,” he said. “Issues are too complex; the solutions are too complex. Everything requires adaptation. …It requires a different kind of citizen involvement and engagement, and that’s why you’re seeing all these community forums.”
 
The Right Model
 
There are many models for conducting civic engagement, Sokoloff said, and he doesn’t claim to have the best one, “though we try to make it better and are constantly revising it.”
 
In too many cases, the process takes the form of an expert- or advocate-driven discussion. “An expert gets up in the front of the room, makes a presentation, and has a question-and-answer period. Or there may be a group of people who have developed an agenda and all they want to happen is for all the people to bless the agenda,” he said.
 
Liz Gabor, a real estate manager at the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, was a participant in two civic engagement efforts in recent months. The Imagine Philadelphia session, she said, was an “organic” interchange in which neighbors were asked to brainstorm solutions to city problems. “People were imaginative and came up with very good ideas.”
 
But Gabor said her experience in the Great Expectations did not seem as productive. “We were told, ‘read this report and comment on it.’ It was too guided.”
 
Another participant in both the Imagine Philadelphia and Great Expectations sessions found them equally constructive. “I heard similar comments at each meeting and a consistency in what people were saying,” said Jo Ann Desper, a senior consultant for a healthcare services company. “They were both good, open forums.”
 
Public involvement means more than meetings at which participants offer opinions and possible solutions, Harper said. “That is one tool that you can use to get reaction and input. There are lots of others that can be used,” including surveys, focus groups, and online interaction.
 
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission is in the midst of a public outreach effort for its long-range strategy, entitled “Connections – The Regional Plan for a Sustainable Future.” An online survey is underway through the end of March that will help refine planning in the areas of transportation, land use, economic development and the environment. The survey will be followed by planning exercises, focus groups and public workshops.
 
The public meetings have dimensions beyond surveys, Harper said. They serve as an educational tool that shows participants how the next person thinks, and they provide “directly and subtly an empathy and understanding of the position that the agency or organization has in trying to come up with a plan, knowing that everyone is not going to be of one mind.”
 
Those differing views are a vital component of civic engagement. A diverse group of participants is a primary goal in calling the meetings. “I was very pleased with the diversity of the Imagine Philadelphia sessions,” Harper said. “It was diverse in lots of different ways. The meeting in West Philadelphia had lots of young people, and I thought that was terrific. In the Northeast, there were lots of Eastern Europeans, but they were from different ethnic groups. I’m very happy with the cross-section we achieved” over the course of the nine citywide meetings.
 
Sokoloff also seeks a diverse group of participants. “The idea is always to make the group as inclusive as possible – by gender, ethnicity, race, and different levels of expertise,” he said. “The more diversity, the richer the conversation.”
 
While different viewpoints are sought, the civic engagement sessions organized for Penn’s design department or the meetings for the City Planning Commission did not specifically invite developers to the table.
 
But they would not have been turned away, either. “For Imagine Philadelphia, we wanted to hear from ordinary citizens,” Harper said. Developers may have attended, but they would have probably been there in their roles as residents. “The only people we explicitly invited by letter were elected officials.”

In the Central Delaware engagement process, separate meetings were held with developers to gather their input and expertise. “That’s where you say, ‘We’re going to have a closed session with developers.’ And when you do that, you let people know you’re doing it,” Sokoloff said. “It is a matter of transparency, but I like to think beyond transparency to co-production – the idea of experts working with citizens.”
 
Too Much of a Good Thing?
 
Even an engaged citizen may need to rest his voice occasionally. To prevent civic exhaustion, Harper suggests more collaboration among agencies. Portfolio Associates is currently undertaking public research into two projects – one looking at ways to ease traffic congestion on the west side of the Ben Franklin Bridge and the other exploring an extension of the PATCO line along the waterfront – with a combined questionnaire and meetings that will ask stakeholders about both issues.
 
“This is to recognize that people’s time is valuable. I think we need to do a little bit more of that,” she said. “So that you’re not asking the public to come out too many times.”
 
A more serious problem arises when organizers of civic engagement create “unrealistic expectations about how much say people will have in a project. I think it’s something you have to repeat early and often – that this is just one of the factors you use in the decision-making process,” Harper emphasized. “I think it is incumbent upon organizations who are managing this process to be truthful with people about what their involvement is going to mean.”
 
There must be an implementation mechanism in place, she said, to show participants their input had a result. If there is no implementation, “I think that hurts other efforts,” she said.
 
The new Philadelphia Police Commissioner, Charles Ramsey, conducted his own form of civic engagement, a round of six town hall meetings in the six police districts, when he took office earlier this year.
 
“The commissioner had said he wanted to get the public’s input for developing a plan for Philadelphia,” explained Lt. Frank Vanore, of the police public affairs department. “He knows about policing, but he didn’t know Philadelphia. He was following a format he did in Washington, D.C., where he held town hall meetings to create his strategy.”
 
According to Vanore, Commissioner Ramsey took notes at every meeting in Philadelphia and shaped a plan to fit each neighborhood. The result? “Some of those things the people said went verbatim right into his plans.” The commissioner’s Crime Fighting Strategy was then posted on the police department’s website for town hall participants to read.
 
Every municipal or regional issue does not require public involvement sessions, Sokoloff said. “You don’t want to do it with every decision. … You’d get stuck. You don’t have time to do it all. There’s so much that has to be done quickly.”
 
The problems that require the most “citizen adaptation” are those that call for citizen participation, he said.
 
But keeping the public engaged through rounds of meetings is “a real challenge,” Sokoloff said. “It’s a possibility that they will get fatigued. I think it’s less likely to happen if what comes out of the engagement – the action steps, policies, proposals, whatever – is responsive to the citizen voice.
 
“The minute you engage the public in this kind of conversation, you have a responsibility to tell them what you heard, what you did with what you heard, and how what you heard impacted your decisions,” he said.
 
“People need to know their time is being well spent. They need to know they’re making a difference.”
 
Desper, the healthcare services consultant, hasn’t tired of civic engagement after participating in two projects. “The more of these the better, as far as I’m concerned. They are a wonderful example of our government working the way it should. They are opening up opportunities for what citizens want at a very basic level.”
 
Contact the reporter at alanjaffe@mac.com

Feb. 27
Previous coverage
 

By Matt Blanchard
For PlanPhilly

Society Hill's civic association has rejected the 15-story hotel and condominium project called Stamper Square. The vote was incredibly contentious and could not have been closer.

After three hours of lawyerly arguments, points of order, and impassioned appeals to principle, the board came down 12 to 12, which, according to Robert's Rules of Order, means the heavy effort by some on the board to approve Stamper Square had failed. The meeting then broke up suddenly, with scattered shouting and recriminations.

If Wednesday night revealed a troubling split among community leaders, it was also better than cable. As one resident quipped: “Who needs the Walnut Street Theater when you've got drama like this?”

The evening’s climax came at the vote tally itself. Normally a quick procedure, it raged back and forth for 35 minutes as the two sides battled to disqualify their opponents from voting.

“I am absolutely offended by your zealotry!” exclaimed Stamper supporter Jim Moss when opponents challenged the proxy vote of an absent board member.

But the victory – and victory seemed to matter deeply Wednesday night – went to lawyer and board member Paul Boni, who appeared to strike a killing blow to the Stamper Square approval with one well-aimed Google search.

But first, some background.

The latest – and perhaps final – designs for Stamper Square envision a 150-room boutique hotel, run by Starwood Resorts as part of their “Luxury Collection” line, as well as 77 condominium units priced above $1 million apiece. Both uses, along with a restaurant and spa, would be housed in two towers on the vacant NewMarket site, just east of Headhouse Square. After 10 months of negotiations with Bridgeman Development, it is the building’s 15-story height that brought the matter to a crisis on Wednesday night.

Opponents say the building is simply too tall for the historic “urban village” of Society Hill.  In response, Bridgeman has dropped the height of their proposal from 18 stories to 15. But last week they said 15 was their “final offer” and threatened to walk away unless civic leaders come to heel.

Is Bridgeman bluffing?

Supporters of the project believe they’re not. They say enforcing the area’s 60-foot height limit (Stamper would scrape 166) will only kill a very worthy project and leave Society Hill staring at the empty hole of NewMarket for another 10 years.

“I’m satisfied that this is as much as this developer will give, given the economic environment,” supporter Moss said of the 15-story plan. “We’re taking a gamble if we reject this project, and it’s a gamble I don’t want to take.”

It was then Boni played his Google card. A simple search had turned up an interview with Bridgeman principle Ryan Roberts from March 2007. In it, Roberts predicts that Stamper Square is “likely to be no taller” than 11 stories. To Boni, that meant it was time for the board to call Bridgeman’s bluff:

“The developer himself told the press this thing would be 11 stories,” Boni told the board. “I see no reason to think that if we bargain hard, they’ll walk away… It comes down to your confidence, in your heart and in your head, that he’s truly at his final offer and cannot come down.”

By the thinnest possible margin, the board went with Boni. And after it was over, he was approached by a friend from the audience.

“How’d it look from the stands?” Boni asked.

“Pretty ugly,” she joked.

But whether Wednesday night’s decision will truly be regarded as ugly now depends on Bridgeman. In the coming days, the Philadelphia development firm, who all sides agree is offering Society Hill a mostly fantastic opportunity, will through their actions provide an answer to the only question that matters now:

Were they bluffing?

Link to Roberts Interview: http://www.globest.com/news/877_877/philadelphia/159452-1.html

Contact the reporter at blanchard.matt@gmail.com

Inga Saffron's take on high-rise hopes 

Feb. 21

By Matt Blanchard
For PlanPhilly

Call it a deluxe ruckus: Bitterly divided residents of tony Society Hill look poised to reject a luxury hotel development slated for Head House Square.

Named “Stamper Square,” the plan envisions a 150-room boutique hotel operated by Starwood Resorts, and another 77 condominium units, housed in two towers on the vacant NewMarket site. Unable to agree this week, the Society Hill Civic Association said it will decide on Wednesday night whether to oppose the project.

While most neighborhoods might find it hard to reject a $300- to $400-per-night hotel with condos selling for more than $1 million apiece, opponents have their reasons. After 10 months of negotiations with developer Marc Stein, it is the building’s 15-story height that has brought the matter to a crisis.

Because it exceeds the area’s 35-foot height limit, the 166-foot Stamper Square needs Civic Association support if it hopes to secure a zoning variance. Stamper's chances were hurt when the board's zoning subcommittee voted 10 to 3 against.

Should Stamper go down, it will be the latest in a long line of failures at NewMarket, a 1.5 acre site that appears to need an exorcist as much as it does a developer.

Named for a shopping mall that struggled almost from its opening day in 1975 until its demolition in 2002, the NewMarket site is today a large hole. Neighbors rejected a supermarket for the site in 1996 but signed onto a plan by actor Will Smith to build a hip “W” hotel there in 2000, a plan that fell apart when the hotel backed out the following year (Another W plan is now slated for 12th and Arch).

Stein, developer of the proposed Bridgeman’s View skyscraper in Northern Liberties, made what he said was a final effort to win over Society Hill at a hot-tempered meeting in the Old Pine Church on Wednesday night. Over 100 people were in attendance.

“It’s been a long ten months,” Stein told the crowd. “Either I walk after [this meeting], or I come back and build something else.”

That something else, he suggested, was a by-right development that would not require the neighborhood approval (Read: it will fill every available inch of the zoning envelope and might be ugly).

The ensuing debate revealed a neighborhood profoundly alienated from its bustling neighbor, South Street (called a “garbage pit” by one speaker), and fiercely suspicious of developer promises.

It also revealed a minor identity crisis:

Is Society Hill a full part of Center City that should welcome wealthy hotel visitors and high-density urban living? Or is it a strictly low-rise urban village that must guard against tall buildings even on a vacant lot?

“We are almost like a village within a city,” argued board member Benita Langsdorf, who opposed the project for violating height limits. “We moved here because we are a different kind of community.”

Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, adduced the example of Ed Bacon’s Society Hill Towers to defend the project:

“This neighborhood began with high rises.  It was always designed to be both modern and historic … And it’s the high density buildings that bring the people,” Levy said. “Some would like to see townhouses, but it’s been 20 years, and where are those townhouses?”

A “potential treasure”

Design-wise, Stamper Square is a collaboration of two architecture firms, locally-based H2L2 and the global giant Gensler. Advocates say its genius lies in the site plan, which places the 15 story towers on Front Street where renderings suggest they will not be visible from most locations in Society Hill.

That site plan also includes a mid-block passage – inspired by Ed Bacon’s greenways – between 2nd and Front. Stein has offered to make a sculpture garden of the passage, which appears to be the hotel’s main entrance.

All 412 parking spaces will be in an underground garage, and stalls will be set aside for the project’s adjacent neighbors. The actual units are contained in two conjoined towers, glass with irregularly spaced vertical panels, rising from a brick base.

Thirty nearby neighbors signed onto a statement of support for the project, calling the proposed passageway “a potential treasure in our community”. Others hailed the project as a high-class balance to the déclassé clientele of South Street.

Doubts

Doubts about the project came from the board’s own zoning committee.

Paul Boni, noted anti-casino lawyer, argued there was only reason why Society Hill was being asked to consider so large a project: The owners paid too much for the site and want to recoup.

According to The Inquirer, the Chawla brothers of Sant Development bought the site from Will Smith in 2005 for $10.5 million – three times what Smith had paid just five years before.

Boni extolled the neighborhood’s 35-foot height limit as a “blanket of protection,” and accused Stein of simply bluffing when he said 15 stories was his final offer.

“He’s already come down,” Boni said. “What confidence do you have that this developer can’t come down further? ... We don’t want to kill the project. We want to give the civic association the ammunition to bargain harder.”

A flawed process?

In the end, board president Richard de Wyngaert declared that his conscience would not allow him to vote on the changing project after four hours of wandering argument. By a close vote, the vote on Stamper Square was postponed to Wednesday.

For board member Steve Weixler, who favored the project, the Stamper Square affair is one more reason why the city should take planning decisions out of the hands of community groups and return that power to trained professionals in the City Planning Department.

Calling the evening’s debate “subjective, personal, unfounded and unfriendly,” Weixler said proponents who had cheered for the project at 6:30 p.m. had by 10 p.m. grown tired and left.

“Eventually people got so tired they desert the process.” He said.
“This underscores the need for government and serious planning to step up in this city… Government needs to stop this process.”

Contact the reporter at blanchard.matt@gmail.com

Foxwoods aeriel view

Jan. 29

Rendell calls council stance gutless

Casino-Free Philadelphia challenges the governor

By Kellie Patrick Gates
For PlanPhilly

   Philadelphia still faces a lawsuit that was filed after its Commerce Department gave SugarHouse Casino a permit to build on riverbed land - even though the city revoked that permit last week.
   "We really think it's a moot point since we revoked the licenses," said Maura Kennedy, a spokesperson for Mayor Michael Nutter. The city filed a brief with the Supreme Court stating as much shortly after Nutter announced the permit decision Friday.
   But state Rep. Mike O'Brien - one of the cadre of local legislators who filed the lawsuit in late December, said the case is not about whether a permit exists, but who has the right to grant one. The legislature does, he says, and the city does not. The city disagrees.
   When making last Friday’s announcement, Nutter criticized the administration of former mayor John Street for its handling of the permit, saying errors were made and the decision was rushed.  But Nutter's legal staff agrees with Street's -- and SugarHouse's -- that a 1907 law gives the city the right to make the call on riparian rights.
    "The city does have a right to decide, it was just done improperly," Kennedy said.

Sugarhouse aeriel view

 Historically, the right to build a project the size of SugarHouse on riverbed land - also called riparian or submerged lands -  has been granted through an act of the state legislature. But tradition holds that only a legislator representing the district where a project is located introduces that legislation. None of the local contingent were anywhere close to doing that for SugarHouse when the casino's attorneys found the 1907 law and applied to the City Commerce Department.
    The legislators and their legal experts maintain that newer laws - including the Administrative Code of 1929 and the Dam Safety and Encroachment Act of 1978 - override the old law.
  "The initial cause for action no longer stands, (but) the overriding principle of law does," O'Brien said, and thus the lawsuit will go on.
    In another twist, SugarHouse officials are now using the lawsuit filed when their revoked riparian rights license was issued to argue that the license should stand.
  "We have been advised by our legal team that the City’s action to rescind our submerged lands license is contrary to law given the pending litigation surrounding that license," said Greg Carlin, chief executive officer of HSP Gaming, the company developing the casino.
    Nutter anticipates the Commerce Department will take a second look at whether SugarHouse should have a license to build on riverbed lands. SugarHouse has 30 days to appeal the revocation, and that appeal would launch the process, Kennedy said. She said there would be at least one public hearing.
  SugarHouse executives don't think they should have to appeal the revocation, because they believe the permit should stand. They filed a brief with the Supreme Court detailing these arguments.
  Spokeswoman Leigh Whitaker said SugarHouse has not yet decided whether it will file an appeal, anyway. "We're exploring all of our options," she said.
   Philadelphia's other proposed riverfront casino, Foxwoods, may also find itself in a riparian rights battle - even though officials say they do not need to build on the submerged lands. 
  

   Foxwood's changed its original proposal by pulling in a promenade, and so, officials have said, they no longer need riparian rights.
  But some state and local leaders disagree.
  In fact, the very day that Nutter announced SugarHouse's submerged lands license had been revoked, City Councilman Frank DiCicco introduced city legislation that would give Foxwoods the zoning it needs to build. But DiCicco's proposal contains several conditions that Foxwoods must meet first, and one of them is that they are granted riparian rights, via the state legislature.
  DiCicco's spokesman Brian Abernathy said last week that Foxwoods first proposal, which required riparian rights, was a better design and the one that was approved by the Gaming Control Board.
   Abernathy predicted that Foxwoods wouldn't like the conditions on the proposal, which must make it through committee and then be read twice more before city council before it could be adopted. He was right.
  Foxwoods spokeswoman Maureen Garrity said in written statements that the riparian rights condition and the others are unlike anything that council has demanded of a zoning applicant up to this point, and therefore unlikely to hold up in court.
   "We believe very strongly in our legal position, and we believe the City will have a difficult time in abandoning the position it has consistently taken in this case and in its last two filings with the Supreme Court," she said.
   It was the Supreme Court that gave SugarHouse the zoning it needed, saying that the city had intentionally stalled for too long. That ruling prompted DiCicco to submit the zoning proposal, in hopes that the city would retain some power in the matter.  The zoning is necessary before Foxwoods can move very far, because the zoning permit is a prerequisite of others. Foxwoods has not received any of the permits it needs yet, but "we're working with (the state's Department of Environmental Protection) to determine the appropriate permits for our project," said Garrity. Foxwoods is also working with the city's water and sewer departments, she said.
   O'Brien believes even Foxwoods' amended plan actually requires riparian rights. Regardless of what happens with City Council, if Foxwoods begins construction without securing riparian rights, O'Brien pledged to seek a restraining order and file a lawsuit "as soon as they put a spade in the ground."
 
Contact the reporter at kelliespatrick@gmail.com

• SuagrHouse stay order request.pdf
• 2008[1].01.24, 207 + 208, City Mootness Sugarhouse.pdf

Old and new tracks and ties at Bryn Mawr

(This is the third in a series of PlanPhilly stories examining the infrastructure projects that would accompany a re-visioning of the Central Delaware waterfront, and how they will meet their biggest challenge: funding. This previous story looked at the proposals for parks and green space in the Penn Praxis Vision, and who will pay for and maintain them.)
 

Dec. 20

By Seth Budick
For PlanPhilly

With a new dedicated source of state funding in place, SEPTA’s financial security has clearly been improved, but the implications are less obvious for future improvements to public transit service in Philadelphia.

In July, Governor Rendell signed into law Act No. 2007-44 (Act 44) establishing the Pennsylvania Public Transportation Trust Fund. The trust fund combines state funds from a number of sources into a single pool to then be distributed statewide. Those sources include a percentage of state sales taxes, Turnpike Commission funds, lottery money, and allocations from pre-existing dedicated transit funding sources. This new unitary source of funds should allow SEPTA to eliminate the annual scramble to close its operating deficit and put it on relatively firm financial footing.  The likelihood of service expansion and improvement, however, is less clear.

Impact of the new state funding system

It may be unrealistic to expect substantial expansion soon due to the fact that SEPTA’s capital and operating budgets are relatively independent of each other, and it is the latter which will see most of the impact from the state’s new funding structure. 
       
The Transportation Trust Fund provides $508 million to SEPTA’s operations in fiscal year 2008.  Of that amount, only $437 million has been budgeted by SEPTA for FY2008 with the rest held in reserve to cover operating deficits in the future, according to SEPTA’s Senior Director of Budgets, Rich Burnfield.
       
Together with other sources of funding (including trust fund money to cover lease and debt costs and Act 26 money that covers lease costs), this still represents a total state contribution of over $496 million to SEPTA’s FY2008 operating budget, a substantial increase compared to the $405 million that was budgeted in FY2007. 

While this increase seems generous, SEPTA’s capital budget has not been treated nearly as well.  Under Act 44, new funding allocated statewide to transit systems’ capital budgets amounts to $50 million, but SEPTA will see relatively little of that money this year.  That is because a good portion of capital dollars are allocated in a discretionary manner by PennDOT, and this year, owing to its substantial debt service, Pittsburgh’s Port Authority will largely be the recipient of the state’s largesse.
        
Thus, only a small fraction of the total increase of $300 million in Act 44 transit funding in FY2008 will actually be available to subsidize grand new projects for SEPTA, whether improvements of existing service, or extensions to the system. 

At the same time, SEPTA has long used funds from its capital budget, or state subsidies that could be allocated to operating or capital, to supplement its operating budget.
 
In FY2007, this consisted of a transfer of $26.8 million from the capital to the operating budget, as well as using $79 million of flexibly allocated state subsidies to close the operating deficit.  The large increase in the operating subsidy should obviate some of these transfers, though the increase in the capital budget will probably not be enough to fundamentally change the funding picture according to Don Shanis, Deputy Executive Director of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC).  “A lot of people don’t realize that without this funding they would have had to cut the system.  This allows them to maintain it.”
Using capital funds to supplement its operating budget has not come without a cost.  “We’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul” said SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney.  As Don Shanis put it, “they’ve deferred a lot of capital projects, so the new funding doesn’t open the door for a lot of new projects.  The only way that that would happen would be a big new contribution from somewhere; either a local contribution, a state contribution, or some kind of creative financing, possibly private sector involvement.”

 

SEPTA’s short term capital plans

Though the state subsidy to SEPTA’s capital budget will probably not be increasing dramatically, it will likely benefit from improved state funding in coming years. 

According to Rich Burnfield, SEPTA has made clear to PennDOT that it expects to receive a larger share of the discretionary pie in the future.  “Next year, when it grows another $50 million, and the year after that, when it grows by $100 million, our expectation is that we will get a share of that which we believe is more in line with what our capital needs are.”

In addition, the impending completion of the reconstruction of the Market Street Elevated will be a significant boon to other capital projects.  Over $100 million is budgeted for this program in FY2008 alone, none of which, according to SEPTA CFO and Treasurer Joe Casey, originates from earmarked federal funds.  Because federal money was not specifically dedicated to this project, other capital programs should benefit from the elimination of this drain on the capital budget. 

One of the largest of those projects is the purchase of new regional rail cars to replace a fleet that is 40 to 44 years old.  These cars, costing $2.15 million each, are expected to begin arriving in 2009, with a total of $330 million having been budgeted for their acquisition.  Another impending large capital expense is the purchase of several hundred new buses, at $508,000 each, to replace an aging fleet which will be 12 years old by the time it’s retired.  While these vehicle replacement programs lack much sex appeal, they are precisely the sort of projects that will benefit from a more secure state funding arrangement according to Don Shanis of the DVRPC.

Among the projects that have garnered the most public attention, modernization of SEPTA’s fare collection system is apparently at the top of management’s agenda.  Though it has been studied for years, moving ahead with long overdue fare modernization is “the number one issue to be addressed in the immediate future” according to SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney.  Despite public pressure to get this project underway quickly, however, SEPTA may be anxious to keep expectations from getting too high.  As Mr. Maloney put it “We’re doing a lot of work, but we can’t promise to our customers that this will come quickly, because the last thing we want is to select the wrong system and the wrong technology.”

Although it has not had funding budgeted for FY2008, the rehabilitation of City Hall Station is another high profile project that is currently in the design phase.  According to Joe Casey at SEPTA, this is also a project that is likely to benefit as capital funds are no longer needed for the completion of the Market Street Elevated reconstruction.  Conspicuously absent from a list of likely future capital projects, however, are any plans for system expansion.  Indeed the only system expansion that we may see in the near future, according to Mr. Casey, is an extension of regional rail service from Elwyn to Wawa. 

Possible longer term capital projects

This is not to say that there aren’t a number of projects that are considered high priority by stakeholders in the region.  According to the DVRPC’s Don Shanis, besides fare modernization, locally favored projects include an extension of the Regional Rail R5, extended service along the Schuylkill Valley corridor, a Paoli transportation center, extension of Regional Rail service to Quakertown, light rail on Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront, and extension of the Broad Street Subway to the Navy Yard and along Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia.  The enormous cost of subway projects is prohibitive, however, with a Northeast extension of the Broad Street line costing perhaps $2 billion.

Mathew Mitchell, the Newsletter Editor of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, a transit advocacy organization http://www.dvarp.org, says that by far the most cost effective project that SEPTA could undertake right now would be an extension of the Norristown High Speed Line, SEPTA’s Route 100, to King of Prussia.  A request for dedicated federal funding for this project, as well as a major expansion of service in the Schuylkill Valley corridor, was submitted, but received a “Not Recommended” rating from the Federal Transit Administration. 

According to Mr. Mitchell, this was largely a result of the King of Prussia extension being combined with a proposal for the so-called Schuylkill Valley Metro (SVM), a rail line that would have provided high frequency service from Center City to the Reading area.  The Route 100 extension “has a lot of bang for the buck, and so was folded in with SVM to leverage the cost-effectiveness.”  Ridership projections for the SVM were unrealistic though, according to Mr. Mitchell, and at a cost of $2 billion, the overall project was not cost-effective.  In addition, SEPTA requested the maximum 80% federal contribution even though “it was stated since the Clinton administration that projects with that level of federal contribution would have very low priority.”

Since the chances of the SVM receiving earmarked federal funding are “essentially nil,” according to Joe Casey, a new proposal will need to be prepared for a Route 100 extension in order for it to qualify for dedicated federal funds.  SEPTA could instead choose to fund this route entirely out of its existing capital budget.  With the increased competition that has recently been chasing scarce federal funds, many cities and transit agencies are choosing to fund new projects themselves, according to Mr. Mitchell.  SEPTA could say “let’s go ahead and do this with our own funds.”

Another project that is frequently mentioned by transit advocates in Philadelphia is the restoration of trolley service on one or more of the lines that were suspended in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Though the city still has a relatively large streetcar network, that web of trolley lines was substantially larger until recently.  The unused trolley tracks and wires that still wend their way all over town provide ample evidence of that history.

Streetcar expansion a national trend

Ironically, construction of new streetcar lines is one of the most popular forms of transit expansion occurring nationally, with cities from Tampa to Seattle getting on board.  Trolley lines have been particularly popular due to their low construction costs and the recent trend towards increasing population and investment in downtowns across the country.  Some of these new lines, most notably in Portland, have been spectacularly successful, where “they’re extending it a lot all over the downtown area, and now they’re planning to go out of the downtown” according to Railway Age Contributing Editor William Middleton.  

In Portland, the price of the new four mile long streetcar line has ranged from roughly $15 to $33 million per mile, while the vehicles themselves have been acquired for approximately $2 million each.  This reflects the notorious variability of prices for new construction which depend strongly on local factors.  In Portland, this included necessary roadwork according to Kay Dannen, Community Relations Manager for the Portland Streetcar.


BRT in Bogata, Columbia
 
This variability is especially conspicuous in the case of light rail; rail lines that use vehicles similar to streetcars, but which generally travel at faster speeds and are separated from automobile traffic.  For those lines, the construction of elevated structures and tunnels, for example, can easily result in infrastructure costs that are several times those of a street running trolley.  A somewhat cheaper alternative is Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), where buses run in a dedicated right of way, avoiding traffic.  BRT construction costs can still be high though, as in the case of a recently completed line in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley which cost approximately $23.6 million per mile to build.

In Philadelphia meanwhile, ridership on SEPTA’s streetcar lines has been relatively stagnant. Septa did recently reinstate service on one of the lines that was temporarily suspended in 1992, the #15, on Girard Ave.  In 2005, after, according to SEPTA’s Joe Casey, the city made it its #1 priority, the transit agency invested $88 million in restoring the line, even without an earmarked federal contribution.

On the other two lines suspended in 1992, the #23, which ran from South Philadelphia to Chestnut Hill, and the #56, which ran along Erie & Torresdale Avenues to Northeast Philadelphia, much of the trolley infrastructure is still intact and restoring service on those lines is a top priority of many transit advocates like Mike Szilagyi, creator of a website that documents the history of Philadelphia’s streetcars.  For the #23 in particular, “it will require replacement of a lot of track and possibly substations as well, but all that was done with the #15.”  Indeed, SEPTA has $189 million dollars budgeted for infrastructure improvements to the #23 and #56, but not until 2012 at the earliest, reflecting the fact that those projects are “on the back burner” according to SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney.

Aside from improving the fabric of the city, advocates like Mike Szilagyi argue that trolleys offer the benefits of increased capacity, longer life spans, zero emissions (on a local scale), less noise than buses, and the potential for running them entirely on “green” power. At the same time, arguments in favor of trolleys do often contain an appeal to the emotions.  As William Middleton puts it, “my personal preference to have a streetcar system should have nothing to do with what’s the best system.”  If those appeals do result in increased ridership, however, then they clearly do have practical implications.  As Mr. Middleton admits, “rail does draw more passengers.”  Generating a true cost comparison of buses and streetcars is clearly a necessity, although, according to Matthew Mitchell, “it's probably a doctoral thesis worth of work.”

While SEPTA’s improved funding is certainly a step in the right direction, a substantial expansion of service, like an extension of the subway down Roosevelt Boulevard, is clearly going to require “major leadership and will on the part of the region,” according to Don Shanis of the DVRPC.  This may also have to wait for significant changes in SEPTA’s management, says Matthew Mitchell.  “None of this is going to happen until there is a fundamental change in mindset in the company.”

Seth Budick, who recently completed a Ph.D. in Biology at the California Institute of Technology, has a longstanding interest in architecture and urban planning issues. Contact him at sbudick@gmail.com

• Figures.pdf
• Philadelphia Trolley Tracks_ Trolley Map.pdf

Nov. 14

By Alan Jaffe
For PlanPhilly

A new vision for the Central Delaware waterfront, forged over 13 months in more than 200 collaborative, occasionally contentious civic meetings, was formally introduced last night with dramatic flare and some compromise on the most disputed elements.

Inquirer coverage
Metro coverage
Daily Pennsylvanian
 
The proposal to bury a section of I-95 was softened by less drastic options. The dense riverfront street grid was proposed with a nod toward developers’ concerns. And the casinos, the hottest issue, were plotted on the plan – and then dissolved on an alternative map.
 
The audience of about 1,200 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center cheered the proposals and offered a standing ovation to the concluding video fly-over, a time-warp that transformed the current waterfront into an active, thriving scene of green spaces and well-balanced development and communities.
 
Public reaction

Approval for the plan, which was coordinated by PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the design department at the University of P