|
|
Open Space
Open Space
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 Pennsylvania, came from nearly every front. Mayor Street lauded the process for engaging the river ward communities and taking on a challenge that has eluded the city for decades. Michael DiBerardinis, secretary of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, called the Civic Vision “meaningful and important.” Riverfront developer Bart Blatstein said the plan is “a great start.”
Dissenting voices in the audience condemned any allowance for casinos, intermittently disrupting the presentation by PennPraxis executive director Harris Steinberg, who has guided the Civic Vision through several combative meetings. Outside the Convention Center, a six-foot skunk urged people to wear clothespins to show their displeasure with the Foxwoods and SugarHouse sites.
A panel of government, business and community leaders were invited to respond to the presentation, and they lent their support to most aspects of the plan. But there was a clash over the issue of funding a major I-95 reconfiguration. Rina Cutler, deputy secretary at PennDot, warned that an estimated $10 billion needed to depress the interstate at Penn’s Landing would be hard, if not impossible, to raise. Mayor Street disagreed. Initial response to large projects is always negative, Street said, but “there is plenty of money” if the public says “this is the priority.”
Overall, the evening was upbeat, congratulatory, and very hopeful.
Councilman Frank DiCicco, whose constituents’ fears of waterfront gaming sparked his suggestion that the city create a master plan for the Central Delaware, said the unveiling last night was “the highlight of my political career.” He thanked the William Penn Foundation for providing more than $1.6 million for this first phase of the waterfront process. He also credited Street for signing the executive order in October 2006 that charged PennPraxis with leading the effort.
The mayor noted that “plan after plan failed” to make the best use of the 13-acre parcel on the Center City riverfront. “The thing that should distinguish this report from other studies is you,” he told the audience last night. “We never had this kind of community engagement” in the process before, and “what will deter it from sitting on a shelf is you not letting it happen.”
With just over 50 days left in his term, he urged that the plan more forward with the formation of an organization that will take up the banner and “ensure that this work has not been done in vain.”
Steinberg then took the podium to present the culmination of his team’s year-long labor in an eloquent, 30-minute sales pitch. With archival, contemporary and conceptual images of the waterfront beamed on two screens flanking him, and on screens in an adjoining hall for the overflow crowd, Steinberg emphasized the historical and regional context of the Central Delaware -- from William Penn’s arrival, through the riverfront’s industrial dominance, through the traffic-jammed state of things today. The initial question was, “how do we create a framework for growth?” he said.
PennPraxis conferred with elected officials and every civic group with a stake in the waterfront so that the “pinheads from Penn,” as he heard one resident describe his team, “would not impose their image on the waterfront.”
The planners relied on the values expressed by residents in that series of meetings, and on the best practices for riverfront redevelopment accomplished in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee and Hoboken. “Man, if we can’t beat Hoboken,” Steinberg laughed.
What the Philadelphia team came up with was three frameworks based on movement, open space, and development.
Movement refers to connections across and beneath I-95 to the river, a street grid that replicates the feeling of Center City life on the waterfront, and a north-south urban boulevard.
A reborn Delaware Boulevard, the “spine” of the riverfront, would mean keeping a six-lane avenue for now, but eventually “skinnying up” the current road to allow for a light-rail or other mass transit line down the center.
The street grid would recall the 17th-century template designed by William Penn “which has guided our identity,” Steinberg said. “We need to think about extending that to the river,” not only to disperse traffic, but also as “the connective tissue” that links land parcels.
The audience applauded the Civic Plan’s suggestion that Septa and Patco lines be linked on a reinvented waterfront. Water ferries and water taxis are also part of the plan, as opposed to a Camden-Philadelphia tram that links the two cities.
Turning to the high-profile proposal of burying I-95 to reclaim the Penn’s Landing area, Steinberg offered a conciliatory tone. “Is there a way to sink it? I don’t know. There is lots more study to be done. It is something that the plan doesn’t live or die on.
“But if we don’t start thinking about it,” he said, “Philadelphia will miss the boat to capitalize on that potential.”
The open space framework in the Civic Vision foresees “a great lawn” at Penn’s Landing, “a great democratizing element of the city.”
Frankford Avenue and Spring Garden Streets were presented in artist’s drawings transformed into pedestrian-friendly green streets of trees, blooming medians, and bike lanes. The string of parks and open spaces along the Delaware would “do work,” Steinberg said, filtering stormwater and pollutants, and creating wetlands, wildlife habitats, tidal gardens, and a healthier city and river.
Land development along the water, and specifically how casinos fit into the plan, has been “the most contentious part of this project,” Steinberg said,
“Not an option!” an audience member shouted.
“Yes it is!” responded another.
“Bull----!” answered the first.
Acknowledging the debate, PennPraxis provided two options for those sites on the waterfront plan, with and without the casinos. But Steinberg said the issue is “not about what is there. It’s about how the buildings relate to each other” and surrounding streets, and whether they allow access to the waterfront.
Other development issues should be addressed through zoning code reforms, according to the Civic Vision. The street grid plan must be codified and buildings must “meet the street line,” with retail, commercial and “life-affirming” uses, Steinberg said. Tall buildings should be staggered along the landscape to ensure “everyone has light and air and views of the river,” he also said.
There is a place on the river for big-box development, too, so long as it is “done more gracefully,” Steinberg said.
The presentation ended with the video, reminiscent of the 1964 World’s Fair ride that looked ahead to the city of the future. The audience was remarkably silent as it was given a glimpse of what Philadelphia could become 50 years from now. When it ended, they rose and applauded the vision.
In an official response to the plan, DCNR secretary DiBerardinis, a 30-year resident of Fishtown, said the unveiling of the plan was an “important event for Philadelphia.”
A century ago, he said, Pennsylvania stood at a similar crossroads, with its forests decimated and streams polluted by the Industrial Revolution. But some leaders had a vision for the commonwealth that helped save its ecosystems. “We are in a similar moment in this time,” he said. Conservation and sustainable communities will become policy imperatives, and “cities that imagine a waterfront like this are the ones that will succeed,” DiBerardinis said.
“The plan is right. The economy of the future will be built around efficiency and sustainability,” he said.
To make it happen, the city must build on the collaboration of the community, DiBerardinis continued. There must be consistent city leadership to shepherd the plan forward, and it must move from a vision to a detailed planning process. Strategic investment must be made and leveraged through the local, state and federal governments, he said. And “early victories” should be implemented “so people can see the reality.”
Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo moderated the panel discussion that ended the evening, posing his own questions and those from the audience.
Blatstein, of Tower Investments, said “planning is not the enemy. The enemy is lack of planning.” He said the Civic Vision has been a “marriage of planners, developers and communities.”
Blatstein also said there should be no gated communities along the waterfront and there should be open and free access to the river.
Cutler, of PennDot, who was among the supervisors on Boston’s Big Dig project, said Philadelphia should not become too focused on a large I-95 reconstruction. “If we spend years debating if it is possible to bury 95, we will miss the opportunity to rethink what else exists there.”
A better choice, she said, might be improved public transit on the waterfront. Because of funding limitations, “we may have to make those choices,” she said.
Mayor Street said an ambitious 95 redo can happen. “It will not happen unless we say this is the kind of investment we want from the local and federal government,” he said. That will require the support of surrounding counties, who must also see that a revived city waterfront will benefit their residents. “The biggest deterrent is perceived regional differences,” he said.
Steinberg said the next steps in the process will be “early action projects,” such as the blazing of a bike trail from the Pier 70 neighborhood to Penn’s Landing, the restoration of riverfront wetlands, and the release of an implementation guide in the spring.
“This is the very beginning,” he said. Alan Jaffe is a former Philadelphia Inquirer editor. He can be contacted at alanjaffe@mac.com
Oct. 09 By Alan Jaffe
For PlanPhilly A rainy Northwest city may have a lot to teach a currently dry Mid-Atlantic city about going greener. And it doesn’t require more rain. In fact, Seattle doesn’t get more rain per year than Philadelphia; it just gets it more often. The lessons offered by Steve Moddemeyer, senior strategic advisor for the Seattle Department of Planning and Development, were about managing what we have, not acquiring more. The Tuesday evening program, “Black, Red and Green: Bottom Line Thinking for a Sustainable City,” was one in a series of Green Source seminars hosted by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. About 80 members, area conservation group leaders, and students came to hear Moddemeyer explain a municipal zoning measure that has taken root in his city and has reaped environmental, economic and social rewards. Moddemeyer began by deflating the myths about Seattle’s rainfall. The birthplace of Starbucks gets 36 inches of rain per year, compared toPhiladelphia’s 40.3. “It rains a little bit every day” through much of the year, he explained. But that rain produces twice as much as is used by the city’s residents, so “that’s a huge waste product we could be using.”
Questions arose about “how to harvest the rain water,” said Moddemeyer, who worked for the Seattle Public Utilities before moving to the planning department. Seattle looked to Australian models of natural asset management to explore how best to invest in systems that balance costs with ecological and economic benefits. And the Seattle planners began exploring alternative green projects that could be used instead of traditional approaches. The city saved $100 million the first year it began “consciously thinking about services we provide” and the comparative costs of alternatives. Seattle’s other model was Berlin, Germany, which had begun considering watershed planning in terms of cities in addition to rural areas, and “returning ecological values back to dense urban areas.” After Moddemeyer moved to the planning department, the city jumped into the environmental approach with both feet. Seattle took the Berlin “green factor” and turned it into a zoning requirement that calls for 30 percent of every commercial lot to be covered in green factors. The flexible landscaping ordinance says they can be landscaping and plantings, tree-lined right-of-ways, added drainage, rain gardens, pervious surfaces, green walls or green roofs, or any combination thereof. Developers found that the price of the 30 percent requirement was four-tenths of a percent of their construction costs. Seattle has taken its green approach to residential communities, including the High Point subsidized housing neighborhood. That community was in need of a new street system, so the city applied the “green factor” to the new grid, adding natural drainage, landscaping, and traffic-calming approaches. In other parts of the city, as long as the green factor was accompanied by “what the community thinks is important,” the changesare met with “benign acceptance.” But for the most part, the driving force in adopting Seattle’s first substantial zoning revision was “a progressive constituency,” Moddemeyer said. Politicians then followed their lead, and the development community “found it has better success when neighbors like what they’re doing.” Moddemeyer said Philadelphia can follow the same logic. “Build a constituency of educated citizens” who support sustainable landscapes, and “elected officials will hear about it.” The next step involves convincing the bureaucracies, which he likened to a pyramid, that the green proposals can work. “The top of the pyramid may come and go, but the rest is hard to move. My goal is to move the pyramid a half-inch,” Moddemeyer laughed. The way to convince government agencies to take similar actions is to “do the math,” taking an asset management approach that shows the benefits will outweigh the costs. Glen Abrams, urban watershed planner with the Philadelphia Water Department, noted that the city may be entering the right climate for the adoption of a “green factor.” He noted the appointment of a new Zoning Reform Commission tasked with rewriting the city’s land use
regulations; GreenPlan, a new roadmap for creating sustainable open space throughout the city; and the PennPraxis Vision Plan for redeveloping the Delaware waterfront.
By Alan Jaffe
For PlanPhilly
The Schuylkill is known for its sculls. The Delaware is known for its scows.
But the industrial traffic on Philadelphia’s eastern river isn’t its only marine activity. The central section of the Delaware actually has plenty of recreational opportunities, though most city residents don’t think of it that way.
There are marinas lined with power boats and sailboats, commanding yachts and personal watercraft. There are duck boats filled with kazoo-tooting tourists. The RiverLink ferry shuttles visitors to and from the Jersey side. The Spirit of Philadelphia carries day- and night-trippers on buffet cruises.
Few people, however, get any closer to the water than a splash from a jet ski.
Activities like canoeing and kayaking are more likely found to the north or south of Philadelphia, or on other waterways to the east or west. But there are sportsmen and women who put paddles in the central Delaware, and there are ways to make it more inviting to weekend warriors. Even swimmers may someday dive into waters between Philly and Camden.
“It’s just a question of will: Does anyone care to make it happen?” said landscape architect Peta Raabe. “It’s not a design problem; it’s a political problem.” If the city is going to continue to grow and thrive, she added, it must find a way to provide access to recreation for the residents who will nurture that growth.
Connecting people to the water will, in turn, help protect the river, according to architect and longtime rower Kiki Bolender. Spending time in a boat fosters a feeling for the river and a sensitivity to pollution and other threats, she said. “You do take it personally. … You just have to get people out on the water.”
Close Cousins and Distant Models
Cities above and below Philadelphia have succeeded in reconnecting to the water. New York’s latest project is Hudson River Park which, when finished, will cover 550 acres from 59th Street to Chambers Street on Manhattan’s West Side. Thirteen former maritime piers are being reconstructed as public spaces that include gardens, overlooks, ball fields, research and educational facilities, picnic spots, and docks for fishing, swimming and boating. A waterfront esplanade will run the length of the park. Boat rides along the Hudson include a children’s cruise and barbeque, a waterfront history cruise, a senior bingo boat ride, and fall foliage cruises.
The Greenwich Village section of the park opened in 2003; parts of Clinton Cove Park opened in 2005. Work on the Tribeca and Chelsea sections began this year.
When Philadelphians talk about waterfronts they’d like to emulate, they usually point toward Baltimore. The Inner Harbor was reborn in the 1970s, and has continued to serve as the heart of tourism in the city, which hosts 12 millions visitors a year.
On the Baltimore waterfront people can catch a water taxi to a series of cultural and historical spots along the harbor. Or they can take a sailing or luxury cruise out to the bay, or exercise their legs on a dragon-headed paddleboat.
Much of Baltimore’s maritime activity is operated not by the city or private enterprise. The moving force is the Living Classroom Foundation (www.livingclassrooms.org), a non-profit that provides educational experiences for in-school and at-risk youth and benefits tourists and the community at large, said director of education Christine Truett. Living Classroom runs the paddleboats used by kids and parents down by Harborplace; the gentle water taxi system; and the tours of the historic ships docked along the waterfront, including the USS Constellation.
The foundation was started in 1985 and began with one schooner, the Lady Maryland. “We had one boat and one mission: to teach kids about the Chesapeake Bay by putting them there,” Truett said. “From that, we’ve grown exponentially. We still take kids out, but we do lots of other things that stay true to our mission, which is learning by doing – that’s at the core of everything we do.”
The Living Classroom has been replicated in Florida and North Carolina. And it comes to Philadelphia once a year. Every fall, the Baltimore program has sent the skipjack Sigsbee to Philly, where it docks at Penn’s Landing and, in partnership with the Independence Seaport Museum, offers area students hands-on shipboard experience.
There are other riverfronts throughout the United States, and around the world, that could offer other lessons for Philadelphia, according to Peter Reed, a curator in the department of architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He said the city could look to Louisville’s Waterfront Park, designed by Hargreaves Associates, which will include a water playground; or to Portland, Ore., or Toronto’s lakefront project. San Francisco’s Crissy Field, another Hargreaves project, is a former military installation that has undergone “a spectacular transformation, turning it into a wonderful park, wetlands and place to go after work. It’s very cool,” Reed said.
He also cites Stockholm as a great example of riverfront redevelopment that makes use of many forms of water recreation. The Swedish project was decades in the making he said. “They had a horrible waterfront; now, it’s a pristine archipelago. There’s lots of sailing, boating for tourists, and boat tours of historic royal palaces. They’ve built an incredibly beautiful waterfront.”
It is possible to go far beyond commercial interests in planning a new riverfront, Reed said, to explore and expand everything from recreation to ecology.
Dining Cruises to Cabin Cruisers
Most visitors to the Delaware get their waterfront views in short bursts. The Spirit of Philadelphia (www.spiritofphiladelphia.com), a four-deck harbor cruise ship, offers two- to three-hour voyages from the Ben Franklin Bridge to the Navy Ship Yard and provides meals and music. The RiverLink (www.riverlinkferry.com) ferries riders every hour from Penn’s Landing to the Camden Waterfront. The crossing takes just 12 minutes.
The duck ride lasts a little longer. Ride the Ducks (www.phillyducks.com), a division of the Dollywood entertainment company, has been operating for five years in Philadelphia, said marketing coordinator Emily Myers. A mix of tourists, local families and school groups board the amphibious craft and visit historic sites around the city before splashing into the Delaware beneath the Ben Franklin Bridge. The 70-minute duck ride spends about 20 minutes in the water, cruising along the Philadelphia shoreline to Penn’s Landing and back again.
A water taxi system also operated along the Delaware in the early 1990s, but it failed for several reasons, according to Joe Brooks, acting president of the Penn’s Landing Corporation, the non-profit, quasi-public corporation formed in 1970 to manage the central waterfront. “The critical mass did not exist at that time to sustain the operation,” Brooks said. The water taxi line was undercapitalized and had inconsistent service, he added. The operator also was limited to the Philadelphia shoreline; an agreement with the ferry system prevented cross-river rides on the taxis.
A short-lived attempt at a water shuttle system, linking Festival Pier to the Great Plaza and points in-between, was tried and failed as recently as 2004.
The Delaware waterfront also had paddleboats in the early ’90s, said Jody Milkman, vice president of marketing and programming for Penn’s Landing Corporation, “but it didn’t fund itself.” Two different operators tried to make a go of it in a protected area of a marina. Neither attracted enough business to keep them afloat. Still, Milkman believes, paddleboats “would be a great use” of the waterfront.
A variety of other seaworthy craft are permitted on the Delaware.
According to Lt. Junior Grade Tamisha Williams, public affairs officer for the Coast Guard’s Delaware Bay sector, any activity is allowed on the central portion of the river unless it would impede regular water traffic or create a security or safety concern. Those kinds of activities, such as a convention of tall ships, require a marine event permit.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission also permits any kind of boating on the Delaware along Philadelphia. “We have everything right up to ocean-going vessels” on that portion of the river, said regional manager Ray Bednarchik. Because of that, recreational boats have to give way to large commercial vessels, which can’t maneuver easily. The fishing restrictions are the same as anywhere else in the state; anyone over 16 needs a license. There are also specific consumption advisories in that area which appear on the commission’s website, www.fish.state.pa.us/mpag1.htm.
Taking advantage of those freedoms on the water are hundreds of boats that dock in several marinas along the shoreline. The Philadelphia Marine Center (www.philamarinecenter.com) has 338 slips on several sites from the south side of Pier 12, below the Ben Franklin, north to Pier 24. Since its start in 1986, the marina has stayed the same size, but its occupants have grown. “We’ve seen bigger and bigger boats; that’s the trend,” explained Pat Cahill, manager of the marina, which can now handle 70-footers, or larger. “It’s sometimes a challenge to accommodate those vessels. We have to have enough deep water, and we have to accommodate the power of the big boats – they have more bells and whistles.”
The marina maintains full occupancy 75 percent of the year, and 15 percent of the power boats and sailboats are transient clients, Cahill said.
She has watched Delaware Avenue turn into Columbus Boulevard, and its commercial truck traffic give way to cars and new walkways. She hopes the evolution of the waterfront will be “user-friendly” for her boaters, “a mix of families, single professionals, and single men.”
“We would like to see more development,” whether it’s condos, shopping, dining, or gambling. “We need resources for all the people, whether they’re visiting or living here. There needs to be a mix,” Cahill said.
“I think the city has done an excellent job” at developing the waterfront so far, she also said, “but it would be great if we had more people. The waterfront is just another piece of what the city is about.”
Getting Their Feet Wet
While sails and outboard motors can power small boaters away from the other river denizens – tankers, scows and freighters – the heavy traffic, and other industrial byproducts, prevent some recreational pursuits.
About 50 miles north of the city is River Country (www.rivercountry.net), the tube/kayak/canoe rental company at Point Pleasant. The typical tubing journey is 5 miles, and the only obstacles to a pleasant trip are thunderstorms and the rare flood. Bringing the joy of tubing to the Philadelphia area has other challenges, said vice president of operations Rick Bray.
“I’ve been in the water there, and if you look at it close, it’s a little spooky,” Bray said. “So much industry was built up along the river and persisted over the years…The standards for dumping have changed a lot, and it’s environmentally cleaner than it used to be. But it will be a while before they should let swimming in there,” he said.
Yet if the river were cleaned up, tubing would be feasible, Bray continued. “There is a lot of boating there, so you’d have to be careful with that.” There’s also the width of the river. “At Penn’s Landing it’s about a half-mile wide as opposed to 300 yards in Bucks County. So, the more apt you’ll be to floating in the middle of a mass of water. If you have large boats traveling by, it could be treacherous,” he said. “Where the large ships stop would determine where you could tube or canoe.”
Around the Ben Franklin Bridge, personal watercraft could patrol to ensure safety of tubers and canoeists, “like having a lifeguard,” he said.
“The possibilities are unlimited if someone steps up to the plate and does what has to be done,” which means making the river cleaner and safer, Bray said.
The issue of swimming in the Delaware and other waters around the city is currently being studied by an engineering firm hired by the non-profit Schuylkill River National and State Heritage Area. The firm is looking at the possibility of creating a floating pool, which would be suspended by pontoons on the river, at prospective sites where the water is clean and calm enough for bathing. The study, which will narrow the possible sites on the Schuylkill and the Delaware to six locations and then to three, is expected to be completed at the end of September. (To read more about the swimming study, go to www.planphilly.com/node/1490.)
Calm Waters and Cityscapes
Every year the Schuylkill River National and State Heritage Area (www.schuylkillriver.org) coordinates a seven-day canoe sojourn down the length of the Schuylkill, which ended June 30 at Lloyd Hall on Boathouse Row. A record 180 people participated in the sojourn this year; about 35 completed the entire journey. The trip is meant to get people to view the river as a recreational resource and important natural resource.
A similar, less well-known trip is also held each year on the Delaware and its tributaries, organized by the Pocono Environmental Education Center (www.peec.org). About 150 people took part last month (June); 20 paddled the whole route. But the Delaware sojourn doesn’t cover the entire river, just 80 miles of certain sections. The closest the paddlers came to Philadelphia this year was the stretch they traveled on the Rancocas Creek in Burlington County, N.J., which also concluded on June 30.
Andy Desko, registration coordinator for the Delaware trip, explained that below the Delaware Water Gap, there isn’t much of a challenge for canoeists. “We have difficulty in getting people to participate in that area. They want the white water action,” Desko said. The waters closer to Philadelphia, he added, are something of a joke to paddlers. “They’re just not as exciting.”
Local kayakers and canoeists have other reasons for sticking to the Schuylkill and only occasionally traveling the Delaware in the Philadelphia area. Jeanne Griffin, of the Philadelphia Canoe Club (www.philacanoe.org), said members prefer to kayak around Lambertville and Scudder Falls in Bucks County.
Craig Stoneking, the club’s training director, said most paddlers bypass the city riverfront for several reasons: the lack of decent access points to the water; the lack of safe parking for their vehicles while they are on the water; and the “largely industrial and unaesthetic appearance of the shore from the water’s edge.”
Griffin’s husband, Richard Greene, a former commodore of the canoe club, said members have often talked about paddling the Delaware south of the Betsey Ross Bridge, “but it’s dangerous.” From Trenton to the mouth of the Delaware Bay is “big-ship traffic. It’s not very canoe-friendly. I know some guys have done it, but it’s kind of choppy, kind of dirty, and there’s a lot of floating debris.”
There are two kinds of canoeists -- white water and flat water, Greene said. “The white water group wants to go fast; they like big waves and fast currents. The flat water paddlers are more interested from a recreational standpoint. They like to get back to what Native Americans saw, which is so-called wilderness.” And the city’s Delaware waterfront is “not what we want to see.”
Designers’ proposals to build canoe or kayaking areas along the seven-mile stretch from Allegheny Avenue to Oregon Avenue may not satisfy avid paddlers, Greene also said. “We want to paddle miles, not a hundred yards.” But the creation of freshwater pools among the old industrial piers might be appropriate for recreational kayaks, lightweight boats made for paddling on flat water. “If the whole idea is to get people out and paddling around, that could fit into what the city wants to do,” he said.
Greene hopes that as Philadelphia redevelops the riverfront, it maintains “some history” and the views from the water of the city’s old warehouses and homes. “Most of that is gone now, and it’s a shame,” he said. If the city can make the Delaware accessible to paddlers by creating a kind of “inter-waterway,” they should be able to see “what the waterside of Philadelphia looked like.”
Up on West Manhattan’s new waterfront, beginning kayakers are taking to the water in increasing numbers, said Albert Butzel, president of the Friends of Hudson River Park. They can learn how to maneuver the small craft on calm waters, then venture out to trickier tidal waters around the Statue of Liberty when they have some experience. Other paddlers use outrigger canoes or whitehall gigs, which are old-style harbor rowboats that are being built in a special program by high school students.
As on the Delaware, large ships also navigate the Hudson. “There are conflicts, especially between the ferries and people on their human-powered crafts. But they manage to coexist,” Butzel said. “There are wake problems … there are loads and loads of people out there. But the small boats stay closer to the shore.”
There is also swimming in Hudson River Park. “As long as it doesn’t rain, you can swim in the water. And lots of people do it,” Butzel said. If there is a significant storm, park-goers are discouraged from going in for two days.
“Entering the Consciousness”
Peta Raabe, whose firm Lager Raabe Skafte developed the Bridge to Bridge Master Plan for regatta racing on the Schulykill, said there are two factors on the Delaware that will probably prevent some forms of recreation: “The limit of where recreation is possible because of the big ships, and the quality of the water.”
But she believes it is vital that the city increase the opportunities for sports and leisure on the Delaware. “People are drawn to the water, and to be separated from it as we are is frustrating.” Residents can find outlets on the Schuylkill, “but we don’t have it along the Delaware.”
Architect Kiki Bolender, of Schade and Bolender, said that with the superior conditions on the Schuylkill and Cooper Rivers, the Delaware may not be best suited for certain pursuits. But there are many other possibilities for that side of the city. Canoe lanes up and down the waterfront could be designed, as could contained, secure areas for paddleboats and a swimming pool.
She said the Delaware could also benefit from an interpretive center like the one adjacent to the Water Works restaurant on the Schuylkill. “Something to engage people on water quality issues of the Delaware would be great,” she said.
The best way to do that, she added, is getting people out on the water. “More and more people are seeing watershed issues as part of the quality of their own lives. It is entering the consciousness more – how scarce clean water is,” she said.
Connecting water quality and recreation will have rippling effects in planning what to do with adjacent sites along the riverfront, where paddlers and boaters will want to eat, Bolender said. And others may just stop by and sit in new parks and patios, where they can wave to passing boaters or watch the river flow.
Swimming platform
May 13
By Kellie Patrick
For PlanPhilly
Philadelphians may once again swim in the rivers that flank their city.
An engineering firm hired by the non-profit Schuylkill River National and State Heritage Area is studying a dozen prospective sites – half on the Schuylkill, half on the Delaware – looking for several places where the water is clean and calm enough for bathing.
With $75,000 from the William Penn Foundation, the Heritage Area has also hired the designer of a floating pool, its bottom woven from high-tech fiber, its weight suspended in the water with pontoons.
“In Philadelphia, people swim in a pool or at the fountain in Logan Square,” said Sarah Thorp, executive director of the Delaware River City Corporation and a member of the advisory committee that will guide the river swimming project. “I can’t wait until the point where I can swim in the Delaware.”
The feasibility study is examining sites within the city borders, scattered along both rivers’ banks, said Kurt Zwikl, Heritage Area executive director. A preliminary report detailing the pros and cons of the several best-suited sites is expected by the end of June. For now, the locations under consideration have not been disclosed – but at least one of them is located within the seven-mile, central stretch of the Delaware River between Oregon and Allegheny.
The riverward neighborhoods were physically separated from the body of water that once defined them by the construction of I-95. There are few public access points.
“In this state and many others, rivers really were the lifeblood of the community, and we turned our backs to these rivers,” said river pool project manager Tom Kerr of the HDR engineering firm’s Allentown office.
When PennPraxis held public meetings in March to glean what city residents want from that section of riverfront, swimming was on the list. “This is all about bringing people back to the river,” said Kerr, an avid canoeist who spent 20 years running the Lehigh Valley’s Wildlands Conservancy before going to work for HDR.
It was the opportunity to bring people to the rivers that led the William Penn Foundation to fund the study, said spokesman Brent Thompson. “The more people interact with the river, the more likely they are to become stewards of it,” Thompson said. The project differs from other river projects the foundation has funded in a key way, he said. “This is the first time we’ve talked about people actually getting into the river – apart from on a boat.”
Kerr said the current dozen sites will be winnowed based on water quality, land ownership, physical characteristics of the site and easy access to the target audience.
There is hope that a river pool could spur economic development – which is part of the mission of the Heritage Area – so the pool or pools will be located in or near depressed areas and will be accessible by foot, bicycle and public transportation, Zwikl said. There must also be room for parking, he said.
Land ownership is an important consideration, because it is uncertain how much money could be raised to purchase land from a private owner, Kerr said. Some areas of the rivers are in heavy use by rowers or for other purposes that might conflict.
It would be more challenging to locate a river pool in an area where there is a fast current or a great difference in depth between high and low tide, he said. And the shape of the land is important, too – a sloping shoreline would be easier to work with than one with a steep drop-off, he said. No timeline has been set for opening a pool, Zwikl said, as much rides on the results of the preliminary study.
The movement toward river swimming in Philadelphia is built on the work and will of two women: Philadelphia attorney and former Heritage Area board member Alice Ballard and her late mother, civic activist Ernesta Ballard.
The Logan Square Fountain that some Philadelphians now wade in? It sat broken and dry for decades until Ernesta Ballard organized the will and money to restore it. The elder Ballard was a member of the Fairmont Park Commission. She ran the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society for years, and brought community gardening to economically depressed neighborhood.
Swimming in the Schuylkill was “her last, big idea,” Alice Ballard said. She wanted to give this opportunity to city children, in particular.
And so when Ernesta Ballard died in August 2005, Alice took up the work of fulfill her mom’s dream. Alice Ballard asked the William Penn Foundation for a grant, and convinced Zwikl that the Heritage Foundation should oversee the project. She continues to coordinate the various groups who must work together to make a pool open.
Zwikl said that when his organization convened the committee that is guiding the project last year, its members said the exploratory study should also consider sites along the Delaware – even though his organization usually sticks to the Schuylkill only.
With all the discussion about reinventing Philadelphia’s waterfront, the time for exploring one or more river swimming facilities could not be better, he said. The city recreation department now operates 74 outdoor pools 8 indoor pools. Last summer, several were closed for repair, but they are reopening this year.
This wouldn’t be the first time city residents enjoyed a floating river pool – but it would be the first time in a long time.
Project architect Meta Brunzema, whose office is in Manhattan, said her inspiration for the Beacon pool was the floating wooden bathhouses that graced both the Hudson and the Delaware in the 1800s. Philadelphia had one of the first in the nation, she said.
“These were like wooden cages that were made of a grid of two-by-fours in a square box. It was suspended in the river, held up by floatation devices,” Brunzema said. “It was a square, wooden building in the water, and the edges would be like a big boardwalk with changing rooms.”
Those who used the public baths did so as recreation. “But the city really put these out for a hygienic purpose,” she said. At that time, some of the urban poor, especially in immigrant communities, were living 10 to 12 people per apartment. “They wanted people to go out and wash because they were dirty,” Brunzema said.
The floating river baths were all closed by the 1930s, she said, because by then the rivers had themselves become too dirty. Some still think of Philadelphia’s rivers as dirty. “The water quality is the biggest psychological barrier, and for years it was the biggest actual barrier,” Alice Ballard said. “Even after the water got good enough, people from Philadelphia still think you have to be out of your mind to jump in the water. We will need to do some work to help people understand that’s not the case anymore.”
The rivers are much cleaner partly due to regulations such as the Clean Water Act and partly due to the death of some riverside industries. (Despite the lack of public swimming sites, some Philadelphians tell stories of swimming in the Delaware in the days of the steel mills. Their mothers would always find out because the water turned their clothes orange.)
But while the water is cleaner, it remains unsuitable for swimming on some days – usually those following a heavy rain.
Ballard said the operation of any pool will be tied to Philadelphia Water Department’s Rivercast program – which is essentially an on-line forecast of water quality. Rivercast currently measures water quality in the Schuylkill, said Chris Crockett, the water department’s manager of watershed sciences and engineering and the creator of the forecasting tool. However, he plans to expand it to include the Delaware in coming years, and that timeframe could be pushed up if the Delaware gets a river pool.
The water quality rating for each day is based on the likely level of e-coli and fecal coli form bacteria, Crockett said. These bacteria indicate the presence of other harmful organisms, he said. Rain can lead to water quality problems because water runs off agricultural land upstream and brings animal waste into the water. If the storm is severe enough, sewage systems become overwhelmed and human waste can also end up in the water. But the water becomes clean again in about 48 hours, Crockett said.
Each day gets a rating of green, yellow or red. Green means all activities are safe. Yellow means conditions may not be safe for activities with direct water contact – such as swimming, but other activities such as fishing are fine. Red means the water is definitely not suitable for direct contact. On these days, the water is likely so rough that no one would want to go near it anyway, Crockett said. The system errs on the side of caution, he said, and still about 60 percent of days are green days. Click here for more about how Rivercast works. Rivercast, which has been in operation since June 2005, would help assure pool users – and those responsible for their safety – that water quality is good, Ballard said.
And the river pool design created by project architect Brunzema means there is now a way to allow people to enjoy swimming in the river while keeping them confined to an area that will be watched by lifeguards, she said. Many summers, someone, often a young person, drowns in the Delaware. A pool would be much safer because it defines an area that has lifeguards and would physically keep everyone in one spot, Zwikl said.
The bottom of the pool Brunzema designed - which will open this summer in Beacon, New York – is woven from a special, man-made fiver that is 15 times stronger than steel. The sides resemble a picket fence. “Fish pass through, but little kids don’t fall out,” she said.
Exactly what Philadelphia’s pool or pools would look like remains wide open, although a rough idea should be eked out for the June report, Brunzema said. It depends in part on the sites that are selected, since the design could compensate for some problems. The design would also take swimmers’ wishes into account, Kerr said.
A floating pool means people could wade or swim in the water without stepping in river muck on the bottom. “Americans like things that are clean and bright,” he said. “There is a hurdle, public acceptance of the idea of doing this.”
But Kerr predicts those kids that Ernesta Ballard had in mind for this project will come in droves – and convince their parents that swimming in the natural river is fantastic.
The permission of several city and state agencies, likely including the Department of Environmental Protection, would be needed before any pool could open, Zwikl said. The feasibility study will include a detailed list of necessary permits, he said.
Brunzema is hopeful that the lessons she learned in creating the Beacon pool – a project guided by legendary folk singer and environmentalist Pete Seeger - would help ease the process. She notes that many rivers have few boathouses, docks, decks or floating residences, and the reason is that the shadow such structures cast on the river bottom is a no-no environmentally.
Plants need light to grow, and fish need the plants. “The government is generally against anything that casts an additional shadow, and it requires enormous permits to create a permanent shadow,” she said. “I realized the solution was something transparent.”
Her first design was a sort of huge, plastic bubble – like a giant, floating kiddie pool. “It was beautiful” Brunzema said. But after showing it around a little, she realized the idea was not a good one. “It was like a big bowl – a plastic enclosure. People wanted to swim in the river.”
The bottom of the pool is a net made from Dyneema – a fiber made by the Dutch company DSM. The same stuff is used in rock-climbing ropes and sailboats. In the pool, the netting is stretched around a circle, similar to a drumhead. Users can walk on it or swim above it. Even the gangway has clear planks so light can get to the water.
The project got the needed permits, but with a caveat – the first pool had to be shrunk from the planned 66 feet in diameter to a smaller prototype, 20 feet in diameter and three feet deep. After this summers’ use, the agencies will decide whether to allow the larger pool.
“I redesigned it as a completely 21st Century version of the old bath house, but I didn’t want people to swim inside a building,” Brunzema said. “If I’m swimming in the river, I want the view. I want to see the sunset.” Kellie Patrick is a freelance writer with a keen interest in the landscapes, plants and animals of Pennsylvania. A former newspaper reporter who worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer and other papers in Florida and Upstate New York, she lives near Philadelphia with her husband, dog and cat.
|
|
