Aug. 27

By Alan Jaffe
For PlanPhilly

(This is the seventh in a series of stories examining the infrastructure projects proposed in the Civic Vision and Action Plan for the Central Delaware. This article looks at the railways that have had a long, remarkable history on the Delaware River and the possible future of rail on the waterfront.)

Previous stories:
Infrastructure overview
Parks and green space
SEPTA funding
Grappling with I-95
Center City Commuter Connection
The Street Grid

The seven-mile stretch of riverfront from Allegheny Avenue to Oregon Avenue was once the dominion of the rail car. The Pennsylvania Railroad brought freight from the south, rolling down Washington Avenue to the waterfront to unload or pick up cargo at the massive piers. In the north, track after track after track ran along Lehigh Avenue to the waterfront, carrying the coal-black Reading Railroad cars, which hauled millions of tons of anthracite from upstate Pennsylvania for shipment up and down the coast and around the world.

A couple of active lines still run from the Lehigh Viaduct.  In South Philadelphia, rail cars still stack up near the freight yards, blocking vehicular traffic. And plans are moving forward for the expanded Southport project beyond the Walt Whitman Bridge.

But on the Central Delaware waterfront, the rule of the rail is over. Colliers awaiting the black fuel no longer line the port. The piers mainly house parties and condos, not cargo. The rail yards are part of an irretrievable industrial past, displaced by technology and geography.

A modernized rail, however, could play a part in the rejuvenation of Center City’s eastern shoreline and help turn it into a 21st-century urban waterfront.

The Northern Yards

From the early 19th to early 20th centuries, the northern Delaware riverfront was known as “the workshop of the world,” a center of industrial manufacturing in Bridesburg, Fishtown, and Kensington.

Cramps Shipyard, now destined for razing and redevelopment, was an economic engine in the region, producing wooden clipper ships and then iron and steel warships for the Civil War through World War II.

The other driving force on the waterfront was the Reading Railroad terminal at Port Richmond, fueled by the steady stream of coal cars coming down from Lackawanna, Luzerne, Schuylkill, Carbon and surrounding counties. Eastern Pennsylvania contained some of the country’s richest seams of anthracite, a dense, high quality coal that was touted as a clean-burning energy source. Western Pennsylvania boasted huge bituminous fields, but that coal burned quickly and dirty.

“There was an advertisement at that time that said, ‘Keep your daughters’ and wives’ dresses clean by using anthracite,’” said Dave Schaaf, an urban designer at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

“It was found in Eastern Pennsylvania, just above us. So the Reading Railroad builds lines to those counties. And that’s why Port Richmond develops the way it does, with all those lines to the water, running down along Lehigh Avenue,” Schaaf said. “It was such a desirable coal, it was distributed to the world.”

Colliers, the ships that bore the coal around the intracoastal United States, lined the ports where dozens of railheads met the water. The Reading Railroad’s enormous infrastructure at Port Richmond moved 2.25 million tons of anthracite in the mid-1870s, according to the website “The Necessity for Ruins” (http://ruins.wordpress.com/category/port-richmond-coal-terminal).

The Reading line also transported materiel to the Pennsylvania steel plants, and fruits and vegetables from farms to markets, including tomatoes to the Campbell’s Soup plant in Camden. It was also a major passenger railroad.

But the collapse of the coal business in the 1950s was the turning point for the Northern Central Delaware industrial base. The dozens of tracks to the waterfront grew silent and vacant. Most have been removed from the grasslands that have sprung up on that vast section of the riverfront.

A couple sets of tracks that run down from the Lehigh Viaduct still carry oil and chemicals to the Tioga Marine Terminal and the remaining industries in the area, explained Adam Krom, a transportation planner at the Philadelphia office of the design firm Wallace Roberts & Todd. Conrail, the federally created corporation that resulted from the bankruptcy of the country’s major railroads, owns the tracks and land where rail is still active on the Northern Central Delaware.

Rail and the Port

Besides the end of the coal economy, the rail lines were also limited by the city’s geography. “We were one of the last of the original colonies founded, and there’s a reason for that,” Schaaf explained. “We were the only colony with no Atlantic frontage. All the great ports were taken by the time William Penn gets Pennsylvania.”

Boston Harbor, New York Harbor, Baltimore Harbor, Hampton Roads and Norfolk Harbor – all well known and thriving. “But have you ever heard of Philadelphia Harbor? There isn’t one,” Schaaf said. “This doesn’t negate the fact that we had the largest freshwater port in the world for quite a long time.” But the competing ports, including the neighboring Elizabeth and Newark, have 50-foot drafts in their harbors. The deepest channel on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware is 40 feet to the bottom.

“The governor and the Delaware River Port Authority want to dredge our channel to 45 feet. Our channel is 103 miles long,” Schaaf said. “So our geography does not exactly work for us. We’re not a great natural harbor. The harbors that really do well on the East Coast are the ones right at the Piedmont, where you have the Atlantic coastal plain meeting the Piedmont right at the harbor,” creating deep water at the port.

The Delaware River could comfortably carry 17th and 18th century vessels with relatively shallow hulls. But 20th century shipping eventually made the port at the northern section of the city obsolete.

“Containerization forced ships to be not only enormous, but to actually be stacked really tall,” Schaaf continued. “You can take the containers off at Elizabeth and Newark, make trucks out of them and send them everywhere. Apparently we can’t get a containerized ship below the Walter Whitman Bridge. The Tioga Marine Terminal does have containerization, but it has to be a specific kind of ship.”

Before World War II, “when ships didn’t need a very deep draft, we did fine. Now, our channel is just too shallow.”

The Port to the South

To the south of the Walt Whitman, the expansion of the Southport project is under way. The plan calls for a major, best-in-class containerized facility with the potential of employing 175,000, handling 3.5 million containers a year.

The rail yards in the south remain active, and there are no plans to relocate or in any interfere with those lines in the Action Plan for the Central Delaware, Krom said. “That area will remain very important from a freight-handling standpoint and as a working waterfront.”

The major issue in that area involves the impact of stacked freight cars blocking autos and trucks on Columbus Boulevard, explained Nando Micale, a principal at WRT who leads the firm’s planning and urban design group. The Action Plan and Civic Vision developed by PennPraxis and designed by WRT shifts the tracks slightly south, closer to the industry and piers serviced by the rail lines.

“There’s nothing incompatible with increased port activity, including intermodal rail-truck-ship connections, in the Civic Vision,” Krom said. Some changes to existing track configurations and the street network may be needed, “but there will be no change to function. It will improve function, in fact,” he said.

The Pennsylvania Railroad was the leading line in South Philadelphia and the piers near Center City. The railroad came down to the waterfront from Washington Avenue. The port shifted south over time, and the Philadelphia Belt Line Railroad Company, a consortium of railroads, carried trains all the way to the Navy Yard. The waterfront was “sort of neutral territory for all the railroads, so the shipper could choose which one it wanted to use. The Belt Line allowed for interchanging among the different railroads,” Krom said.

Bob Turner, a consultant for the Belt Line, explained that it was chartered in 1889 “to break up the monopoly of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which controlled the Philadelphia waterfront.” The Belt Line brought in the Baltimore & Ohio and other companies “to make sure the waterfront was open to competitive rail service.”

The Washington Avenue tracks are now gone, and there are few working piers on the Central Delaware. The active railroads to the south are CSX, Norfolk Southern and Canadian Pacific. CSX and Norfolk Southern now own Conrail, although Conrail has served since 1998 as a switching and terminal railroad that operates as an agent for its owners, allowing access for both carriers.

Craig Lewis, vice president of corporate affairs at Norfolk Southern, confirmed that the railroad companies provide no freight service “north of, roughly, South Street.” Norfolk Southern also has been in talks with Foxwoods Casino representatives about doing some reconfiguration so that trains do not travel above the casino’s location, if it is built.

But Lewis said Norfolk Southern’s focus is on business around the Navy Yard, where the company has plans for a new intermodal facility and active rail service in the “relatively near future.”

The company’s longer term program is called the Crescent Corridor, a plan to improve rail infrastructure along Interstate 81 from North Jersey to West Tennessee and divert freight from highways to tracks. “Part of the game plan anticipates new or expanded terminals,” Lewis said, including Philadelphia’s Navy Yard.

As the port is expanded, and if the Action Plan’s proposals for naturalizing areas of the waterfront and creating a street grid to support land development are realized, the southern section of the Central Delaware should complement the rail infrastructure, Krom said. “It will actually neaten up a lot of operations over time.”

A New Role for Waterfront Rail

In the early decades of the 20th century, an elevated rail line ran from Frankford Avenue and down Delaware Avenue, where passengers transferred to the ferries to cross the river. As the port evolved, larger ships docked at larger piers, and ferry service declined with the opening of the Ben Franklin Bridge. The elevated track was torn down.

Passenger rail along the Delaware was briefly revived in the 1990s with a trolley line that serviced the Penn’s Landing area, but it had limited success on a waterfront that never realized its potential.

But that same right-of-way used by freight trains in decades past and by the trolley more recently could host a 21st-century track. “The Vision Plan established the idea of potentially having a waterfront light-rail line,” Krom said. The new line could promote riverfront development, provide residents access along the river, and reduce congestion on Columbus Boulevard, he said.

“Light rail generally means fast, higher capacity, modern service, and more efficiency,” Krom explained. “It holds more people, it doesn’t interfere with traffic, and it moves with its own power.”

While the light-rail line in South Jersey uses diesel power because it covers the long route from Camden to Trenton, the Philadelphia line would probably be an electric-powered rail, Krom said.

The right-of-way down the center of the boulevard in the Penn’s Landing area is held by the Belt Line in joint ownership with Conrail, said consultant Bob Turner. “There is not much in the way of industry anymore” in that stretch of riverfront, he added, and “we do not operate at all. … We’re in a sort of holding pattern; our main purpose in life is to make sure there is competitive business on the waterfront.”

If the Belt Line company allows light rail service on the right-of-way, it would reduce start-up costs considerably, Krom said.

Creation of a rail line down the median of the boulevard, in concert with other pedestrian- and bike-friendly changes along either side of the highway, would reduce auto traffic from six to four lanes. But the Action Plan estimates that a high-frequency streetcar line will be able to transport 2,000 to 3,000 passengers per hour in each direction. “That’s almost twice what a car lane would have carried,” Krom said. “So you’re not losing capacity. You’re just shifting people from automobiles to transit.”

A streetcar line would also reduce parking lots along the waterfront, Krom said. “Tourists will have to park just once. They can access all the destinations on the waterfront by riding light rail. If they come by mass transit, they’d need zero parking spaces.

“Residents wouldn’t need as many cars because car share and light rail would be available to them. So it will help with congestion. And it will cut the high cost of building parking lots,” he said.

The Delaware River Port Authority, which operates several bridges and the PATCO Hi-Speed Line, is already exploring several alternatives for light rail along Philadelphia’s waterfront.

“An Alternative Analysis study is now under way, which is the first step in the process for applying for federal funding,” said John Matheussen, chief executive officer of DPRA. “We’re looking at potential ridership, cost factors, and environmental impacts.”

The three alternatives under consideration all involve light rail, Matheussen said. “These are street level or underground lines, all complementary to systems already in place. We’ve had good experience with the River Line in New Jersey. This is what light rail is built for.”

Fifty percent of the funding for such a project would come from the federal government, Matheussen said. “The cost of these alternatives is in the high hundreds of millions of dollars up to a billion dollars. We would look for the rest to come from DRPA, the state of Pennsylvania, their trust funds, potential private alternatives, and public-private partnerships.”  However, the vast majority large price tag is needed to extend the light rail from the riverfront to Center City; the construction of just the riverfront tracks itself would only cost a very small fraction of this nine-figure amount.

DRPA is half-way through the process of choosing an alternative, he said. The agency’s last round of public input on a waterfront light-rail project will occur this fall. (To view the PATCO alternatives, go to www.patcopaexpansion.com.)

Micale, of WRT, said any transportation system has “funding challenges. It comes down to federal policy. Other cities have funded such projects themselves, or they figured out ways to fund it with minimal federal money. Those tend to be cities in major growth markets; Philadelphia and other East Coast cities tend not to be.”

But in examining successful urban waterfronts, “it’s hard to find places that have not created light-rail systems,” Krom noted. He lists Toronto, Seattle, and San Francisco, which is working on a second light-rail line on its southern waterfront. Many European cities have also incorporated light rail in waterfront renewal. “What most cities are striving for is access to the river,” he said.

From South to North

The PennPraxis proposals recommend a light-rail line that runs the full length of the Central Delaware, from Oregon Avenue to Allegheny Avenue, and possibly beyond in several directions.

“It could extend upward from Oregon Avenue as a major east-west railroad that ends up at the Sports Complex,” Micale said. Other east-west connections could also be made linking the line to Center City along Washington Avenue or Spring Garden Street.

It could also link up with the North Delaware Greenway under construction in Northeast Philadelphia.

The old rail yards to the north have long been the focus of an open space or greenway plan that crosses the city and connects its two great rivers. The path could thread itself around the still active right-of-way running down from the Lehigh Viaduct, “a rails and trails” project as opposed to rails-to-trails, Micale said. “But there’s still a lot to do in-between.”

The light-rail line could also stimulate redevelopment in the southern section of the northern rail yards, which Schaaf noted contains the largest amount of vacant land on the Central Delaware.

Lewis, of Norfolk Southern, noted that some of the PennPraxis plans for the northern rail yards are “probably in conflict with the value of that real property. Unless the community makes some acquisitions” of land, there could be friction between developers and planners. “But I don’t think these things are insurmountable,” he said.

Much of the desirable land on the northern section of the Central Delaware is owned by Conrail, which continues to operate a train five days a week for “a number of customers” in the Tioga Marine Terminal and Port Richmond area, said Conrail spokesman John Enright.

Conrail has sold defunct rail yards in the area around the Walt Whitman Bridge over the past year to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, but “we don’t have any specific project in development at this juncture” for the real estate in the north Central Delaware, Enright said.

Conrail is aware of the PennPraxis proposals for mixed uses for the old rail yards, including development and green spaces. “We haven’t met or sat down with PennPraxis about their vision at this point,” he said.

“As a railroad,” he continued, “if we have vacant property and there is an opportunity to develop rail service, that is certainly our preference. That’s not to say we wouldn’t take into consideration other factors, such as the PennPraxis vision or anything else. …We really haven’t had any dialogue with PennPraxis at this point.

“Meanwhile, if an opportunity arrives for developing rail business, we will certainly look at it. We are always open-minded for new rail business,” Enright said.
 
The northern rail yards have “always been seen as a site for redevelopment,” said Micale, of WRT, “though they’ve never consummated a deal there.”  The adjacent Cramps Shipyard grounds are also viewed as a likely site for early action because of the access to the highway and its proximity to Center City.

“The idea is that the boulevard and light-rail initiatives would bring you all the way to this area, so you would set the framework for development in the southern portion of the Conrail site,” he explained.

And a light-rail line could bring new hope to an area where rail was once king.

Contact the writer at alanjaffe@mac.com.

.

Aug. 11

By Kellie Patrick Gates
For PlanPhilly
 
     Philadelphia's future waterfront would be better off if the two planned casinos were built elsewhere, a PennPraxis report ordered up by the mayor and released this morning states.
     But if SugarHouse and Foxwoods are built along the Delaware River, the report outlines changes to their designs that would make them a better fit.
     These include:
     • Dividing the currently proposed wide, rectangular buildings into narrower, taller structures - for Foxwoods, this would translate into two smaller, stacked gaming floors.
     • Reducing the amount of parking spaces by half and placing more emphasis on mass transit and pedestrian traffic.
     • Extending streets and green space through the casino parcels to provide more physical and visual access to the river.
     • And moving up the casinos' timeline for the building of non-gaming uses so that condominiums, restaurants, shops, and other street-level businesses open early on.
     PennPraxis Executive Director Harris Steinberg emphasized in an interview this morning that while these steps would yield improvement, they are not offered as a compromise.
    "It pushes the envelope, it significantly alters their current site plans, but in the end, we conclude it does not go far enough to make them fully compatible," he said.
     Despite alterations to the current plans,  the buildings would still be too big, with far too much space dedicated to parking cars, he said - even cutting the number of parking spaces by half would still leave each casino with a garage 1.5 times the size of the largest one in Center City.
     If the casinos were to be built with the modified designs and most or all of the parking were moved to remote sites away from the waterfront, that would be a good start toward making the casinos compatible with the vision, he said.
     The report was based on a three-day workshop with a team of experts from around the country. Mayor Michael Nutter asked Praxis - the practical arm of Penn's School of Design - to explore whether the proposed casinos could be built in a way that would mesh well with the Central Delaware Vision, a plan for extending the city's urban grid and creating public access to the waterfront that Praxis gleaned from a long series of public meetings and workshops.
     (Although a letter sent from the mayor's office to several state political leaders seemed to indicate that Praxis was also charged with exploring alternative sites for the casinos, that was not part of the assignment. The city's planning department is looking into that.)
     Terry Gillen, senior advisor to Mayor Nutter on economic development and his casino point person, said that the report provides specific reasons why the casinos don't work at their proposed waterfront locations, and that's exactly what the mayor needed.
    "He needed explanations for why the site isn't good, so that the public, and the folks across the state understand there are some legitimate problems with the sites," Gillen said.
    Gillen said the "public" means "citizens and elected officials in Pennsylvania who may be concerned that we're not moving as quickly as they thought we would. We want them to understand why." It's not that the city is anti-casino, but that the sites are problematic, she said. "My sense is when they understand we have legitimate issues, that we didn't have the same zoning rights that many of them (other cities chosen for casinos) had, they are sympathetic."
    Both casinos have legal matters pending before the Supreme Court in which they argue, essentially, that the administration is intentionally slowing down the process to prevent the casinos from being built in their current locations.
    Representatives from SugarHouse and Foxwoods have repeatedly said they are not interested in changing locations.
    From the moment the mayor asked Praxis to do the analysis, the casinos and their supporters have looked on with skepticism. When both the mayor and Steinberg publicly said that it would be better if the casinos were built elsewhere, the casino interests asked, how could the study possibly be unbiased?
    Similar sentiments were expressed by some Friday.
    Steinberg said that when he previously said the casinos wouldn't fit on the waterfront, he was referring to their current proposed designs. And it wasn't just him, but a team of experts from across the country - including an expert in casino design - who determined that there was no way to redesign them so they would fit in completely with the civic vision.
     Foxwoods officials took the weekend to review the document. Eary this afternoon, Spokeswoman Maureen Garrity issued a short, written statement, calling the document unsurprisingly biased.
     "The conclusions reached by Penn Praxis only confirm that Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia was correct in our suspicion that the outcome was predetermined," the statement said.
     "This point was driven home when comments from Penn Praxis' experts support our assertions that traffic is a manageable issue reported in the media were nowhere to be found in the report."
     Garrity said the traffic issues comment relates to a July 30th entry in a Daily News blog called www.phillyclout.com in which one of the experts Praxis gathered for the pre-report brainstorming session said that the traffic the casino would bring was "manageable" and no different from a shopping mall.
     The Monday statement continued, "While Penn Praxis spent three days reviewing and revising our plans, Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia has spent nearly three years and more than $100 million developing and designing a world-class entertainment facility that will positively transform South Columbus Boulevard, making it more pedestrian-friendly, improving traffic flow and providing riverfront access to the community."
     SugarHouse spokeswoman Leigh Whitaker also said Friday she could not provide comments on the details of the report until SugarHouse's team analyzed it. Monday, she said the casino officials decided not to comment on the report.

     But on Friday, Whitaker had some overall comments.
     On resiting: "We feel we have the best location and we feel resiting is not possible," she said.
     On a redesign: "I want to disavow people of the notion that our design is bad. That's not the right assumption. We have been working on our design for two years, and it takes a lot more consideration than what it looks like. That's very important to us, but there were a lot of other factors we needed to consider. The intention of the Gaming Act is that is has to be large enough to generate revenue. It has to be functional, there has to be appropriate access."
     The only specific recommendation of the plan that Whitaker was willing to discuss was the parking issue. It would be great if people took public transportation, she said, but it is likely that once the lot was full, they would park in the neighborhood.
    That is the greatest fear of Maggie O'Brien, a long-time resident of Fishtown and co-founder of the pro-casino group Fishtown Action, aka, FACT.
    O'Brien couldn't believe it when told that the study suggested that even cutting the parking in half would not be enough to make SugarHouse casino fit in with the neighborhood.
    A reduction in parking or a switch to remote parking wouldn't get casino customers to walk, take public transportation, ride their bikes or use a shuttle service, she said. "People are going to drive their cars down there, and if the lot is full, they are going to park on the damn street, which is exactly what we don't want them to do," she said. "The study doesn't look at reality."
     On the other side of the public opinion equation, CasinoFree Philadelphia co-founder Daniel Hunter said the conclusions of the report were inevitable. "What PennPraxis announced today was obvious to the rest of us for quite awhile - casinos don't fit into the civic vision for the waterfront," he said.
    O'Brien didn't see the point of redesigning SugarHouse because she likes the current design - she thinks it would make for a beautiful building, and she imagines herself sitting with a mixed drink on the riverside deck one day.
    Hunter doesn't see the point, either. No change in form would make a casino tolerable, he said, because he takes issue with the casino's function.
    While the study provides details and renderings of what both casinos would look like if the ideas generated by the study group were put in place, it is far from enough to build on. The changes would require "a complete redesign" he said.
    That doesn't come cheap.
    "Architects, engineers, all those people come back to the table," Whitaker said.
    When asked if the city might offer money to cover the cost of a redesign, Gillen said she couldn't go there yet. "I don't want to get into the detail of next steps or negotiations about what needs to happen," she said. "Right now, the city wants a little bit of time - not much - to look at the report and to consider our options." Gillen said this would happen within weeks.  "I hope this will lead to a conversation with the casinos about design and the site issue," she said.
     A meeting during which Gov. Ed Rendell, Sen. Vince Fumo, Rep. Dwight Evans, Mayor Nutter and the casino operators are to discuss the relocation option is expected to soon take place.
    Officials from both casinos have pledged to attend. But the casino operators have been frustrated by the effort to get them to move. Spokeswomen for both SugarHouse and Foxwoods have said that the casinos did not make the rules, they have only followed the procedure set up by the state, which established the number of slot machines and approved the locations.
     Steinberg said his concern is not about the function of the casinos, but their current form, and that the lessons learned from the workshop could be applied to any large building.
    He agreed that some of the design elements were out of the casinos' control, for example, the state-mandated number of slots and American casino industry standards hamper Foxwoods and SugarHouse, he said. And that's part of why they can't be made to fit properly with the waterfront vision.
   A casino that offered smaller numbers of stations for more varied types of gambling - more of the European model - could actually work within the framework of the Central Delaware vision, he said.
   
 
    Contact the reporter at kelliespatrick@gmail.com

• Report_Full_080708_rev.indd_.pdf

Previous story and videos

July 31

By Matt Golas
For PlanPhilly

The three-day, lightning-round, PennPraxis workshop analyzing how two licensed Delaware Riverfront casinos, as well as any large development, can be designed to meet the guidelines of the City-endorsed Civic Vision and Action Plan for the Central Delaware concluded Thursday morning with preliminary recommendations from national experts in transportation, traffic, ecology, urban design and sustainability.

In order to gain on-the-ground knowledge, the panel interacted with local and state administrators as well as issue specific and citizen stakeholders during day 2 of the event.

The expert team included architectural designer Tim Magill, who brought a charrette-like feeling to the event through his quick sketches of Foxwoods and SugarHouse infrastructure improvements; landscape architect Jose Alminana, who preached a consistent approach to a 100-foot riparian border that would help us “honor the river”; traffic engineers Walter Kulash, Frank Jaskiewicz, and Daniel Plottner, who promoted the idea that the waterfront really needs an urban traffic volume experience to make it pedestrian friendly, and architect Peter Steinbrueck, a former Seattle, Wash. city councilman who is a leader in the field of sustainable growth.

On June 26, Praxis was asked by Mayor Michael Nutter to prepare an independent, third-party analysis of the current casino site plans relative to the Civic Vision of the Central Delaware and the Action Plan for the Central Delaware: 2008-2018. Praxis Director Harris Steinberg said the report will be sent to the mayor Friday Aug. 8.

The workshop opened with the group concluding that the two casinos are not currently compatible with the “civic values, principles and design guidelines” put forth in the Praxis vision of a redeveloped waterfront. (See previous story here: http://www.planphilly.com/node/3607.)

By the end of three days, the panel had begun to flesh out scenarios that would create a path to compliance for the casinos - or any large development on the river - around four crucial topics: traffic and transportation, urban design, ecology and sustainability. Some big bullet points were:
• Make development scale comply with walk-able street grid
• Slow down the traffic to create urban experience for pedestrians
• Hide the parking garages
• Honor the ecology of the river
• Sustainable development can save money

Here’s a more complete but very rough outline of anticipated corrective outcomes.
Traffic and Transportation:
1. What does a multi-modal formula for movement on the waterfront look like?
Phase multi-modal traffic in order to create “celebratory” bus portals; create bus rapid transit lanes; make pedestrian improvements on Reed and Shackamaxon Streets; upgrade bike lanes; use water taxis.
2. What policies might we recommend?
Permit parking. Auto users contribute traffic impact fees based on trip generation. Eliminate perceived requirement that any development must improve existing traffic situation. Stop the perpetual cycle of creating more congestion by creating more capacity.
3. How to address phasing public transportation?
Accelerate design work and planning of rail system. Extend present bus routes to the riverfront. Elevate riders’ experience by improving condition, feel of bus stops. Connect casinos with a shuttle.
4. How many cars do we allow on waterfront?
Limit Phase I of casino plans to four-fifths of total or 2,400 cars and then take wait-and-see-approach in the event more parking is not needed for Phases II and III. Remote parking for casino employees. Think about how to reduce auto footprint through automated parking.
5. How to improve the pedestrian experience?
Streets built at 500-foot block scale. Reduce curb cuts. Continuous ground floor retail and mixed use. Crosswalks at all intersections. Ability to cross in one light sequence. More generous sidewalk area. Shrink and civilize valet parking and casino arrival courtyards. Appropriately light and landscape streets.

Urban Design
1. How does massing of new developments work with vision plan?
Invoke 500-foot public access and street network. Separate parking from casinos. Leave 30-40 percent of property as open space. Consider mid-block corridor. Balance mix of uses through projects that create more urban environment as part of the public realm.
2. Can we develop vertical gaming floors and move away from the big-box concept?
Vertical footprints are a better use of the land. The trend is toward multi-flagged development featuring variety of places in one spot.
3. How do we connect development to its contextual neighbors?
Create activities and attractions all along the riverfront. Activate streets through a parallel street network. Accommodate vibrant multimodal riverfront not auto capacity.
4. How to integrate transportation, ecological and sustainable systems?
Streets are part of the public realm and should be designed so they are environmentally sustainable. Reduce impervious surfaces. Remediate storm water runoff. Push local government for green strategies and initiatives.

Ecology
1. How to measure the ecological impact of development?
Generate conditions around open space, going green, LEED certification, water issues, carbon footprint issues that, by the end of development, will ensure we have something better in those areas than what we have today. Naturalize the river’s edge.
2. What standards do we use to create ecologically responsible development on land and at the river’s edge?
Soften the transition between the public domain and the river, especially on the edge. Take full advantage of restoration activities. Insist on 100-foot riparian setback because it is last chance to manage storm water before it goes into the river. Create pervious paving, natural habitats. Make places perform ecologically. Take advantage of solar energy.
3. Are there other factors to consider?
Impact of flooding and global warming.

Sustainability
1. How to define and measure sustainability within the context of the site and the city?
It’s all encompassing. Consider transportation, material, building design, culture, heritage with examples such as percent of energy generated on site; how to handle waste reduction; the use of local and recycled materials on the site; how water is managed on site; make LEED silver as a minimum requirement for building on site; renewable energy to power slots machines; consider density and FAR incentives.

The casinos’ point of view
The presidents of both casinos declined invitations to the workshop from Steinberg in strongly worded replies that said their presence would be pointless, since Steinberg had stated publicly several times that he and Praxis were against the casinos ever breaking ground.

But Steinberg stressed that he’s not anti-casino, and that Tuesday evening’s conclusion that the casinos were incompatible meant “only as currently designed.” His goal, he said, is to tease out how these projects, on these sites, can contribute to the overall Praxis vision and action plan, endorsed last month by Mayor Nutter.

Foxwoods and SugarHouse have had an entirely different relationship with City Hall since the change in administrations, and contend that permits have been intentionally stalled by order of Nutter. They cite nothing but favorable decisions from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board and the state Supreme Court.

“There have been at least five different traffic studies, including ones by the Mayor’s Gaming Advisory Task Force, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, SugarHouse, Foxwoods, and the City Council,” according to information on the SugarHouse web site.

On the Foxwoods web site, the owners say the casino “supports the city’s long-term goal of economically reinvigorating the remainder of the riverfront, and will provide public access to the river.” For its first-phase development, it lists restaurant and lounge venues open to the public, fine dining, sports bars, a 2,000-seat showroom, retail shops, a 4,200-space parking garage and a riverside walkway, in addition to the 3,000 slot machines.

“This has been a neutral analysis that has been an exercise independent of use,” Steinberg said as the event wrapped up. “The report that’s issued will be used as a political tool by various constituencies, so it’s important to be sure about ‘What would it look like for a casino on that site to comply?’” with the civic vision and action plans. “I think this is a new day and we are covering new ground and creating a higher standard for developing the waterfront – and eventually the whole of Philadelphia.”

Contact the reporter at mgolas@design.upenn.edu

SugarHouse web site: http://www.sugarhousecasino.com/home/index.php

Foxwoods web site: http://www.foxwoods.com/AboutFoxwoods/FDC_foxwoodsphiladelphia.aspx

• Report_Full_080808.pdf

July 17

By Matt Golas and Isaac Steinberg
For PlanPhilly

A broad team effort that should inspire the most cynical Philadelphians brought home a $19 million payday that will not only give this city's version of the Champs-Elysées a facelift but will also create a long, long overdue green park in the concrete and brick jungle that is South Philadelphia's Hawthorne neighborhood.

In another of what seem like weekly good karma infusions since Michael Nutter took over the mayorship here, Ed Rendell, Hizzoner, Michael DeBerardinis (Secretary, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and a Philly native), Center City District boss Paul Levy, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Knight Foundation, the Fairmount Park Commission and the William Penn Foundation Thursday joined hands to provide details on the windfall of public and private funding for Benjamin Franklin Parkway improvements and an environmentally designed park at 12th and Catharine streets in South Philadelphia.

About $2 million will go toward the park, in a neighborhood known as Hawthorne. The park will sit on the site of the demolished Martin Luther King Jr. public housing project.

Pew's Don Kimelman said Nutter made it clear from the outset that the city wanted neighborhood projects connected with the parkway improvements.

"The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has a long and successful record of creating high quality landscaping for some of Philadelphia's most prominent public spaces. PHS beautifying the Rodin block will contribute to a dramatic improvement for the parkway. Likewise, the new park at 12th and Catharine will be a wonderful addition to a reborn Hawthorne neighborhood."

Nutter reinforced that opinion.

"It's a wonderful moment to be here today. We have to end the notion that parks and development have to be just in center city, we have to have both all over Philadelphia," the mayor said. "We need to see this kind of community engagement all over Philadelphia, use it for a model for all of Philadelphia."

At the forefront of the parkway effort is the Center City District, which led previous efforts to fund and redesign aspects of the Parkway and study vehicular and pedestrian traffic patterns, replace signage and install new lighting. CCD President Paul Levy touts its efforts behind the new outdoor café and information center, now under construction and due to open later this summer on the triangle of land bounded by the Parkway, 16th Street and Cherry Street.
"This is no longer a highway, but a quality pedestrian place in the city, and a quality public space," Levy said.
"Now, walkable public spaces are the ones that are thriving in cities. The best is yet to come on the parkway."

The café, Levy said, was the beginning of a series of improvements scheduled for the next few years.

“The significance is going to be, OK now there’s some dollars to back these things up, and it’s up to us now to make sure they get done, and that’s a good thing,” said Rob Stuart, president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. “There is much need for infrastructure improvements and additional dollars for planning for parts of the Parkway that are currently not working, like the Sister Cities Plaza near the Basilica. It’s great to see a combination of public and private investors in the Parkway.”

Some of Thursday’s announced cash will go toward enhancements in the 1600 and 1700 blocks of the parkway that include new granite curbing, new benches, trash receptacles and quality plantings, bringing to fruition urban planner Jacques Gréber’s original plan for the circle from a century ago. It also includes plans for Shakespeare Park – the area directly in front of the Free Library that opens onto the Parkway and Logan Circle, but which also straddles the Vine Street Expressway between two sections exposed to the air, creating vehicle exhaust and noise pollution.

The creation of Shakespeare Park would involve a pavilion, book stalls and sound barriers, for starters. If Levy has his way, the exposed parts of the expressway would be covered with more lawn space or gardens, but that goal might be prohibitively expensive in the short-term, at least with this amount of funding.

Levy said all of these ideas are part of a deliberate “place-making” plan – the “activation” of landscapes, streetscapes, roadways and public spaces that make up the Parkway, with the goal of making the boulevard an “animated cultural campus.”

The overall parkway plans will also include improving some traffic lanes, upgrading sidewalks and installing bicycle lanes and safer pedestrian crossings on the 1600, 1700, 2100 and 2200 blocks of the Parkway. The 1800 block on the south side of Logan Square will also be included in these plans.

CCD will manage the landscaping for Sister Cities Plaza. PHS, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fairmount Park Commission will manage the landscaping on the block surrounding the Rodin Museum, including new lighting and paving for the entry plaza upon which The Thinker sits, and restoring Meudon Gate, the main entryway to the garden. In response to this plan, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has committed to raising substantial funds to restore the Rodin Museum’s courtyard garden and ensure its continued maintenance.

PHS, CCD and the Fairmount Park Commission have jointly developed a long-term maintenance plan to continue landscaping after the work is completed.

Mark Focht, executive director of the Fairmount Park Commission, said these improvements would set the stage for the new Barnes Museum, expansions of the Free Library and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a proposed Holocaust Memorial Museum at 16th Street, south of the new café.

Last month, Levy told an audience at a meeting of the Central Philadelphia Development Corp., the CCD’s economic development vehicle, that the Knight Foundation had granted more than $800,000 for a major renovation of Dilworth Plaza, across from City Hall. Though not part of the Parkway, the plaza is adjacent to Love Park, and like the Sister Cities and other Parkway dead zones, it is desolate expanse and a regular location for the homeless. Levy said Dilworth Plaza plans might include an ice skating rink, similar to the one in New York’s Rockefeller Plaza.

Here's the funding breakdown:

The Commonwealth: $6,450,000

The City: $6,400,000

Pew: $2,000,000

Knight: $1,250,000

William Penn: $1,000,000

Contact the reporter at matt@mattgolas.com

Previous coverage:
April 18: http://www.planphilly.com/node/3016
March 24: http://www.planphilly.com/node/2897

• aparkway010.jpg

June 27

By Isaac Steinberg
For PlanPhilly
   The developing vision for a trail that would allow Philadelphians to jog, bike and walk along the central Delaware Riverfront was given a serious boost by Mayor Michael Nutter Thursday night during the presentation of the Central Delaware Advisory Group’s 10-step, 10-year action plan for the waterfront.

   During a speech at the Independence Seaport Museum, Nutter pledged that the city will match the $250,000 William Penn Foundation grant issued last year for the creation of a seven-mile trail.

   Trail architect and Center City District President and CEO Paul Levy has been championing the early-action project, which would initially run from the Wal*Mart in South Philadelphia to Penn’s Landing.

   “To me, it is very simple,” Levy said.  “Six to nine months from now this can be accomplished.”

Taking advantage of the Schuylkill River trail - while in progress 

   Levy likened the effort to the successful trail along the Schuylkill River and said the purpose of the multi-use trail is to give back a significant part of the waterfront to the people of Philadelphia.
 
   The trail "would allow Philadelphians to get on the waterfront every day,” he said. “I will not ride a bike with my daughter on Delaware Avenue. We need a safe place for our kids.”

   Levy also said the trail could connect cyclists to the Ben Franklin Bridge and the already developed bike and walking trail along the Camden waterfront.

  Nutter also noted that the trail – which he would like up and running in the next few months - would positively impact his plan to increase Philadelphia’s population by 75,000 people within the next 10 years. “The waterfront area with the bike trail will help contribute 10,000 people” to that effort, he said.

   In a previous article written by Matt Blanchard http://www.planphilly.com/node/1802, Levy had this to say about the project. “The trail is more than an investment in recreation; it's an investment in public opinion. The more people out there using the riverfront, the more we have a constituency for public amenities on the waterfront.”

Contact the reporter at tua88396@temple.edu

• CCD_TrailPresentation_new.pdf

Photo credit: Steve Hall

MLK Plaza is a mixed-income HOPE VI residential area along 13th Street in the Hawthorne neighborhood of Philadelphia. Originally built in 1960 as four public housing high-rises at 13th and Fitzwater, MLK Plaza was a site of high poverty and street crime. When the towers were imploded in 1999, almost half of the 600 public housing units were uninhabitable.

The Plaza has been replaced with new streets and rowhouses that blend in with the other historic rowhouses in the neighborhood, reconnecting the old public housing site to the revitalizing existing fabric of the community. The transformation of MLK Plaza has brought new life to a community suffering from decades of disinvestment and disrepair.

Idea submitted by Patricia Bullard; photo courtesy of Flickr (Cavalier92)

The Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts is a magnet school located on South Broad Street in Carpenter Street in the old Ridgeway Library building. The school is more commonly known as CAPA.

The building itself has had an interesting past. It was first a morgue in the 1700s, then later made a library in 1800s, which later became abandoned and became the unofficial headquarters for drugs and crimes. Finally in 1997 it was finished cleaning up and rebuilt and became the home for CAPA.

From 1993-present CAPA has held and taught many students, and has become a permanent part of the Avenue of the Arts. Some well-known students include all members of R&B group Boyz II Men (though they did not graduate) and Ahmir Thompson and Tariq Trotter of the hip-hop band The Roots.

At 12 acres, this site is close on the Delaware River just south of the United States Coast Guard at Washington Avenue.  Penn's Landing Catering also operates on this site.  It is also very close to the Columbus Boulevard big-box retail district and the proposed Foxwoods Casino at Reed Street.

This parcel is just south of the Walt Whitman Bridge on the west side of Pattison Avenue.  This industrial site is largely underutilized.