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How rail plays infrastructure role

mgolas — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:55:36 -0400

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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.

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A modernized system could help rejuvenate Center City’s eastern shoreline and help turn it into a 21st-century urban waterfront.

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August 27, 2008

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Levy's trail gets nod from mayor

mgolas — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:36:27 -0400

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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

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Kimmel Center Civic Feedback Session

andrewg — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:31:51 -0400

Start: 04/14/2008 - 6:00pm

End: 04/14/2008 - 8:30pm

Start: 04/14/2008 - 6:00pm

End: 04/14/2008 - 8:30pm

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DUE TO OVERWHELMING ADVANCE RESPONSE, REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CLOSED. COPIES OF THE PRESENTATIONS AND FEEDBACK FORMS WILL BE AVAILABLE ONLINE AFTER THE EVENT. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

This marks the next round of public input in the Kimmel Center Public Space Project, organized by PennPraxis and the Penn Project for Civic Engagement and sponsored by the Kimmel Center to develop ideas on how to further enliven the building's public spaces.

The Civic Feedback Session will give citizens the opportunity to view initial design concepts developed for the Kimmel public spaces and provide feedback in response to the ideas that will help enrich strengthen the work.

Design students from University of the Arts and University of Pennsylvania will present their ideas, all of which grew from the Design Principles developed out of the public forums held in January. The Principles will serve as the basis for the public dialogue.

6:00 -- registration

7:00 -- presentation in the Perelman Theater

8:00 -- discussion in Commonwealth Plaza

9:10 -- design panel in Perelman Theater

9:30 -- end

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Kimmel Center public forum (click below to watch video from first forum)

andrewg — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:57:48 -0500

Start: 01/27/2008 - 1:00pm

End: 01/27/2008 - 4:00pm

Start: 01/27/2008 - 1:00pm

End: 01/27/2008 - 4:00pm

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This series of public forums kicks off a civic engagement and design process organized by PennPraxis and the Penn Project on Civic Engagement. The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts has hired Praxis to lead a citizen-driven design process on ways to energize and activate public spaces in and around the Kimmel.

1:00pm - registration and refreshments

1:30pm - Kimmel walking tour

2:00pm - overview presentation

2:15pm - group discussion

4:00pm - end

NOTE: As this was far and away our most popular forum date, we are now at full capacity for January 27. Click here to return to the main Kimmel page and select another forum to attend. We will have other opportunities to provide input as well, in the form of online surveys and in the newspaper. Thanks again for your interest in this project.

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Kimmel Center public forum (click below to watch video from first forum)

andrewg — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:18:07 -0500

Start: 01/28/2008 - 12:00pm

End: 01/28/2008 - 3:00pm

Start: 01/28/2008 - 12:00pm

End: 01/28/2008 - 3:00pm

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12:00pm - registration and refreshments

12:30pm - Kimmel walking tour

1:00pm - overview presentation

1:15pm - group discussion

3:00pm - end

NOTE: We are now at full capacity for January 28. Click here to return to the main Kimmel page and select another forum to attend. We will have other opportunities to provide input as well, in the form of online surveys and in the newspaper. Thanks again for your interest in this project.

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Kimmel Center public forum

andrewg — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:14:33 -0500

Start: 01/30/2008 - 6:00pm

End: 01/30/2008 - 9:00pm

Start: 01/30/2008 - 6:00pm

End: 01/30/2008 - 9:00pm

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6:00pm - registration and refreshments

6:30pm - Kimmel walking tour

7:00pm - overview presentation

7:15pm - group discussion

9:00pm - end

Register for this event by completing the form at the bottom of this page. Registration is capped at 50 people per forum, so sign up early!

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Kimmel Center public forum

andrewg — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:14:19 -0500

Start: 01/23/2008 - 6:00pm

End: 01/23/2008 - 9:00pm

Start: 01/23/2008 - 6:00pm

End: 01/23/2008 - 9:00pm

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6:00pm - registration and refreshments

6:30pm - Kimmel walking tour

7:00pm - overview presentation

7:15pm - group discussion

9:00pm - end

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How will our waterfront develop?

mgolas — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:46:08 -0400

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July 23

By Matt Blanchard
For PlanPhilly

Suddenly the options are clear. No longer is the waterfront’s fate a foggy future prospect. No longer is it just about casinos.

Two starkly different visions for the entire corridor have emerged. And with 1,000 acres of prime development land along the Delaware hanging in the balance, these two visions are bound to collide.

Developers have proposed at least 23 high-rise buildings to line the riverfront, most between 20 and 40 stories tall with massive parking garages. Advertised as “luxury” communities, critics call this wall of proposed construction “Miami Beach on the Delaware.” To see the details, click here.

Now Penn Praxis director Harris Steinberg has unveiled a second vision. Early sketches of a waterfront developed with community input were released on Monday morning click on pdf here. They’re the first specific proposals for what could be the city’s most important urban planning effort in 50 years.

The Praxis vision would take the two largest chunks of riverfront land and create two new neighborhoods, one in South Philadelphia and another stretching along Northern Liberties, Fishtown and Port Richmond. The existing landscape of huge sites, such as the waterfront WalMart, would be broken up with a web of new streets. This denser urban fabric could then sprout a cityscape of human-scaled homes, shops and parks, drawing the vitality of Philadelphia’s existing neighborhoods down to the river’s edge. It’s not Miami Beach, but rather Rittenhouse Square, that Praxis envisions on the river.

Which vision will win out? That depends on how hard civic leaders are willing to fight the prevailing political reality and make the Praxis plan into law.

Just such a group of civic leaders assembled to view the sketches on Monday: the Central Delaware Advisory Group, a task force of community activists, politicians, bureaucrats and planners assigned by Mayor Street to oversee the Praxis planning effort. Though their response was muted, commitment to the plan seemed solid.

“If the choice is between going to war on behalf of these proposals or bowing to the political realities, I say go to war,” said advisory group member Matt Ruben of Northern Liberties. “I think we need to make it a major issue for the general election … There will always be forces against it, but if you don’t stand firm for what you want, you won’t get anything.”

The Southern Section

Above is a plan showing the South Philadelphia waterfront as it is today. Narrow neighborhood streets come to a halt at Interstate 95, south of which the scale balloons to accommodate automobile-dependent, big-box retailers like WalMart, visible in the dead center of the plan, and Ikea, visible to the left.

In this southern segment, Steinberg sees 325 acres of developable land, an area roughly an eighth the size of Center City. The Praxis plan would lay a new street grid of low to mid-rise housing, seen in yellow. It would also make Columbus Boulevard into a real urban boulevard, as well as providing a riverfront park on the WalMart property, seen in green. Note also the four greenways connecting the river back into Pennsport.

Steinberg jokes that the rigid-looking boxes of the image above make it resemble “a new piece of China.” Yet the image provides more detail of just what this new South Philadelphia neighborhood could look like, with details such as a baseball field, and the wiggly line of a reconstructed stream. Note that the port facilities remain untouched. In fact, Steinberg speculates that the port could serve as an “anchor institution” for the neighborhood, much as the University of Pennsylvania does for West Philadelphia.

The Northern Section

This image above shows vast amount of undeveloped riverfront terrain in Northern Liberties, Fishtown and Port Richmond. Altogether, it’s more than 400 acres. Penn Treaty Park is the green square to the left of center. Allegheny Avenue is the last wide street to the right.

Focusing first on green spaces, the Praxis plan calls for a “necklace” of five parks, starting with (from left to right) the old city incinerator site at the foot of Spring Garden Street; Penn Treaty Park expanded with a Logan Circle-like traffic roundabout; a new green space at Aramingo Avenue to resurrect the memory of the old Aramingo Canal; a sizeable new park on the Conrail site in Port Richmond to include preserved industrial ruins such as the Ore Pier; and an expanded Pulaski Park to the north.

Around this necklace of greenery, Praxis envisions new blocks of Philadelphia neighborhood to reconnect the city to the river. Yellow areas indicate such development in a web of new streets.

The end result could look something like this: A belt of entirely new mixed-use neighborhoods, fronting the river and connected by a pedestrian-friendly grand boulevard.

The Boulevard

The exact width of the north-south boulevard would change at different points in its length, as would its course, sometimes running where Delaware Avenue is today, sometimes as Columbus Avenue, sometimes as Beach Street, and sometimes very close to the river along a yet-to-be platted right-of-way.

Yet the layout of the boulevard would be consistent, as seen above. Note the inclusion of a light rail line on the central median. Recent plans by the Center City District call for just such a line, shuttling across the city in the shape of a “T.” The top of the “T” would run along the waterfront from Oregon to Allegheny Avenue, picking up residents at grade level. The stem of the “T” would be a connecting spur running west down the center of Market Street to the office district around 20th Street.

Steinberg calls the light rail a “key piece” of infrastructure, because it will ultimately reduce the need for parking in a new riverfront district.

Reducing the need for parking reduces the overall size of buildings considerably, obviating the need for gargantuan garages that deaden the streetscape and consume land otherwise useful for river access. Right now, the city requires at least one parking spot per housing unit, adding considerable cost to developers. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“It’s the cars that really drive height and mass,” Steinberg said. “If you have to park one car for every dwelling unit, suddenly these sites are overburdened with parking.”

Add a rail line, and the city may be able to reduce on-site parking requirements along the river. The garages go away, the traffic jams go away and the whole area moves one step away from Miami Beach and toward Rittenhouse Square.

A New Deal with Developers

The advantage of one public train over 20 private parking garages is emblematic of the case Steinberg hopes to make to the development community: If we all pull together, everybody wins.

“It’s in the development community’s best interest to support the kind of public investment in infrastructure that we’re proposing, because ultimately the value of their property will be increased,” Steinberg said.

Instead of packing their projects with private amenities, Steinberg hopes to entice developers to invest in the public amenities: Public parks, public river access, and lots of retail to enhance the public experience of the street.

But relying on the public realm requires a leap of faith. The riverfront today is mostly vacant land, with few guarantees that a real neighborhood with working public transit is about to appear. Steinberg will meet with developers and property owners on August 7 to make his case.

A possible point of controversy is Penn Praxis’ pier development guidelines. Right now, 35 and 40-story towers have been proposed for fairly narrow finger piers which extend into the Delaware. At Monday’s meeting, Steinberg called for a considerably less dense pier development scheme, such as the internationally-celebrated Dutch approach to building housing on piers seen below.

In the end, however, it is the city which must flex its muscle on the waterfront. It is the city, not the development community, which will ultimately slow the march to Miami Beach.

To that end, Steinberg is working with the City Planning Commission and Councilman Frank DiCicco to craft City Council legislation that will enshrine some of the PennPraxis design guidelines in law, in the form of a zoning overlay.

“What we’re seeing on the waterfront are pure economic forces at play,” he said. While developers have the right to seek the highest and best uses from their property, the city also has rights.

“The city has the authority to say, these are the rules; these are the lot sizes, this is how high the building can go, this the amount of density, this is the amount of parking,” Steinberg said. “This is all part and parcel of what a city does.”

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Seeking to score an early victory on the river, Center City District head Paul Levy is putting together funds for a 4-mile bike trail along the Delaware River that could be open by the fall. Described as a "quick and dirty interim trail," the route would make use of existing roads and paths, employing jersey barriers and other low-cost elements to shield pedestrians from the traffic. Levy said it would begin near Home Depot at Columbus and Tasker, extending north to Cumberland Street in Port Richmond, with the possibility of bicycle and skate rental kiosks along the length. Priced at around $300,000, 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," Levy said.

Home Page Summary

Breaking news: In the face of high-rise proposals, Penn Praxis offers human-scaled cityscape for seven miles of Delaware Riverfront.

Source

Written By

MattB

Publish Date

July 23, 2007

Abstract

Riparian rights-fight details emerge

mgolas — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:22:02 -0400

Bio

Body

July 19

By Kellie Patrick
For PlanPhilly

The plans Foxwoods Casino officials presented to the Philadelphia Planning Commission this week showed a small but significant modification: A promenade that once jutted into the Delaware River has been pulled inland.

The proposed walkway no longer cantilevers across the bulkhead and over the state-owned, riverbed property, said Foxwoods’ attorney Jeffery B. Rotwitt. And that, he said, means Foxwoods no longer needs the legislature to grant the casino operation a riparian lands lease.

Why the change?

Activists, politicians and others who want to stop the casinos, prevent them from building on the current sites or glean concessions that would benefit neighborhoods or the city had been holding on to the casino’s need for a riparian lease as a bargaining chip. The casinos could not move forward as originally planned without a legislator introducing a new law granting the developers riparian rights. And if long-standing tradition holds, it would have to be a lawmaker who represents the district the casino sits in.

So far, no legislator has introduced such a bill.

“We were dealing with people who we don’t think are friends of the project, who are trying to hold us hostage, so why bother to do it?” Rottwit said in a phone interview Thursday. “We snipped (the jutting portion of the promenade) off. We brought it back in.”

But Mary Isaacson, spokeswoman for State Rep. Michael O’Brien, says the riparian issue is still very much in play.

She said she is not convinced that Foxwoods’ amended plan does not include riparian lands. She said she has seen old photos in which there are piers where there is now land. “They own the dirt on top, but not the riparian lands beneath,” she said.

At the Planning Commission meeting, Isaacson said she was also speaking for Rep. William Keller who represents the district where the Foxwoods site sits. She promised a court injunction would be sought to stop the Foxwoods’ project if it gets the needed city approvals without resolving the riparian rights issues.

“We’re going to need to have independent surveys done,” she said. Isaacson said she is suspicious of Foxwoods’ own surveys.

Said Rotwitt: “Let her do it – let her hire someone. Be our guest.”

Isaacson also said Foxwoods should have to once again go before the Gaming Control Board, since the current plan is different from the one they approved. She plans to recommend to O’Brien that the gaming oversight committee – on which he sits – talk to the Gaming Control Board about this issue.

Rotwitt said Foxwoods has kept the Gaming Control Board apprised of changes in its plans, and that if the board thought another hearing was necessary, they would have called one.

Originally, Foxwoods planned to build a finger pier that stretched out into the Delaware, he said. That idea was abandoned not for political reasons, but financial ones. The cost of building such a space, and then running heat and other utilities out to it, was too great, Rotwitt said – especially considering the rental fees that the restaurants using the space would have generated.

The pier was pared down to the projecting promenade, which was recently abandoned to avoid the riparian rights issues.

Rotwitt said the at-times heated riparian discussion at the planning committee meeting was pure politics. “We’ve had it surveyed. This is a non-issue. It’s black letter law. It’s undisputed.”

But Isaacson was pleased when the planning commission put off voting on the Foxwoods proposal due to confusion over the riparian issue.

So was Brian Abernathy, spokesman for City Councilman Frank DiCicco – although he and Isaacson got into a heated argument at the planning meeting.

Abernathy said he believes Foxwoods has presented its latest plan in good faith, but there is too much confusion about riparian boundaries to “take it as fact yet.”

DiCicco, in whose district both casinos sit, has been trying to persuade Foxwoods to avoid this and other site issues by building on another site. Abernathy said he was “not willing to discuss” whether the councilman had suggested any alternate sites in particular.

As an incentive, DiCicco has said he would try to get Foxwoods city and state money for the trouble of changing locations, in part to compensate the developers for money they invested in planning for the current site.

Foxwoods is so far unwilling to take the bait.

Instead, it is awaiting a court decision that could significantly speed up the construction process.

Under current circumstances, even if the riparian issue goes away and the planning commission approves the Foxwoods plan, the casino still needs City Council to change the zoning of its proposed location to allow for gambling.

But six weeks ago, Foxwoods asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to override council’s authority and make the zoning change.

Rotwitt expects a ruling toward the end of August. Construction would begin “10 days after we get either the zoning change from the city or a Supreme Court decision.”

Meanwhile, SugarHouse – the other casino planned for Philadelphia’s waterfront – has already passed muster with the planning commission.

But a large percentage of the SugarHouse plan depends upon the receipt of riparian rights. O’Brien has said he would introduce such legislation for SugarHouse only if it reaches agreements with the neighborhood associations in the community, and the associations have agreed not to negotiate with the casinos.

O’Brien has introduced riparian rights legislation for two other projects, however. Bills to grant rights to NCCB Associates – which hopes to build a residential condo tower on Pier 53 – and Donald Trump’s VTE Philadelphia -- which wants to build a residential tower on Pier 55 and ½ --- were passed by the House early this month and will be considered by the Senate when the assembly’s recess ends this fall.

Isaacson said the riparian boundaries for these properties are not in dispute. “The Department of General Services reviewed the surveys and there are not any questions,” she said.

Home Page Summary

Foxwoods reps say they don't need to encroach into Delaware; local legislators want another bulkhead-pierhead survey. <a href="/node/1651" target="_blank">Riparian update</a>

Source

Written By

KellieP

Publish Date

July 19, 2007

Abstract

Planning commission tables Foxwoods vote

mgolas — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:35:56 -0400

Bio

Body

July 17

By Matt Blanchard
For PlanPhilly

For some it was a victory, to others a defeat, but to all sides it came as a shock: Despite a widespread assumption that the Planning Commission would approve Foxwoods' $560 million plan for a casino in South Philadelphia, the commission opted instead to delay a decision for at least a month.

Foxwoods had assumed the approval was in the bag: "We certainly expected we'd have an approval," said casino attorney Jeffrey Rotwitt.

And though they hated it, Foxwoods opponents also assumed it was done deal: "It seems as though the planning commission is going to vote in favor of it," city councilman Frank DiCicco had said before the meeting.

Yet after four hours of testimony inside the Free Library's auditorium – and numerous outbursts of shouting and slogan-chanting from the audience – the commission voted to table the matter, claiming they simply didn't have enough information to make the call.

"There were other questions we wanted to look into," explained commission member Gloria Levin.

Foxwoods, best known for their mega-casino in Connecticut, proposes a 3.7 million-square-foot facility along the river at Columbus Boulevard between Reed and Tasker Streets. The first phase includes 3,000 slot machines. Later phases will add shops, restaurants, entertainment
venues, a parking garage, a public riverfront walkway and possibly two condominium or hotel towers.

The design of the casino, by Ewing Cole architects, is dominated by a 10-story parking garage along Delaware Avenue and did not inspire much support from the audience. Promises to soften a giant blank wall on the building's north side with climbing vines drew jeers from the audience.

When images of a riverside boardwalk were shown, someone shouted "Where's the suicide pier?" And while the first phase of the project includes a landscaped riverfront park, the second phase obliterates that park to make way for casino buildings.

Even so, the staff of the planning commission recommended that the board approve the casino's zoning and plan of development, with certain provisos. Such recommendations carry great weight with the board.

Foxwoods got a second piece of good news when word reached the meeting by Blackberry that a rival casino, RiverWalk, had lost its bid in the State Supreme Court to overturn the casino's license.

But Foxwoods faced tough questions on four issues: riparian rights, traffic, a development agreement with the city, and the fate of legislation that would keep casinos at least 1,500 feet from homes and places of worship. The commission will examine each issue in depth before making its decision.

Riparian Right
The complex issue of riparian rights seemed to provide a pivotal moment for the board. Under state law, land between the shoreline and the end of existing piers is called "riparian land." It belongs to the commonwealth and cannot be developed without approval by the state legislature.

A little more than 9 acres of Foxwoods' 30-acre site is riparian land.

But when Foxwoods' Rotwitt claimed the project "makes no use of riparian lands" and doesn't require state approval, a staff member from state rep. Mike O'Brien's office rose to angrily dispute the claim.

"You are trying to build on riparian lands, land that belongs to the state," said O'Brien chief of staff Mary Isaacson. "And until you meet with your co-owners and come to some agreement, whether you like it or not, you're not going to be building on that land."

Isaacson declared that O'Brien and fellow state Rep. Bill Keller would seek a court order to bar Foxwoods from commencing construction before the riparian issue is settled.

Traffic
Commission members also seemed disturbed by the apparent absence of independent traffic studies to gauge Foxwood's impact. The casino's traffic engineer, Jeff Green of Orth-Rogers, presented the board with a raft of signaling and lane improvements that he said would improve peak hour traffic on Fridays by 36 percent over current conditions.

Casino opponents chipped away at that certainty with their own traffic engineer, and seemed to strike home with former city council candidate Matt Ruben lambasting the commission for reviewing a proposal whose only traffic study was paid for by the developer.

"To know [an independent] study has not been completed and to vote to approve it anyway constitutes the most basic and most egregious dereliction of duty for a planning commission," Ruben thundered.

A Development Agreement in Progress
The third issue behind the commission's delay was timing: The city has not yet completed negotiations for a legally-binding development agreement with Foxwoods Casino. That agreement is said to cover transportation, local jobs, public safety, architectural design, public access to the river and even flooding concerns. Since it is a work in progress, City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. offered few specifics. Diaz said he expected the two sides to finalize the agreement "in the next 24 hours."

One aspect of the agreement was described: The casino has offered to fund a special services district to the tune of $1 million per year. According to Foxwoods' Rotwitt, the district would be entirely managed by the community, and could accomplish community goals such as traffic safety or programs for seniors. The other city casino, Sugarhouse, has made an identical offer to the residents of Fishtown.

The Buffer
The final reason stated for the commission's delay is confusion about legislative efforts to enact a 1500-foot buffer between the casinos and residential areas, schools or churches.

Such a buffer would force both casinos off their current sites, probably to remote reaches of the city. Because it countermands state law, a citywide referendum on the buffer concept was tossed off the May primary ballot.

Even so, three buffer bills are pending:

Frank DiCicco has introduced legislation in City Council, though he admits it's chiefly a delaying tactic.

State Rep. Babette Josephs recently introduced HB 1477, a buffer bill whose application would effective ban casinos from the city of Philadelphia.

And most bizarrely, State Sen. Vince Fumo, the architect of the state's gaming laws, last week introduced two separate 1500-foot buffer bills in the senate, apparently as the fulfillment of promises to his anti-casino constituents. Fumo immediately declared both bills hopeless, leaving many to scratch their heads: "I believe this legislation has virtually no chance of passing either the House or Senate," he said.

Perhaps understandably, city planning commissioners are confused.

So in the end, it was Commissioner David Adelman who moved to table the discussion until answers could be procured.

"This is too important to rush through a bunch of questions right now," Adelman said to cheers mixed with a few boos.

Foxwoods Undaunted
Afterwards, Foxwoods' Jeffrey Rotwitt told reporters the commission should already have all the information they need. He argued that the real reason the commission tabled the discussion was the shear "vocality" of the angry, largely anti-casino crowd.

Further, Rotwitt noted that a month-long delay would have zero impact on the casino's plan. Because City Council is in recess until September anyway, the planning commission's delay until August was immaterial.

"We are fully confident that when they convene in August , they'll approve it and pass it on to City Council."

The other proposed casino, Sugarhouse, was reviewed on May 22, also inside the Central Library, and won the commission's approval. The commission gave only 24 hours notice of that meeting. This time, they gave nearly two weeks.

The Planning Commission and Foxwoods are also making large format drawings that are part of this plan available for public viewing. These drawings are technical in nature, and contain site layout information, engineering, zoning, and other technical data.

These drawings will not be posted on the Planning Commission website. They will be available for viewing at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission during regular business hours, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Home Page Summary

Riparian rights, traffic study issues stall city's move to forge ahead with second slots operation. See <a href="http://www.philaplanning.org/plans/gaming/gamingdocs.html" target="_blank">casino documents</a>, <a href="/node/1743" target="_blank">videos.</a>