Upper North Philadelphia

Port Richmond/ Fishtown Art-Music Fest

andrewg — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:41:54 -0400

Start: 09/27/2008 - 11:00am

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A meeting of the minds when we all gather for the First Annual Arts & Music Fest. Sponsored by Portside Art Academy and The Green Rock Tavern, starts at noon. 10 bands, food, drink and activism. Sounds good, right?

Location: Lehigh Avenue and Aramingo Avenue

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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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Publish Date

August 27, 2008

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Temple U. Station gets a once-over

mgolas — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:18:16 -0400

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July 31

46th Street Station TOD

By Seth Budick
For PlanPhilly

On a hot and muggy Thursday evening in North Philadelphia, planners presented their ideas for the new Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) centered on SEPTA’s Temple University Regional Rail station. Perhaps due to the weather, community turnout was light compared to a similar meeting held last week in West Philadelphia for the city’s other TRID – the area around the 46th St. station on the Market Frankford Line (MFL). It should be noted that the low attendance didn’t keep strong opinions from being expressed.

Both TRID planning studies have been funded by grants from the state and managed by the non-profit NeighborhoodsNow. Last night’s meeting was hosted by Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha, a local Community Development Corporation that has been working with NeighborhoodsNow to support mixed income transit-oriented development (TOD) in Philadelphia.

Last night’s presentation shared much in common with the one given a week ago in West Philadelphia. It’s clear that Scott Page, Principal at Interface Studio, and Transportation Planner Frank Jaskiewicz, who were responsible for both TRID studies, believe that regardless of where they’re located, transit friendly neighborhoods must meet certain universal standards such as having easily accessible stations. At the same time, differences between the two plans reflected the substantial variation between the neighborhoods, not least in the form of the transit that serves them.

While 46th St. station provides access to the heavy rail (subway and elevated) MFL, Temple University station is served by Regional Rail trains. Though each of these commuter lines runs far less frequently than the MFL, at least some trains on all seven Regional Rail lines stop at Temple. As a result, you can catch a train from Temple University station headed for Center City every 3 to 14 minutes between 8AM and 9AM, according to SEPTA’s online schedule. During the same period, MFL trains arrive roughly four minutes apart. Despite this relatively frequent service at Temple University station, of the 35,000 potential riders within a half mile radius, Page said that only 4% use the station daily.

This discouraging statistic led him to one of the central questions guiding the TRID plan: “How do we build in a way that encourages people to use the station more than they currently do?” Page cited the fact that 60% of Philadelphians currently drive to work and stressed that the goal of TOD isn’t to get every one of those people out of their cars, but that instead “We want to give people a choice in how they get to work.”

Andre Mears, a local resident, offered one explanation for the current low ridership. As he put it, “the train is there, but we’re just a block from the bus.” In other words, with so many nearby bus lines whose routes parallel the Regional Rail into Center City, it rarely makes sense to walk several blocks to the station if you can catch a bus and pay a lower fare (if you don’t have a weekly or monthly pass) by walking a shorter distance instead.

Jaskiewicz addressed this issue by saying that the TRID plan does not focus exclusively on the Regional Rail station, but could feature improvements to several modes of transportation. These might include new bus shelters with maps and timetables and even electronic signs with upcoming bus arrival times updated in real-time.

It’s true though that Regional Rail service to Center City is largely redundant with other transit options in the neighborhood. A great advantage of the Temple University station, however, is the easy access it provides to the enormous number of stations that Regional Rail serves outside of Center City. Though this point did not come up during the meeting, it’s clear that as the Philadelphia regional economy has become less focused on Center City, access to job centers outside of downtown Philadelphia has become an increasingly valuable asset.

Many of the prescriptions that the planners offered for a walkable and transit-friendly community echoed those from a week earlier, including creating clean and safe access to the station. This calls for such basics as improving lighting and dealing with that Philadelphia scourge, broken sidewalks. Increasing the station’s visibility was also cited as a priority by the planners and that objective was endorsed by one community member at the meeting who said that for a long time he wasn’t even aware of the station’s existence.

As far as opportunities for development, Temple University station offers a very different picture compared to 46th St., according to Page. University related development to the west, and new housing to the east, have left a large gap immediately around the station. Two large lots, one city owned and the other belonging to Philadelphia Gas Works, sit directly adjacent to the station but are currently used for parking. According to Page, these represent a great opportunity for moderate density residential and retail development. In the short term, he suggested adding a café or other retail to the plaza directly beneath the station since right now “There’s no commercial activity at the station at all.”

At the same time, vacancy rates in the neighborhood are high, creating enormous opportunities for infill development, Page said. “There’s a lot of space here. There’s no need for us to be building anywhere where there’s existing homes.” Page would like to focus development on those vacant properties, rehabilitating existing structures when it makes sense. As a first step, Interface mapped all of the vacant property in the area and the resulting checkerboard makes for a startling image; east of the rail viaduct, the amount of vacant land is comparable to that which is occupied. To answer the question “Where do we start?” Page proposed initially concentrating development on Berks, Norris, and 9th Streets.

Like last week, when Page suggested installing a giant running track around a “superblock” near the 46th St. station, he again offered a novel and creative use of existing infrastructure. In this case he proposed creating a tree nursery on an unused part of the rail viaduct adjacent to the station. Community members seemed open to the idea as Page explained that “We could grow trees in the neighborhood and move the trees to the streets where neighborhood residents would like to see them planted.”

The TRID planning team will be relying on community members to help winnow down the ideas presented last night. Page said that preliminary analysis indicates that the TRID would be able to capture $2.7 million in the form of tax incremented financing that could be used for installing and maintaining some of the many proposed improvements. But Marvin Lewis, Executive Director of the Ludlow Community Association, repeatedly emphasized that any changes coming out of this plan need to address the needs of the local community first and foremost.

Now that the two TRID plans have been presented to their respective communities, their feedback will be incorporated and the plans will be finalized in the coming weeks and months. At the end of the meeting, the plan did get a strong endorsement from Andre Mears, a community member who had seemed skeptical earlier in the evening. He said that if the end result matched what he saw last night, “I would walk over there just to walk around.” As Page put it, “We’re trying to build a community around a station in a way that encourages people to use that station.” Over the coming months it should become increasingly clear how that goal might translate into reality.

Contact the reporter at sbudick@gmail.com

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NeighborhoodsNow managing civic engagement process that would bring transit oriented revitalization to area around 9th and Berks.

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Publish Date

July 31, 2008

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Transit Oriented Development Meeting

IsaacS — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:49:09 -0400

Start: 07/31/2008 - 5:00pm

End: 07/31/2008 - 7:00pm

Start: 07/31/2008 - 5:00pm

End: 07/31/2008 - 7:00pm

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July 31

Community Meeting on Transit Oriented Design
Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM Hall)
2319 N. 7th St. (between York & Dauphin)
NeighborhoodsNow<http://www.neighborhoodsnowphila.org/>) is working to bring Transit Oriented Development to Philadelphia by managing an urban planning process for the area around the Temple University Regional Rail Station. Please come to share your ideas, concerns, support, and to have your questions answered. Included in this email is a flyer for the event and a brochure with an overview of Transit Oriented Development and the opportunities it presents for Philadelphia in general.

Questions, please contact The Enterprise Center CDC 215-895-4075.

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Budd Site (proposed TrumpStreet Casino)

andrewg — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:12:20 -0400

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The 30-acre site in Nicetown was the proposed location for the Keystone Redevelopment LLC TrumpStreet Casino. At Fox Street and Roberts Avenue, this venture received the most negative reaction from neighborhood groups in the early siting process. It was one of the five sites considered by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2006.

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Conrail Lands

andrewg — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:06:38 -0400

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Located at the terminus of the Lehigh Avenue Viaduct along the Delaware River, this 200 acres of underutilized post-industrial property presents an incredible opportunity for redevelopment of some kind.

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Proposed Pinnacle Casino site

andrewg — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:03:42 -0400

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Project would sit on 27 acres next to Delaware River in Kensington at Beach Street and Schirra Drive. Of the five sites considered by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2006, this was the largest. Many believed this site to be the front runner for licensing, especially because of PennDOT's plans to reconstruct the Girard Avenue Interchange of Interstate 95.

The Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force had this to say about locating a casino site (Pinnacle) on a 27-acre parcel next to this property.

"The Fishtown site has greater visibility from the interstate and the Ben Franklin Bridge and would offer greater flexibility in design and opportunities for expansions. The Fishtown site is located close to warehouses and light industrial buildings and is immediately adjacent to the Delaware River. While there is no benefit or synergy with these land uses, there is also no major incompatibility issue either. Some synergy is possible with the Port Richmond Village shopping center on the other side of I-95. The site is proximate to, and visible from, I-95 and from the Betsy Ross and Benjamin Franklin bridges, making it easier to find by nonresidents, in particular those coming from New Jersey. At 27 acres, the site is sufficient for a casino development with all the appropriate amenities on a single level. The site is also buffered from nearby residential areas by the highway."

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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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The northern section begins to illustrate its concept of activity "bulbs" in each neighborhood.

andrewg — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:42:22 -0400

Updated: Traffic issues resonate in Pennsport

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:48:31 -0500

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Close to 100 outspoken river ward residents from Philadelphia neighborhoods that are affected by development and sewage back-up issues turned out for a full-day symposium at Furness High School in South Philadelphia Saturday.
The event, sponsored by the Pennsport and Whitman Council civic associations, was designed to cover the issues of sewage control given the prospect of casino development in a number of riverfront communities; traffic gridlock concerns on Delaware Avenue and I-95; and legislative actions being taken and under consideration around the issues of riparian rights, casino siting and charter change and the portability of casino licenses.

Speakers and presenters included Pennsport Civic Association president John Dougherty; state representatives Bill Keller, Mike O'Brien and John Taylor; Joanne Dahme and Debra McCarty of the water department, Joe Fiola of DEP, Izat Melhan of the health department; Barry Seymour and Rosemarie Anderson of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission; Charles Denny of the streets department; Chuck Davis of PennDOT; Jim Paylor of the International Longshoremen's Association; and councilman Frank DiCicco.
Videos of the three segments of the event are being produced by PlanPhilly. The first video concerning sewer problems is now available to view on the site. Traffic and legislation segments should be available shortly.
The topic of sewage included recommendations calling for residents to install flow back-up protection in their homes, for the city to consider building holding tanks for excess flow from heavy rains and for the casinos to install independent sewage infrastructure that would run directly to treatment facilities.

The traffic discussions centered on existing gridlock in South Philadelphia and the need for a comprehensive, independent study that would detail the impact the casinos as well as more development would have on river ward neighborhoods. The assembled state representatives called for the DVRPC to issue an RFP (request for proposal) and conduct a traffic study that would be apolitical. DiCicco concurred with the state representatives concerning the DVRPC's leading role in developing a traffic study.

The legislative session included a discussion of riparian rights, which can limit where casinos are sited along the river; a call for the Gaming Control Board to be more transparent about the reasons behind their decision to approve Foxwoods and SugarHouse; the politicans' stand on Act 71, which enabled casinos; an explanation by Keller about his successful house action to defeat a bill that would have seded the city's ability to approve casino siting.
Keller also announced that he is developing a master plan for the working port that will create, at a minimun, 20,000 jobs.
The event concluded with Anne Dicker of Casino Free Philadelphia soliciting signatures for a petition that would call for a public referendum May 15 on zoning that enables casinos to exist within 1,000 feet of a residential neighborhood.
Dougherty said there will be three or four more symposiums. See transcripts of the first symposium by clicking here

Home Page Summary

Second Pennsport riverfront symposium addressed traffic, water problems and riparian rights.