A CIVIC VISION pdf
A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware covers 1,146 acres of land in an area once known as the Workshop of the World. Following an industrial decline affecting the entire region, the riverfront has undergone dramatic changes in land use, and the city adjoining it has also been transformed. The central Delaware landscape has the potential to become one of the great urban riverfronts of the world.
While cities around the world have developed comprehensive plans for revitalizing their waterfront areas in recent years, the central Delaware riverfront has lacked a plan that reflects current market trends. The city of Philadelphia has allowed the area to be developed on an ad hoc basis, without the benefit of a comprehensive and sustainable urban vision. This leaves us at considerable risk of losing the rare opportunity to create a varied cityscape of beauty and consequence and leave an invaluable legacy for future generations.
The Genesis of the Civic Vision for the Central Delaware
A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware presents a civic vision that seeks to create a road map for future growth along the central Delaware riverfront. It aims to combine high-quality, private urban development with current thinking about sustainable urban systems and the concept of the greater public good. By adopting this civic vision, Philadelphia can join the ranks of progressive, world-class cities that have envisioned new futures for their riverfronts and created places of inestimable value that inspire visitors and residents alike.
This civic vision was forged through an exhaustive process that recognized the need to balance public and private interests to ensure a sustainable future for the central Delaware riverfront. Through an open, transparent public process and the engagement of multiple stakeholders, the project team has married expert knowledge and citizen values in a plan of unusual breadth and strength. The process itself gave thousands of Philadelphians the chance to have a strong influence over the governing principles and values underlying this document, as well as allowing countless others in public and private roles of consequence to share their concerns. The resulting vision offers a comprehensive look at the riverfront that is appropriate for the twenty-first century—a vision supported by both the on-the-ground knowledge of citizens and best planning practices from around the world.
The vision establishes a sound yet flexible framework for development that will make the central Delaware riverfront into an active, vital asset for the city of Philadelphia and its environs. Because achieving this aim requires the integration of multiple factors, including civic values, best planning practices and numerous ownership interests along the riverfront, the civic vision outlines implementation strategies that emphasize collaboration.
(Philadelphia's central and southern riverfront, circa 1870.)
A vision plan is vital for clarifying and transforming the city’s role in determining the future of the central Delaware riverfront. These are some of the benefits that A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware provides for the city of Philadelphia and its citizens:
A starting point for future civic action that builds the case for more detailed planning, as well as economic, environmental and technical studies;
A framework for advocacy, ongoing public dialogue and action by public officials based upon extensive civic engagement;
A focus on “big idea” concepts that encourages the implementation of progressive public policy and public investment in civic infrastructure; and
A broad-based vision that demonstrates what is possible while allowing for growth and adaptation.
The Power of Planning
Cities are organic entities that grow and change over time, and sound urban planning and design help them evolve in beneficial ways that create a framework for our lives. They are shifting landscapes. Visionary plans influence urban-development practices for decades and even centuries; perhaps the most notable example of this in the United States is Daniel Burnham’s plan for Chicago in 1909, which established the template that has guided subsequent growth. The most revered cities around the world still adhere to elements of their hallmark plans, from the plan of Pierre L’Enfant in Washington to that of Baron Haussmann in Paris. Quality urban design is attuned to the rhythm of the era, but it also stands the test of time. It informs development, makes a city more memorable and can even help us feel safe in our neighborhoods. By giving sites a feeling of permanence, sound city planning allows buildings and sites to be adapted over time without losing their essential character.
Successful planning requires that we balance the interests of the public and private sectors, but the process of creating a successful plan also teaches us that these interests are intertwined. Public policy that is written to create and preserve quality urban development will benefit private-sector interests by stimulating demand. However, the decline of both public and private investment in recent decades shows that Philadelphia’s land-use policies are out of date with current development pressures, allowing for development that does not adhere to sound principles for planning, land use, transportation and quality of life. As a result, the quality of the built environment has been compromised.
The city was not always characterized by a haphazard development style. In fact, Philadelphia began with a plan: William Penn’s plan for the city, a holy experiment that was also a real-estate deal. The plan, which Penn designed with his surveyor, Thomas Holme, was first published in 1683. It laid out development parcels and public squares along a network of parallel streets, reflecting the planners’ efforts to resolve the tension between religious freedom and aristocratic land ownership, community interaction and private property. This plan allowed for growth within a formal framework, and economic realities led to the speedy filling in of Penn’s blocks with dense, mixed-use neighborhoods. Theirs was a prescient template for growth that survives to this day.
Penn’s clear delineation of development parcels, a street network and open space has served the city as a template for 325 years of growth. Today, in the absence of comprehensive planning, this growth has been implemented mainly at the hands of private developers and property owners. What follows is a brief history of city planning in Philadelphia and the central Delaware.
The Philadelphia Story: A Timeline of City Planning and Growth
1683: Philadelphia Plan: William Penn and Thomas Holme’s grid plan
for Philadelphia is first published in London. Its framework of streets has guided the city’s growth for 325 years, allowing for an easy mix of uses between businesses and residences.
1684: Seeing the clear economic value of the central Delaware, Penn allows development at the river’s edge as long as public riverfront access is retained at every block. The Wood Street Steps in Old City are the lone remaining vestige of this agreement.
1700s: River Of Commerce. The city continues to develop, primarily north and south along the Delaware River. By the time of the American Revolution, the river has become a national center for commerce and manufacturing, and it remains so through World War II.
1822: This year marks the opening of Frederick Graff’s Fairmount Water Works, the first municipal waterworks in the country, designed to protect the city’s water supply and provide a refuge from the crowded metropolis. It soon becomes a beloved symbol of excellence in civic design.
1831: Delaware Avenue: In his will, shipping magnate Stephen Girard starts a trust that finances Delaware Avenue. The avenue becomes the first public road to link the docks of the central Delaware to one another.
1854: Philadelphia is consolidated into a single city and county, giving local government new authority to acquire land for public good. The establishment of Fairmount Park follows in 1855.
1876: The Centennial International Exhibition, the first offcial world’s fair in the United States, is held in Fairmount Park. The showcase introduces the United States as a new industrial force and Philadelphia as a center of American culture and industry.
1907-1917: The Parkway. With the help of plans created by Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber, the Fairmount Park Commission designs the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a European-style boulevard that connects Philadelphia’s downtown with Fairmount Park. This effort generates the first direct participation in city planning by local leaders (the Parkway Association) and helps make Philadelphia one of the most progressive cities for urban design in the United States.
1920s: Infrastructure: Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the subway system are completed.
1949-1970: Edmund Bacon becomes a national figure as executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, implementing many large projects, such as the Society Hill revitalization, Penn’s Landing, and the Gallery at Market East.
1956: CPDC: Central Philadelphia Development Corporation is founded, ushering in a new era in which planning is conducted by smaller, non-profit groups.
1952-1962: Reform: Philadelphia mayors Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth begin a post-WWII reform movement that significantly strengthens the local government’s role in city planning. John Gallery calls this reform in urban redevelopment a “civic and political partnership.”
1970s-Present: Displacement: As many early projects of the Urban Renewal era caused widespread displacement, the federal government is focusing its projects on communities and neighborhood preservation. Philadelphia responds by decentralizing its planning processes to involve more community groups and citizens.
1979: Elevated I-95: A mostly-elevated extension of Interstate 95 opens along the central Delaware, marking the beginning of the riverfront's identity as a regional auto thoroughfare.
1990: Center City District: CPDC helps establish Center City District, a business improvement district charged with implementing maintenance and marketing programs for downtown. Over the next seventeen years, the residential population of Center City grows to make it the third largest downtown in the nation.
2003-2007: Mayor Street launches the New River City initiative. This includes the creation of a civic vision for the central Delaware, a vision plan for the future of the central Delaware River.
Current Features of the Project Area
The civic vision covers 1,146 acres of land; these acres include seven miles along the river’s edge. The project area’s boundaries are Allegheny Avenue to the north, Oregon Avenue to the south, I-95 to the west and the Delaware River to the east. Currently, the area is comprised of piecemeal development that lacks a cohesive plan. As the following factors reveal, the situation is growing urgent.
The riverfront is currently a fragmented collection of development, ranging from a working port and big-box retail in the southern area to high-rise, gated communities in the north. Among the unintended consequences of its unchecked development are traffic jams along Columbus Boulevard, reports of flooding in nearby basements during significant storm events and a virtual lack of public access to the water’s edge.
Development pressures are intense: along the central Delaware, twenty-two high-rise towers and two state-approved casinos are in various stages of proposal and approval.
With I-95 and Columbus Boulevard cutting a 600-foot-wide swath through the corridor, the riverfront is an auto-dominated landscape that precludes public access to and enjoyment of the river.
The area abuts Philadelphia’s oldest, most historic and densest row-house communities, and the project area includes structures that highlight the city’s former industrial primacy as the Workshop of the World.
Only 8 acres of the project area are publicly accessible park space: Penn Treaty Park in Fishtown and Pulaski Park in Port Richmond.
Penn’s Landing remains a significantly underutilized public space in the center of the study area due in large part to the difficulty of accessing the site across I-95.
Across the project area, a lack of openness and transparency characterizes both government oversight and the development process.
Much of the land in the project area is privately owned, and large portions remain underutilized, most notably the 250-acre Port Richmond rail yards in the northern sector.
About 60 percent of the project area has been certified as “blighted.”
The current and future health of the Delaware River is a significant concern, largely due to combined sewer outflows, proposed dredging and increased riverfront development.
Given the current development landscape along the central Delaware, it is time to create a sound framework for growth.
(A chaotic convergence of land uses typifies the southern portion of the project area, which includes suburban-style big-box retail and a working port.)
Recent Planning Efforts along the Delaware Riverfront
A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware is the first planning initiative to cover such a large stretch of the Delaware riverfront in Philadelphia in twenty-five years. (Between 1981 and 1982, under Mayor Green’s administration, Waterfront District Plans were completed by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.) Throughout the planning process, we consulted with those involved in other riverfront planning efforts in the project area and throughout Philadelphia and worked to coordinate our efforts with theirs. Most of these planning initiatives began before our planning process, and each one represents an important community effort. A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware recognizes the work of these various neighborhood, city, state and regional entities and has incorporated many of their tenets into the civic vision from which it sprang. Key organizations include the following:
Northern Liberties Neighbors Association (NLNA): In April 2007, NLNA released the Northern Liberties Waterfront Plan, a community-based riverfront vision that will guide development from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge to Penn Treaty Park. Commissioned by NLNA and financed by local developers, it is the first community plan addressing land along the central Delaware. The plan focuses on ideas for narrowing the gap between the neighbors and the river, such as east-west “civic incisions” that reclaim important connector streets as public space, manicured parks under portions of I-95 and floating trail elements in the river as a way to allow people to travel along a continuous riverfront trail, despite private control of riparian land. The full plan can be viewed or downloaded from the NLNA website at www.nlna.org/images/NLNA_WaterfrontPlan_Web.pdf.
New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) and Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront (NABR) are working with The Pennsylvania Environmental Council to lead a community-driven greenway study that examines how to improve neighborhood connections to the river from Spring Garden Street to the Betsy Ross Bridge. More information can be found on NKCDC’s website, www.nkcdc.org.
NABR conducted a workshop in April 2007 that used the neighborhood principles identified during our planning process to envision alternate uses for the Foxwoods and SugarHouse Casino sites. More information can be found on its website, www.nabrhood.org.
Delaware River City Corporation is the non-profit implementing agency for the North Delaware Riverfront Greenway, an eight-mile trail and landscaped edge from Pulaski Park to Glen Foerd. The project grew out of a vision plan for the North Delaware prepared by Field Operations for the City Planning Commission in 2001. That plan called for increased public access and mixed-use development, primarily on brownfield sites. Several projects proposed by the plan are already underway, including the extension of Delaware Avenue north and the major expansion of trails and parks. More information can be found on the group’s website, www.drcc-phila.org.
GreenPlan Philadelphia, the city’s blueprint for sustainable open space, is Philadelphia’s first comprehensive plan for parks, recreation and open space. This plan was created concurrently with our planning process. GreenPlan includes strategic recommendations for improving the city’s open-space network and an implementation plan that includes first-action demonstration projects. Numerous sites along the central Delaware have been identified by both our project team and those who developed GreenPlan as potential early projects, such as Penn Treaty Park, the former city incinerator site and Festival Pier. More information can be found at www.greenplanphiladelphia.com.
Cooper’s Ferry Development Association: Founded in 1984, CFDA has leveraged more than $500 million of public and private investment in the Camden riverfront, including financing for Tweeter Center, RiverLink Ferry, Campbell’s Field and the New Jersey State Aquarium. The Camden riverfront currently draws two million visitors per year and contributes about $4 million in annual taxes to the city of Camden, 18 percent of its overall collections. More information can be found on CFDA’s website: www.camdenwaterfront.com.
Though not on the Delaware River, other recent riverfront planning projects include the Schuylkill River Development Corporation's Tidal Schuylkill River Master Plan: Creating a New Vision in 2003 and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation's 2004 Philadelphia Navy Yard Master Plan. Plans can be found at www.schuylkillbanks.org and at www.navyyard.org.
Riverfront Development Pressures Reach New Heights
Intense development pressures in recent years along the central Delaware have demonstrated the need for a comprehensive vision for the riverfront. The city’s recent downtown housing boom, aided by the expansion of the ten-year property tax abatement for residential construction, has caused a dramatic rise in interest in vacant, postindustrial riverfront parcels. Today, these vacant parcels are seen as prime sites for high-density living and retail establishments. As of 2007, plans for twenty-two new high-rises are proposed along the central Delaware riverfront, and many have received zoning approval. Additionally, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has licensed two casinos with five thousand slot machines each; these are also slated for development along the riverfront. If the casinos are built as approved, it is anticipated that each casino development will stimulate ancillary and supporting development on adjacent sites.
To date, the city’s approach to riverfront development views any development as good for the economy. Thus, the city has spent little time strengthening the land-use controls needed to encourage high- quality design, a feature that would protect the area’s value and appeal. In the absence of these controls, the existing physical landscape is one of isolated development, replete with traffic jams, flooding caused by poor stormwater management and a lack of public access to the river. A comprehensive approach to riverfront development that addresses economics, urban design, social equity and ecology has been lacking from the conversation. This civic vision presents Philadelphia with the opportunity to manage development pressures along the riverfront, protect the public good, address long-term and sustainable design principles and adopt a framework that will ensure that the Delaware riverfront succeeds in becoming a major local and regional asset.
The Challenges Facing Riverfront Development, and the Potential for New Growth
The primary challenges to developing the central Delaware into a model twenty-first century, urban riverfront community are physical and governmental. However, many opportunities exist to create such a riverfront in what is currently an array of big-box shopping centers, super- block-scaled development, vacant land, an auto-dominated landscape and a largely inaccessible river’s edge. Underutilized land can be the city’s next great developed and public space, existing sprawl-type development can become urban infill, and neighborhood development pressures can spill over constructively onto the river’s edge.
Challenges
The physical and psychological barrier of I-95, which literally cuts the city off from the riverfront.
Inadequate coordination between a plethora of governing and managing entities at both city and state levels.
An automobile-dominated landscape that makes the riverfront a high-speed thoroughfare and not a destination.
Large-scale, post-industrial brownfield sites that encourage suburban-style development with horizontal, big-box development and acres of surface parking.
Development pressures that decrease opportunities for open space.
A dearth of attractive, public green spaces.
Gated communities that block public access to the river.
Minimal road connectivity between the river and adjacent neighborhoods.
An aging combined sewer infrastructure that contributes to riverfront pollution.
A current lack of federal funds for transformational urban-redevelopment projects.
An existing rail right-of-way ownership down the center of Columbus Boulevard that is incompatible with a pedestrian-friendly, urbane boulevard.
A lack of coordination between the needs of the riverfront as a whole (traffic, open space, riverfront access) and community benefits agreements presented for Zoning Board of Adjustment approval that are negotiated by civic associations and individual developers without regard to comprehensive planning implications.
Archaic zoning code practices that cause unintended development consequences, with the Zoning Board of Adjustment and City Council adjudicating zoning variances on a parcel-by-parcel basis.
Largely private ownership of riverfront land.
The ten-year property tax abatement which has stimulated development but is also a missed opportunity for capturing future property tax value for public infrastructure investment.
The lack of a comprehensive civic vision that balances public good with quality urban development.
Potential
Strong neighborhood communities bordering the central Delaware.
An existing Philadelphia street framework that allows for potential “green” connective corridors to the river from adjoining communities.
Development pressure that will spur neighborhood expansion to the river and provide the density necessary to support park space, retail, mass transportation and quality public investment in civic infrastructure.
Future job growth in the working port, construction, riverfront hospitality and retail fields.
Strategic public investment in infrastructure (street grid, boulevard, parks), yielding significant private investment returns and increased public revenues.
Existing public access points (Penn’s Landing, Penn Treaty Park, Pulaski Park) as starting points for new riverfront parks and open spaces.
A historic legacy as the site of earliest Philadelphia settlements.
An existing rail infrastructure as basis for future mass transportation infrastructure.
The potential for creative funding sources for future infrastructure investment.
A working port as a growing economic driver for the city.
Large, undeveloped parcels as potential sites for new urban destinations.
A planned I-95 rebuild and improved design during current rebuilding process.
Developing partnerships between public, private and non-profit entities.
The Advisory Group’s Work to Address Casinos on the Riverfront
The central Delaware riverfront planning process proceeded in parallel with other independent development proposals, the most controversial of which was the siting of two state-mandated and licensed casinos within the project area. In response to community concern, the Central Delaware Advisory Group voted to include a “no-build” scheme in this civic vision so that alternative site plans would be acknowledged.
Thriving riverfronts—indeed cities in general—incorporate a wide mix of uses. In some cities, mostly in Europe and Canada, this mix can include casinos if they are given urban form and properly contextualized. However, to achieve this, cities must be able to provide and enforce zoning regulations and design guidelines that manage building form and scale, provide public riverfront access and ensure that the automobile does not dominate the landscape. The controversial process that brought casinos to the Delaware did not allow for a thorough discussion of design and planning.
The proposed casino locations and no-build criteria are included in the following pages and demonstrate the effect of applying the central Delaware design guidelines (created with the advisory group as a part of this process) to the site and program of the proposed casinos.
Elements of the proposed no-build provision include the following:
Extending the Philadelphia street grid over large development parcels to create a pedestrian-scale environment and improve riverfront access.
Encouraging smaller buildings to allow for permeability at the river’s edge.
Providing a 100-foot minimum public easement along the riverfront for a multimodal riverfront trail and green space.
Placing buildings at the building line on city streets.
Requiring parking that is visually unobtrusive and has a minimal impact on pedestrians’ riverfront experience.
Exploring innovative remedies to the auto-dominated landscape, including remote parking, car sharing and automated garages.
Requiring that buildings are constructed to ensure that massing, height, scale and form reflect their riverfront and neighborhood context.
The current designs for SugarHouse and Foxwoods do not meet many of the design standards established in the central Delaware planning process. However, it should be noted that the Philadelphia City Planning Commission worked to incorporate these standards into the city’s casino review process.
Short-Term Recommendation
With the construction of the casinos, traffic is expected to increase in areas that already have persistent congestion problems. Although an independent study of traffic impacts approved by City Council was not completed by the time of the printing of this report, it is clear that the casinos will bring thousands of cars to the riverfront. Our recommendations for traffic mitigation are related to all large-scale development on the riverfront and include the creation of a riverfront-specific traffic and transportation policy that enhances and encourages mass transit, coordinated remote parking, shuttles, water taxis and other forms of traffic dispersion and management. Before long term improvements are made, short-term traffic congestion will worsen. Managing and facilitating this change will require collaboration between city and state agencies.
Long-Term Recommendations
In the longer term, because this civic vision is concerned primarily with providing guidelines for good riverfront development, PennPraxis recommends that the casinos evolve to meet the design standards established through this vision. This is especially critical in future phases of growth to ensure the development of the mixed-use riverfront envisioned in this plan. Because casinos frequently renew their physical plants, future compliance with design guidelines should be a goal and an expectation of the casinos and the city.
Recommendations for future changes include the following:
Reduce or break down the scale of buildings and provide more permeability through the site in accordance with the 420 x 500 foot maximum riverfront parcel size recommended in the design guidelines. On the river’s edge, buildings should not exceed 250 feet in length to ensure pedestrian access and viewsheds to the water.
Provide active frontages to city streets, with buildings meeting the city street line with a variety of retail and commercial uses, stimulating a quality pedestrian-oriented series of sidewalks adjoining the casino development.
Eliminate or reconfigure all exposed parking garages.
Create an active pedestrian realm on Delaware Boulevard. Large driveways should be minimized to enhance walkability.
If adjacent properties are acquired by the casinos, development standards should allow for the creation of city streets separating casinos from new development to allow for access to the river. The casinos should also work to avoid the construction of additional large-scale structures dominated by inactive parking structures and blank-walled buildings.
Encourage and accommodate use of mass transit along the proposed Delaware Boulevard and to and from Center City. This use would be bolstered by the development of remote parking locations served by mass transit as a part of a comprehensive, regional traffic and transportation strategy.
Encourage the use of water-taxi service from both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey sides of the Delaware.
In community benefits agreements, accommodate for infrastructure improvement and long-term mitigation of impacts, and require compliance with the design guidelines established in this civic vision.
Explore city-level ways to leverage the revenue-generating power of the casinos (further explored in Chapter Eight) making the casinos into partners in implementing the goals of the civic vision.
Riverfront Susceptibility to Change
As our look at the planned casino development reveals, the project area faces a drastic transformation from its current state in coming years as private developers reimagine their riverfront land. The project area is composed of a series of post-industrial parcels that are transitioning from their former uses in ways that reflect a changing real-estate market. Here are some factors in the region that we anticipate will lead to significant changes, changes that call for the city’s active guidance based on a comprehensive plan:
The land south of Pier 70 that belongs to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority is available for future port development. Port-related employment is of growing importance in Philadelphia, especially considering Pennsylvania’s proposed investment in port expansion.
The big-box retail center along South Columbus Boulevard is susceptible to change due to the short life spans of these types of buildings. With Foxwoods Casino just to the north, it is easy to imagine that this section could change into a denser district offering varied retail options within ten years.
The holdings of the Penn’s Landing Corporation (PLC) can be changed with approval by its board of directors; the proximity to Center City of these parcels makes them particularly attractive for development or long-term, ground-lease agreements with PLC.
The area from the Ben Franklin Bridge to the PECO Delaware Generating Station will likely change quickly due to strong residential development pressures from downtown, rapidly transforming adjacent neighborhoods such as Northern Liberties and Fishtown and their large number of underutilized parcels. With two Waterfront Square towers already built, SugarHouse Casino and Bridgeman’s View Tower already approved by the city, and fifteen other high-rise proposals in the Northern Liberties and Fishtown stretch of the river alone, this area of the central Delaware riverfront is poised to become a dense, high-rise residential and commercial district.
North of the PECO Delaware Generating Station are 250 acres of underutilized post-industrial land. This area does not have the same market pressures as parts directly to the south, but available parcels have received development interest, particularly due to their proximity to the reconfigured ramps created in the Girard Avenue Interchange rebuild, which is slated for completion in 2013.
The two existing riverfront parks, Penn Treaty Park and Pulaski Park, are neighborhood assets that must be protected and that would benefit from expansion.
