U. reveals location of remaining food plazas

Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell said the site near Meyerson Hall and Franklin Field may change. After months of searching for two noncontroversial locations, University officials said yesterday that one of the two remaining fresh air food plazas will be built by Franklin Field at 33rd and South streets, blocks away from the busy Walnut Street corridor where many vendors currently operate. The other plaza will be built behind Meyerson Hall near 34th and Walnut streets, as Penn officials had previously indicated. Although Penn officials say the announcement means that locations for all five plazas have been finalized, City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell -- who represents West Philadelphia -- said yesterday that there might still be "one or two changes" in the actual locations of the plazas. University officials were not immediately available for comment on Blackwell's remarks. In the wake of a proposed City Council ordinance that would ban vendors from most of the streets and sidewalks in the area, many students, faculty and employees said they hoped Penn would allow vendors to continue operating in a plaza in the busy area along Walnut Street between 34th and 37th streets. Penn is building five food plazas on its property so the displaced vendors will have a place to operate away from the campus' busy thoroughfares. The plazas are separate from the proposed ordinance. Vendors and consumers have been vocal in expressing concerns about the proposed locations of the food plazas. Administrators canceled plans for proposed plazas near Van Pelt Library and Bennett Hall in February after protests from people who work in those buildings. Jason Eisner, a member of the Penn Consumer Alliance -- one of the ad hoc groups formed last summer after Penn proposed its initial ordinance -- said he was "shocked" at the new locations because they do not provide for adequate vending on Walnut Street. "The point of the two plazas that were eliminated was to provide for truck vending on Walnut Street," Eisner said. "The administration still has not come through on that promise." Three other plazas are scheduled to be built: between the Gimbel Gymnasium and the parking garage on the 3700 block of Walnut Street; at 34th and Spruce streets next to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; and on 40th Street between Locust and Walnut streets. The HUP plaza is roughly across the street from the Weightman Hall plaza. The contract to build the 40th Street food plaza has been awarded to Syma Construction, and construction on it will begin within the next few weeks, according to Jack Shannon, the University's top economic development official. Since announcing that they were abandoning plans for the two food plazas at 34th and Walnut in the face of faculty and staff protests on February 12, University officials have spent time trying to find two other locations. University officials explored placing a plaza next to Hill House, but decided against it when they met with strong opposition from the residents of that dorm. Shannon said that the two new sites would not face the same problems the other locations did. He said that he had "personally spoken with the administrations in the buildings" next to the potential sites and had involved them in the planning process to avoid potential protests. The plazas will provide outdoor seating for customers, as well as electrical hook-ups, sewage, water lines and improved lighting for vendors at the cost of $1 per month. The Meyerson Hall plaza will house four vending carts. As part of construction for that plaza, the trash bins currently at that location will be repositioned and a "more appropriate front door presence for the building will be constructed," according to Shannon. The other plaza, which will be constructed on the parking lot at 33rd and South streets next to Weightman Hall, will hold five vending trucks and five vending carts. As part of the plaza, "a landscaped environment" will be constructed and sufficient parking will be maintained, Shannon said. Eisner said the main problems with the new sites is the number of vendors that will be housed at the new locations is far fewer than at the two originally proposed sites. "The two plazas these would replace would have a total of 17 [vendors], of which 11 would have been trucks, but the news ones have 14 vendors with only 5 trucks," Eisner said. But Shannon said the new plans fulfill the University's original promise of constructing five plazas that will hold a total of 45 vendors. Construction on the plaza on 40th street will begin in April and take four to six weeks, Shannon said. University officials will now begin soliciting bids for the four other locations, according to Shannon. All five food plazas will be ready by September, Shannon said. The University moved ahead with plans for the 40th Street plaza before the others because it wanted to demonstrate "good faith" to the community, Shannon said. But the ordinance, if passed, is scheduled to go into effect on April 30, four months before four of the food plazas will be completed. Hearings have not been scheduled yet but are expected to take place in April. Shannon said he expects Blackwell to "make reasonable provisions to smooth the transition between the passage of the ordinance and the completion of the food plazas." But yesterday, Blackwell indicated that she felt no special measures needed to be taken during the transition period. "Everybody should still be able to work until the plazas open," Blackwell said. According to Blackwell, the ordinance will provide for 101 on-street vending spots in designated areas. That, she said, will be more than sufficient for the 98 vendors currently on campus -- even before all 45 food plaza spots are open in September. Also, Blackwell said the final locations in which vending will be permitted under the ordinance are far from settled. "In terms of the map [of vending locations] that exists, I think that there are going to be some changes," she said. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Binyamin Appelbaum contributed to this article.

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