Mayor to choose construction plan for Penn's Landing area

There are many Philadelphians who envision Penn's Landing as the next popular destination, a place where residents and visitors alike will flock for culture and entertainment, business and commerce and a mecca of open space.

And last week, four different companies -- Brandywine Realty Trust, Tower Investments, Penn's Cove Partners of Philadelphia and the Atlantis New York Group -- submitted proposals to the city with the hope of making that plan a reality.

The four plans -- one with a giant price tag of $3 billion -- were received by Mayor John Street's office on Sept. 2 and will be deliberated over in the coming weeks.

"The Penn's Landing board of directors will make the final selection [for the project] along with the Penn's Landing Committee and the City Commerce Department," said Laurie Curtin, Penn's Landing Corporation spokeswoman. The committee as of yet has not issued a date when the decision will be released.

All of the plans include input from Philadelphia residents, who, at a series of forums held last spring, voiced such requests as open public space, accessibility and affordability.

Harris Steinberg, executive director of Penn Praxis in the Graduate School of Design, helped organize the forums last spring. He said that he was extremely satisfied with the results, calling it "a productive civic dialogue."

"All of the developers were asked to include public comment and ideas in their proposals," Street spokeswoman Christine Ottow said. "That will all be a part of the decision-making process."

In addition, all four plans will be available for public review for approximately three weeks, starting today at the Penn's Landing Visitor Center on Columbus Boulevard.

Each developer was required to find the funding to support his or her proposal because the Penn's Landing project will mainly be completed with private money, according to Ottow. But she added that "many [of the plans] will include revenue generating components to help pay for the project."

At this time, Ottow and Curtin do not know which plan has garnered the most public support or internal attention.

"They honestly have not been reviewed at this point," said Curtin. "They are very in-depth proposals.... We will not be making any comments about them."

The proposals vary in magnitude and composition, including amenities such as theaters, water parks, ice skating rinks, residential, retail and office space, restaurants and parks.

Marilyn Storck, marketing director for Penn's Cove Partners, said that the company's water-themed proposal would "marry the water to the land," and their decision to substitute increased public space for office and residential buildings would lead to a "more fun kind of atmosphere."

In contrast, the Atlantis New York Group proposed an elaborate $3 billion plan for the area, which includes building over I-95 and Columbus Boulevard, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

This plan would allow for two theaters and 20 movie screens, as well as apartments, townhouses, a science center with pictures beamed in from the Hubble Space Telescope, a virtual reality "aquasphere," volcanic light shows and waterfalls. Despite the plan's huge price tag, representatives from the Atlantis New York Group claim that it is both financially and logistically feasible and could be completed by 2008.

Steinberg called the plan "extremely ambitious." His "initial take before studying it is that it would be doomed to the same fate as the others."

He explained that in the past 40 years, 11 plans have failed due to their large size. However, he noted that "there are some intriguing aspects of it."

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