Some day soon, city residents taking a stroll along the Delaware River won't be confronted with abandoned, burned-out factories, but with urban parks surrounded by restaurants, rowhomes and shopping instead.
At least, that's the plan put forward yesterday by Penn Praxis.
Praxis, the consulting arm of the Penn School of Design, released a set of preliminary recommendations at a community meeting yesterday to redevelop the face of the Delaware.
Especially important as city officials try to integrate two new casinos slated to be built in the area, the plan aims to reconnect the rest of the city with 7 miles along the waterfront.
When finished, it will allow Philadelphians access to a river that's currently blocked off by major highways and an industrial wasteland of abandoned buildings.
The plan involves extending existing roads across the barrier created by Interstate 95. It also promotes higher density development by limiting the ability of developers to construct buildings surrounded by parking lots that would otherwise only eat up space, said Praxis Executive Director Harris Steinberg.
Threaded along the new streetscape would be three acres of new greenspace - Praxis hopes to have a public park every 200 feet.
Paul Levy, president and CEO of the Center City District, also announced plans yesterday for a biking and jogging trail along the southern edge of the waterfront that could be completed in three to five months.
The CCD is in negotiations with several developers who own parcels of land along the river to allow access to a two-mile-long trail that would begin in the parking lot near Home Depot in South Philadelphia and continue north, terminating on the Camden waterfront by crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge.
The trail would also have two facilities from which people could rent bikes and roller-skates.
While cautioning that developers still have to give final approval to the project, he cited similar efforts in New York, Stockholm and Vancouver that allowed immediate waterfront recreation to build support for a larger development effort.
Though the response from participants in the meeting - many of whom represented neighborhood associations and other interest groups - was positive, representatives of area developers protested that their input was ignored.
Craig Schelter, a former head of the city Planning Commission, told current head Janice Woodcock that the city was making "a real mistake" in ignoring the development community.
"We believe that the [plan] is fundamentally flawed due to its lack of specificity and failure to consider the economic realities at stake," stated a letter Schelter's group presented to Woodcock.
Steinberg, however, called the complaints a public-relations ploy by developers to stop progress along the waterfront.
"They've been engaged almost from day one," he said.
Praxis will be releasing its final report in November, and the matter will then be taken up by City Council.
