It may be possible to make a city environmentally and civically friendly with two big casinos on the riverfront, according to a recent analysis by Penn Praxis.
After Penn Praxis Executive Director Harris Steinberg declared that the waterfront may not be a good location for the planned Foxwoods and SugarHouse casinos, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter asked Penn Praxis to analyze the current casino plans.
Penn Praxis examined the two plans to see if they complied with its civic vision, created for the Central Delaware Waterfront between Oct. 2006 and Nov. 2007, Steinberg said.
The goals of the civic vision include extending the street grid of Philadelphia, managing storm water, filtering pollutants and providing alternative transportation.
According to Steinberg, after Penn Praxis determined that the casinos' plans were not in agreement with the civic vision, they hired five experts to come up with a plan reconfiguring the casinos with the cooperation of city, state and casino. This redesign would involve reduced parking spaces, a breakdown of the mass of the buildings to allow more public access to the river, the allotment 30-percent of the area to open space, installation of green roofs and accommodation of mass transportation.
Kim Magill, of 5+ Design in Hollywood, CA., combined the input of all the experts and drew Penn Praxis' plans for the redesign of the area.
The casinos' plans for the Waterfront are part of a "larger city plan that is not suburban in nature," Steinberg said. "Cities are synergies of the other sites around them."
The current plans, he explained, were designed in a "vacuum" because they did not reflect this synergy.
"We want the Waterfront not to be dominated by the automobile," he added.
In a speech about the Waterfront two weeks ago, Nutter announced he would accept parts of Penn Praxis' civic vision and ask the city planning commission to devise a master plan for the waterfront, according to Terry Gillen, a senior adviser for the mayor.
"Mayor Nutter wants to reinvigorate and develop the Waterfront in a way that maintains the city's focus on good design," Gillen said.
She added that the casinos did not attend the meeting Nutter held about the Waterfront last week.
Penn Praxis will submit its proposal to Nutter on Friday, and Nutter plans to meet with Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, other political figures and casino officials later this month.
Gillen said that Nutter's office is "looking forward" to seeing Penn Praxis' designs.
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