Designing a New Delaware Riverfront

February 19, 2009

Port Richmond's Pulaski Park has seen better days.

The waterfront park - named for a Polish military commander and American Revolutionary War hero - is tarnished with graffiti, its sole bench charred beyond use.

To say Pulaski Park is neglected would be an understatement.

Located at Delaware and Allegheny avenues, Pulaski's small strip of grass is littered with discarded newspapers, food wrappers and other trash, and the soft, droning, mechanical hum of nearby industrial plants fills the air.

It even seems as though the inaccessible parking lot is larger than the park itself.

This half-acre strip, stretching eastward like an obstructed football field, is the only place in the neighborhood where locals can get to the mighty Delaware River - once the lifeblood of the formerly booming port town.

But access is all the park can provide. Vandals have burned Pulaski's single bench - two charred legs and a damaged wooden slat are all that remain.

While the river view and open breeze might otherwise make for an appealing place to recline, the racist graffiti that mars the park - swastikas and white-supremacist drivel - makes Pulaski Park a truly uncomfortable place to relax.

This grim scene, though, might be considered a highlight of Philadelphia's Delaware River waterfront. After all, along with Penn Treaty Park, Pulaski is a spot where riverward residents can legally set eyes on the Delaware along the miles-long stretch between Northern Liberties and Bridesburg.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

How is it that the once-great waterfront that Ben Franklin set his eyes upon when he arrived in Philadelphia - with little more than two loaves of bread and the shirt on his back - is now little more than miles of industrial wasteland separated by massive vacant lots and ill-maintained and vandalized public parks?

More important, what can be done to improve it?

The question is being addressed on a number of fronts. Last year, PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered an "Action Plan" for the Delaware riverfront that established a variety of improvements that could drastically change the riverfront from Pulaski Park all the way south to Oregon Avenue.

Last month, to help push the plan into effect, Mayor Michael Nutter disbanded the lame-duck Penn's Landing Corp. and established the new Delaware River Waterfront Corp. This new group, unlike the previous one, will hold regular meetings and is open to public oversight and input.

The area under the new group's domain has been expanded from Penn's Landing to include the seven miles of riverfront outlined in the PennPraxis plan.

In addition to a discussion of these changes, the question of how to improve the waterfront was on the agenda during a recent meeting of the Mayor's Institute on City Design.

MICD, a coalition of political officials, business leaders and other academics, is a national organization focused on improving development and planning for American cities.

The group held a symposium Feb. 12-14 in Philadelphia, with a prior kickoff event on Feb. 11.

During that kickoff discussion, Philadelphia officials met with others from MICD to discuss how the federal government can support American cities like Philadelphia.

Last year, the United States Conference of Mayors compiled a list of "shovel-ready" projects - those set for the start of construction - that need federal investment to put those shovels in action.

The list included the waterfront project, with Mayor Nutter suggesting that the federal government would need to provide $25 million for the project, which would create 278 jobs.

PUT THEIR HEADS TOGETHER

During the recent kickoff event at the Academy of Natural Sciences on the Ben Franklin Parkway, panelists discussed how this project - and other city improvements - could be made a reality if certain steps were taken.

"We are at a crisis in the nation's economy and in the world economy, but we are also at a time of great opportunity," said Marilyn Jordan Taylor, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design, at the start of the program. "To truly make transformative choices, we need to look not just at shovel-ready or better than shovel-ready projects, but we need to think about the role of design in the future of cities."

During the meeting, Susan Wachter, professor of real estate for the Wharton School and the co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research, questioned a board of experienced panelists on various aspects of city planning and the many opportunities to revitalize Philadelphia.

The board was composed of Maurice Cox, former mayor of Charlottesville, Va., and director of design at the National Endowment of the Arts; Larry Scarpa, a Los Angeles architect; Dan Pitera, director of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center; and Alan Greenberger, executive director of the Philadelphia Planning Commission.

The panelists gave short presentations on what each saw as problems facing Philadelphia city planning. They also described ways that the city could improve as a green, livable urban environment.

While each presentation was insightful, Greenberger's seemed to have the largest impact on the crowd.

In contrast to the multi-slide presentations that preceded his speech, Greenberger presented just a single slide during his talk.

But it was a powerful image.

It was a color-coded map of Philadelphia. Small, red sections designated residential areas and yellow areas showed commercial zones, but across much of the picture, large patches of gray had particular prominence.

They represented the 9,000 acres of industrially zoned land that overtake the city, including much of the Delaware River waterfront.

A STARTLING VISION

"When I saw this, I almost fell out of my chair," said Greenberger, whose map equated Philadelphia's industrial zones to the total acreage of the city's Fairmount Park system.

"It wasn't long ago that (Philadelphia) was thought of as the workshop of the world," he said of the city's industrial stature.

Within the past 50 years, he said, that distinction has worn off, leaving an abundance of vacant industrial sites throughout the city. The real concern, as he sees it, is that these vacant industrial areas choke off residential access to the river.

"We have thirty-eight miles of rivers," he said. "Most cities would kill for thirty-eight miles of rivers, but we live apart from them."

He said the "industrial carcasses" left from the city's industrial age "split Philadelphia in half, and it's tough to live around them."

Remedying the problem of industrial land that thwarts public use of the waterfront could take "more than fifty years of work," Greenberger said. Just the same, panelists at the meeting tossed around ideas to tackle the problem.

Before anything can be done, said Taylor, funds are needed to help rezone and restructure the waterfront, but that money is in short supply.

"Where is the money?" she asked. "There is certainly not any at the local level."

In his recommendation, Charlottesville's Cox praised the PennPraxis Action Plan for the central Delaware riverfront as steps in the right direction.

"Ultimately, in order to determine a pattern that will come out the way you want it, you need to set up a vision," he said. "And you need to reward those who subscribe to it."

Once funding is secured, he said, perhaps developers who build green, energy-efficient buildings or add amenities to their waterfront projects could receive tax credits from the city or from the federal government as a way to spur developments that follow the action plan.

HIT THE GOVERNMENT FOR $$$

Cox also suggested requesting federal block grants - large grants from the government that City Hall would distribute as needed - and establishing stipulations that would require any eligible developer or project to follow specific requirements outlined in a document like the action plan.

But Greenberger suggested even that may not be sufficient. Before desirable projects can be placed along the waterfront, he said, changes need to be made to the city's zoning code - a tricky task, to say the least.

"Zoning in Philadelphia is a serious full-contact sport," Greenberger complained when asked how changes could be made in the city code to address concerns about the swath of industrial zoning across the landscape.

"Logic and reason have long departed the scene," he said of the zoning code.

However, even if the code cannot be changed immediately, Greenberger added, the city could still create sustainable buildings and green urban landscapes. Like many large urban areas, Philadelphia is "ahead of the sustainability curve" because he believes the city could - with a good amount of effort - make rowhomes into more environmentally friendly structures.

"If we figure out how to cheaply make existing rowhomes greener and more sustainable," he said, "we could have the most sustainable homes in the world."

Greenberger called for the federal government to provide more support for large cities. Instead of providing so much funding to create greener city suburbs, government dollars could be used to make urban areas flourish, he said.

"I feel like the federal government is the great and distant Oz," Greenberger said. "There has to be a shift in the way the federal government thinks of cities. They look at cities as problems, and we do have problems, but we are also generators of jobs and wealth."

Cox agreed. He said cities are more green and sustainable than most suburbs because of urban amenities like public transportation and dense housing that saves heat. That is more environmentally friendly when compared to suburban areas populated by single homes that waste heat and also residents who often waste gas to drive farther for work or leisure, Cox said.

THE TASK WON'T BE EASY

At the conclusion of the meeting, Greenberger spoke with the Star about the challenges he sees facing the implementation of the PennPraxis Action Plan.

First and foremost, he said, is that much of the land that would be used to transform industrial zones and revitalize the waterfront is owned by a multitude of private investors. Getting them to agree on one unified plan for the future, he believes, might be difficult.

"I think a lot of landowners would like to have a project that they could rally around," said the head of the city planning commission. "But it's all too political. It gets all wrapped up in personalities. People say things like, 'I like the project but I don't like that guy.'"

Even if each owner of waterfront land agreed to develop the Action Plan, a return on an owner's investment might not be that high, he added.

The urban planner said it could take so long to develop the waterfront that any gain on investment might take too long to come to fruition, making landowners hesitant to participate in the project.

"When communities keep on demanding additional amenities, that thins the margin even more," he said. "It's a very risky business."

But with President Obama's stimulus package in the mix and the potential to gain federal funding for urban improvement projects, Greenberger thinks anything is possible.

If funds indeed are granted through the stimulus package, the money will be used mostly to help complete viable projects that currently form a backlog on the city's agenda, he said.

This means some projects that have awaited funding could begin, but a complicated, multi-million-dollar project - like the work it would take to fulfill the PennPraxis riverfront Action Plan - may have to wait a while longer.

"I think the stimulus package will help clear the decks so we can get moving on those newer projects," Greenberger said. "It will definitely help Philadelphia, but really, it's just going to clear the decks of all that older stuff." ¥¥

Reporter Hayden Mitman can be reached at 215-354-3124 or hmitman@phillynews.com