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Core Realty's Michael Samschick was trying to put two new apartment buildings on North Delaware Avenue near Fishtown, 136 feet and 78 feet tall. Last night the Fishtown Neighbors Association vetoed the project.
When it comes to NIMBYs, Fishtown can be brutal. Delaware Avenue's wide berth begs for large development and its proximity to the river is screaming for towering views. Sure, I'm bias. This is, after all, an architecture blog. But the FNA holds bias too, and an unreasonable one on Delaware Avenue. Let's face it, Delaware Avenue is Fishtown's residential border, not its heart. The iron fist of the FNA is only allowed to oversee Delaware Avenue's vacant lots and blighted abandonment because few actually live there.
With the exception of Penn Treaty Park, diagonally across from Samschick's proposed apartment buildings, the few projects that have managed to rise pale in comparison to Core Realty's pedestrian friendly plan. Waterfront Square stands fortressed from the Avenue and SugarHouse Casino's empty hotel and entertainment promises have given Fishtown more asphalt than any reason to stroll north of Old City.
One sentiment during FNA's vote echoes exactly why the loudest in Fishtown keep getting dealt the shittiest hand, "We really don’t need more people...Sorry, we just don’t need you." That attitude hasn't treated Bucks County very well so it's certainly not going to fly in a densely populated neighborhood in one of the United States' largest cities.
Core Realty's apartment buildings would have offered retail space that could provide cafes and restaurants for those playing in Penn Treaty Park. It's height could have encouraged pedestrians to endure SugarHouse and Waterfront Square, walking a few more blocks to explore a neighborhood they know little about.
But therein lies the problem in the FNA's isolationist attitude. To the FNA, Penn Treaty Park is Fishtown's private reserve. And that's unfortunate because change will come. Core Realty is a local development firm. It's not only easy to muscle out of a neighborhood, it has a local reputation to uphold, and that means accommodating even unreasonable demands. But that won't stop North Delaware Avenue from being developed.
Height restrictions and a general attitude towards "outsiders" means only big money will win. Eventually vacant lots adjacent to Fishtown will become too valuable for practical, scaled development, and that means Acme, CVS, and suburban creature comforts. But maybe that's what the FNA wants. After all, nothing turns off the New Philadelphians eager to wander into new neighborhoods and parks like surface parking lots lining high speed traffic corridors.
Like residents of any neighborhood who recognize they are one piece of a bigger picture, NIMBYs like the FNA need to understand that Fishtown is part of a collective Philadelphia. Penn Treaty Park is a wonderful asset, bankrolled by City Hall.
If Fishtown doesn't want Samschick's apartment buildings, I cordially invite him to build them in my backyard along the Vine Street Expressway.
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| Photo: Bradley Maule |
Tonight at seven the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation along with Alan Greenberger and PennDesign unveiled the next generation for Penn's Landing. Let's call it Penn's Landing 2.0. Or should we call it 40.0?
Can we really call it the "next generation" when the current planning phase has easily circled two?
Pardon me if I haven't soiled my pants in anticipation of Hargraves and Associates most recently commissioned wet dream of a re-envisioned Penn's Landing, but those in charge have been holding their annual circle jerk for the last forty years.
The renderings look great. They always do. They have for the past four decades.
But why is this any different?
It isn't.
Until the plans for Penn's Landing involve destination attractions that can offset pricy parks and interstate caps, the city and state will never approve the funds to improve its relationship with Center City.
Philadelphians and tourists willingly walk the Ben Franklin Bridge and ferry to Camden every day. The reason is exclusively in its destination attractions. Until Philadelphia can match that, Penn's Landing will remain what it is.
PlanPhilly just reported that engineering will soon begin on a new eight acre park capping I-95 and extending to the waterfront, and the rendering looks pretty fantastic.
Unfortunately, the headline is a bit of a misnomer, and the rendering a bit misleading. By "engineering," the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation will be performing a $400,000 study to determine a master plan and to begin discussions with private developers.
Sound familiar? That's because it is.
The DRWC has been engaged in multiple studies in the ten short years I've lived here. In fact the city has been trying to solve the Delaware River debacle ever since it cut it off from the city in the 1970's.
A quick Google search brings up countless "Master Plans" and fantastically grand renderings of a new Penn's Landing brimming with condos, amusement parks, museums, even an aerial tram carrying Philadelphians across the river to Camden's waterfront, which inexplicably remains more successful than ours.
Why the DRWC continues to tease Philadelphians with these master plans and exciting proposals (if they can even be called that) is a mystery to me. Part of me wonders if the powers that be at the DRWC want to see how long they can keep getting paid to push paper.
After all, any amateur architecture nerd with a laptop and Photoshop can put together a lavish rendering of a new and lively Penn's Landing. That gets passed around the local blog circuit, excites and pisses off neighbors, while those employed by the DRWC get paid to watch the show. A few months later, the DRWC passes off a new "engineering" effort to PlanPhilly and spends the next year working on the next master plan.
Thirty years later, we still aren't asking why?
We've managed to put tens of thousands of recreationalists on the Schuylkill River in the last decade, and while it's a much smaller river with fewer logistical obstacles, the city has been actively struggling with Penn's Landing much longer. In fact, given Philadelphia's historic reputation for pipe dreams, the successful changes on the Schuylkill River are mind boggling.
Part of that success might be in the piece meal approach taken on the Schuylkill River. Instead of an overall master plan requiring billions of dollars and speculative investment, Boathouse Row, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Waterworks, the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, the Friends of the Schuylkill Banks, and the Schuylkill River Trail are all working on smaller, individual projects and seamlessly wove them together into an organic and unintentional master plan that no CAD hack ever saw coming.
It's true that those investing in the Schuylkill River are working with existing assets that the Delaware River lacks, but that doesn't change the fact that the approach that's failed the Delaware River for the past thirty years still doesn't work.
In fact that lack of assets is what the DRWC needs to target, not tax funded improvements to a burden no one wants to walk to. Pedestrianization and interstate caps are great, but they're supplementary improvements at best.
Parks are rarely destination attractions. The Schuylkill River's proximity to Center City and the PMA serves as its own destination attraction while the Delaware River sits isolated and sparsely populated. We need to bring Center City's built environment to the Delaware River, not just its sidewalks.
Without new residents and shoppers on Delaware Avenue, any master plan is only going to inhibit the organic creativity on the part of developers and architects who have a shot at bringing those people to the water.
When the freezing rain is falling and the winter wind is blowing it's hard not to trail off during the 3PM lull dreaming about weekend road trips to the beach. Whether or not the Jersey Shore is your thing, it's hard to deny it's convenient. But what if we had a beach even closer?
In a way we do. New Jersey is dotted with wildlife preserves and sandy beaches along the Delaware River, but they're almost as far as Wildwood.
New York City is nothing if not surprising. Everyone knows about Coney Island, but I had no idea that New York was home to fourteen miles of sandy beaches, all easily accessible by public transportation. The banks of Philadelphia's untouched Delaware River could potentially offer the same, only without the trek to the outer boroughs. The swampy marshes of Northern Liberties, Fishtown, and the Northeast have been littered with trash for so long that the garbage has become the source of archaeological digs.
The city has done a surprisingly fine job with its bike trails and nature preserves along the river, in Center City and beyond. In some instances it is so surprising that no one knows they exist. Did you know there's a beautiful trail that runs from Washington Avenue to Wal Mart?
What if these trails were littered with sandy oases instead of trash? The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation continuously releases dazzling renderings of a new Philadelphia waterfront, lined with parks and condos. But once the excitement of what could be wears off, we're left with the realization that we're aiming too high.
I'm not saying we should join the Negadelphian choir of negative Nancies, but how about giving us something we can work with? Instead of showing us what Penn's Landing would look like with a capped interstate and a tree lined boulevard lined with condos that require private investment, tell us about the trails we already have and the wetlands aching for a Sunday photography tour.
Sure, I love hidden treasures, but I get tired of telling people that "Philadelphia isn't as bad as Philadelphian's say it is," you just have to look. Add some sandy beaches around Sugar House Casino and get the Fishtown hipsters who protested its existence to the shores they were fighting for.
Had it been built, today's economy would have probably left it a ghost town, but what a beautiful ghost town it would have been. It's a shame that of all the grand proposals for Northern Liberties' waterfront area, neighbors managed to NIMBY away all but the most poorly designed of the various proposals. And even in the case of these two, opposition fought so hard against an inevitable casino that they wound up with a suburban warehouse instead of a well designed tower with a landscaped marina.
In a time of optimistic real estate gambling, the post industrial wasteland that is Delaware Avenue was to be the site of a new, and concentrated business, residential, and entertainment district. With skyscrapers rivaling Center City's, the redevelopment of this concrete jungle of vacant lots, rotting warehouses, and abandoned cars promised that Northern Liberties could be more than a hipster's wet dream of ironic blight.
Bridgeman's View
Oh, how times change. While just a few years ago, one could envision such a scenario being today's reality, sadly, Delaware Avenue remains a blighted artery, and home to the homeless.
Sugarhouse Casino
Sugarhouse Casino draws a crowd but pays no respect to its surroundings. Like a pig in a prom dress, a large warehouse has been dressed up with a plastic facade. With development tied up in town meetings and neighborhood opposition for over a year, dwindling resources and a sagging economy eliminated a hotel component that redefined the area's skyline and balanced Waterfront Square's jarring presence.
Trump Tower
While it may have turned into a ghost town, it would have created a badly needed, urban infrastructure in a suffering part of town, one that could save this area from the same mistakes made in South Philadelphia in which a similar landscape was redeveloped into an asphalt oasis of suburban shopping.
Given the current economy and the present state of the neighborhood, it's unlikely this stretch of Delaware Avenue will be thrown any developmental optimism again. If this NIMBY has the foresight it likes to claim, right now they are seeing strip malls and fast food drive-ins.
