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It looks like the powers that be in Fairmount Park have been cruising the internet for market research, finally addressing some of the obstacles that keep the Schuylkill River's wild success from spilling over into Fairmount Park's Lemon Hill and Strawberry Mansion.
However they've consulted PennPraxis, Philadelphia's captain of the Master Plan Pipe Dream. PennPraxis does what it does well. But they're visionary designers sought for ideas, not business minded developers. When ideas are sourced from PennPraxis they prepare a vision as if they control the available (and sometimes unavailable) land with unlimited funds, ignoring financial realities.
Were money no object, some good ideas have been addressed. The primary focus seems to be connecting the river to the park space east of Kelly Drive. The plan proposes a crosswalk at Strawberry Mansion, enhancing pedestrian quality and slowing Kelly Drive's notoriously fast traffic. But Strawberry Mansion doesn't host Kelly Drive's heaviest swell of pedestrians, many of whom walk the Schuylkill from Boathouse Row to Girard Avenue and turn around.
Girard Avenue's missing piece seems insignificant given PennPraxis's grand proposal of a new, public boathouse, small boat rentals, and new gardens. Girard Avenue may have been ignored because the east side of Kelly Drive at Girard tends to get very urban very quickly. But a Girard Avenue crosswalk would do more than just control traffic and provide a safe passage for residents and recreationalists. It would provide visitors with a sidewalk to the Philadelphia Zoo and Centennial Park, and offer those who turnaround at the rock a loop back to Boathouse Row over Lemon Hill.
PennPraxis's sprawling ambition in Fairmount Park is indicative of many oversized attempts to produce a cohesive master plan. Echoing numerous attempts to redesign Penn's Landing, these ideas ignore space that currently succeeds. Neglecting the space's current assets such as Lloyd Hall and the Philadelphia Police Department's boathouse upstream, PennPraxis suggests building an additional public boathouse rather than improving or expanding those that already exist.
Perhaps the most shortsighted element in the design is its overall approach, which spreads down from Strawberry Mansion from areas less traveled, rather than branching out from trails that already succeed. Essentially the plan gambles on its own success. Field of Dreams was more than just Kevin Costner's last great movie. It was a lesson. In the end, he lost his farm. If new crosswalks further north see limited use, it risks our chances of ever seeing new crosswalks at more practical locations.
A map of the master plan remains to be seen, but if it is as integrated as the latest proposal for Penn's Landing it could stall in a stream of blind ambition. Cohesive plans look great on paper but can rarely be executed without bottomless funding, not solely because they're so large, but because the integrated pieces can't work alone.
You don't have to think small to think smart. But you do have to think outward, consider financial realities, and with the agility for a master plan's individual components to evolve in the process. Link the park space where it's most used. Connect recreationalists to profit points like the Philadelphia Zoo and Memorial Hall. Consider variables that will prove the master plan is a viable one so that future funding presents itself when necessary.
While many will be celebrating Easter with their families this weekend, I'll be spending Earth Day with my secular parents, the free spirited hippies that brought me into the world in a 1970s farming commune. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, a little bit. Still, I was raised on campgrounds and hiking trails. I could swim in a river before I could walk, and to this day grow my own vegetables on the small sidewalk in front of my house.
Needless to say, sometimes I get a little frustrated living in the concrete corridor of the Northeast. Here, AstroTurf passes for grass and faded silk flowers adorn window boxes. I find myself chatting with the Amish at Reading Terminal Market just for a little piece of home.
Of course Philadelphia is no stranger to the outdoors. Fairmount Park is one of the biggest urban park systems in the nation and community gardens have become the answer to vacant lots in some of our most blighted neighborhoods. But newly planted trees around Callowhill are stamped with a stencil on the sidewalk stating, "THIS IS A TREE." Obviously, in Philadelphia some people need to be reminded.
Last weekend, walking just a few blocks from my house, the Center City hotels were prepping for spring. That's great. How they prep is not. Loew's Hotel was replacing their seasonal creeping juniper with spring pansies. Wonderful. Beautiful. Except the juniper ended up in the trash. Even worse, along the small plaza at 12th and Filbert, five year old trees were topped, ready to be cut down and replaced with saplings.
Of course seasoned Philadelphians will claim that has something to do with underground plumbing or electricity, which is why they send their teenage sociopaths to the streets of Fishtown and Pennsport with box cutters to kill newly planted trees. But the city's underground is as mysterious to them as it is to those who maintain it.
Plus, there are ways to control the root structure of newly planted trees so that they can easily be moved when they get too big, relocated as Fairmount Park infill or along the Delaware or Schuylkill where they can mature. Sure, this may all sound like the idealistic ramblings of a tree hugger, but the new trees aren't cheap and those chopped down are even more valuable. Whether any of these plants - trees or shrubs - are being disposed of by a private hotel, office complex, or government facility, our cash strapped parks department spends thousands of dollars planting the same trees and shrubs that these organizations are trashing.
This isn't a soapbox without a point. The city's Parks Department could establish some kind of Green-Swap program, using volunteers to gather discarded plants and trees, and then replanting them in parts of the city more conducive to long term growth.
It doesn't have to end there. The city's park system is vast, with acres of unused or underused space, particularly fields. The city could use parkland to grow trees from seeds. A maple tree takes only two or three years to reach the height of those being planted around offices and hotels.
Once those plants mature or become unseasonable, the Parks Department could retrieve the tree or shrub and replace them with our locally grown saplings. While there are plenty of willing volunteers who'd jump at the opportunity to get their hands dirty, it also creates a unique experience for the city's public schools.
The government may be shut down, but Philadelphia sure isn't. Honestly, take a look at the list of attractions that are open and the ones that aren't. Which ones would you recommend?
Aside from Valley Forge, the list of shuttered attractions looks like an insider's guide on where not to go.
The National Constitution Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Barnes Foundation, all open. The Mutter Museum is so open it's not even on the list. The Franklin Institute, the zoo, the Betsy Ross House, Atwater Kent, open. Fairmount Park? Yep, it's a city park, with over a dozen house museums and the historic site of the Centennial Exposition, all open. The Schuylkill Banks are open. Penn Treaty Park is open. Franklin Square is open.
Sorry, the Declaration House and the Second Bank of the United States are closed. Did you know they were ever open on idle Wednesday? Do you even know where they are?
Okay, maybe, but I've never been inside.
While you might not be able to grab a $3 cup of coffee at our multimillion dollar brochure kiosk otherwise known as the Independence Visitor Center, were it not for a few barricades and security guards, you might mistake Philadelphia's participation in the shutdown for a Sunday afternoon.
In fact, it would benefit Philadelphia's tourism industry to start advertising itself as such, especially if the shutdown lasts much longer.
With major destinations like the Statue of Liberty and the White House closed for the duration of this Congressional hissy fit, Philadelphia's closed Liberty Bell Pavilion pales in comparison to the Barnes Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, each with collections that the National Gallery can't rival.
City Hall is open and its tower is just two meters shorter than the Washington Monument. Did you know that? Probably not because William Penn's phallus is surrounded by a sea of skyscrapers that puts the view from Good Old George's obelisk to shame.
If the shutdown continues as long as the nation's last, Philadelphia could find itself more than a brief diversion from DC or NYC, but an entire alternative. Visit Philly should seize this opportunity to plaster DC's Metro and the New York City subway with posters reading "Philadelphia: Still Open."
With more outdoor artwork than any city in the world (I dare you to argue), this is a prime opportunity to point visitors to a Philadelphia that is more than just dusty stacks of Colonial history, telling a shutdown America that Philadelphia's abundance of city parks and museums are open, maybe even encouraging tourists to stick around long enough to see private attractions like Penn's Anthropology Museum, Reading Terminal Market, and Boathouse Row, attractions a cranky federal government can't touch.
