Camden's Skyview Tower

As the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation looks ahead to a reborn Penn's Landing, its latest proposal is still devoid of that signature destination attraction: an aquarium, music pavilion, sports arena, an observation deck. Well Camden has most of that, and may soon have it all.

It's easy to say the best thing about Camden is the view, but it has a regional monopoly on waterfront attractions. Herschend Family Entertainment will be working with the U.K.'s Skyview Company to privately fund the 300 foot Skyview Tower just south of the New Jersey State Aquarium.

Those docking on the Riverlink at the east bank of the Delaware will be greeted by three tall pillars circled in metallic hoops surrounding a glass pod carrying thirty visitors to the top. At night it will be illuminated in various colors providing Camden with an iconic skyline viewed from Penn's Landing.

It's as exciting for Philadelphia as it is for our neighbor across the river.

Many cities have erected copycat observation towers, some better than others. Toronto's CN Tower borrows heavily from the original Space Needle in Seattle but succeeds. Other Space Needle lookalikes in Vancouver and Crystal City, VA fall flat atop larger buildings. Maryland recently opened its large Ferris wheel on National Harbor emulating but not rivaling London's iconic Eye. And Knoxville once though, "hey, instead of a Space Needle, what if we capped it with a gold disco ball?" Its Sun Sphere defines its Kentucky skyline, but sadly as the butt of a Simpsons joke.

Camden's Skyview Tower will be as unique as it gets. Its illuminated columns will reflect Center City's own colorful, nighttime palette while its futuristic pod may evoke images from Bladerunner or The Fifth Element.

One Water Street

Penn's Landing may soon be home to 250 new apartments.

Varenhorst's new tower, One Water Street, won't be part of the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation's master plan which calls for similar, albeit shorter, development on Penn's Landing.

The new building would stand just north of the Ben Franklin Bridge at 230 N. Columbus Blvd.

Penn's Landing: If We Build it Will They Come?

A new study by the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation has shown that a $250M investment in an overhauled Penn's Landing could generate $1.8B in economic growth.

But hold your horses.

Executing the DRWC's latest master plan could take five to seven years. And the private development, which is entirely speculative, could take at least thirty five years.

This is why I tend to hit the snooze button when I read the words "master plan." Wake me up when I'm 72 and prove me wrong, but I'll probably be in Miami so I can't promise I'll care.

In all seriousness, and in all fairness to those at the DRWC, they've finally addressed one of the fatal flaws in their piss poor project management skills: they're thinking dynamically. They've noted that the existing framework will be a desirable asset to potential developers. They've wrangled a way to get the transportation budget to cover part of the bill.

But they aren't quite there yet.

Any master plan is a potential boondoggle. The $250M price tag could easily double in five to seven years, and five to seven years could turn into ten or fifteen. The plan, stunning as it is, is massive. The park itself covers the equivalent of two city blocks. Grass sound cheap until you consider it needs to cover an interstate and be elevated above the existing Penn's Landing to slope towards the water. That's heavy engineering. To date, the largest project that the DRWC has executed is the Race Street Pier.

That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it does mean it's risky. The problem that still remains in DRWC's master plan is a lack of contingency. It's a broad and cohesive design, which would be great if time and money meant nothing. But because the sloped park is so cohesive, there's no room for failure. If the sloped park is complete and the money dries up, the green meadow will rise above the street to stare down at the I-95 canyon.

Worse, if the city blows through it's $250M budget prepping the site, we could potentially be saddled with a construction zone for the next decade or two, erasing the progress the DRWC has made and discouraging those who call Penn's Landing home.

Don't think small, think smart. How can the master plan retain a cohesive feel while all its components work as successful, independent pieces? Cap I-95 and see if that brings more people to the Penn's Landing we have. Better yet, green Festival Pier and bring some permanent attractions to the water.

The DRWC could have been vying for the Museum of the American Revolution. How about a museum dedicated to Native American history? Seems like an appropriate location. They could work with Gerry Lenfest to bring the SS United States to Penn's Landing.

Give us an exciting, innovative reason to be there. How about a scaled down Adventure World or Splash Mountain? Put an elevator at Race Street to take foodies to the next Iron Chef's restaurant atop one of the concrete towers approaching the Ben Franklin Bridge. The ideas for destination attractions are endless, attractions that make the Delaware River a destination. Let the park follow.

The Philadelphia Boondoggle

From Penn's Landing to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia's public endeavors seem to be the definitive embodiment of a boondoggle. Twenty one years after the Pennsylvania Convention Center opened, the billion dollar money pit has yet to deliver its promises. When the Center's first phase failed miserably, the state threw more money at an expansion that hasn't unlocked the front doors of its grand façade, several years after it was complete.

Now it's true, civic projects are not designed to profit but - theoretically - use tax revenue to best serve its taxpayers. They provide a necessary service or an asset. However profitability shouldn't be ignored. Adjacent development was used to pitch the PCC expansion. When the development never emerged, or emerged heavily subsidized, no one was really held accountable. Empty promises are the method operandi of the status quo.

The only new hotel to emerge near the PCC is the lackluster Hilton Home2 at 12th and Arch, its ground floor retail occupied by the first fast food options you'd expect to find next to any convention center in America, two decades after it opened.

Meanwhile the surface lots north of the PCC continue to chip away at the build environment, trading buyable real estate for high cost/low maintenance surface parking. Whether or not the PCC has recouped the billion spent on its two phased construction or if it can maintain its day to day operations with the revenue from its vendors, the center has done more harm than good. Considering the emerging revitalization of the Loft District, the Reading Viaduct Park, and the nation's overall renewed interest in downtown living, the PCC has come to find itself an unwelcome partner in City Hall's vicinity.

After all, the streets surrounding Reading Terminal below Vine Street looked a lot like today's Loft District before the PCC was dropped on us by the state. It's no stretch to imagine that the neighborhood's proximity to Washington Square West and Reading Terminal Market would have helped it evolve into one that looks a lot like Old City were it not for the PCC. And full time residents vested in its streets would have undoubtedly had an impact on our deteriorating Market East.

But ifs and buts aren't cluster of nuts, so, no granola.

Still, what about our future boondoggles? Has the city learned its lesson?

As malls go, ordinary but not bad - architecturally. Fill it with attractions that appeal to the market on the street: TOURISTS.

Speaking of Market East, PREIT may be the city's next money pit. Although the Gallery at Market East isn't owned by the city, the marriage between the two is strong. It's not surprising that PREIT's proposals for a revitalized Gallery Mall are about as lackluster as anything the city pitches. History has told us that inner city malls don't work and why, but those at PREIT can only see their white elephant as a mall.

While its layout may scream "mall," its best reuse as a mall is only by the vaguest definition. Tucked between numerous hotels and the Historic District, it should be full of tourist attractions, a beer hall, and some corny museums. But all PREIT can see is Center City's answer to King of Prussia and a Target, despite the fact that Center City already has KOP on Walnut Street and Kmart failed for the same reason a Target won't succeed.

But why should we expect innovation? PREIT, like the city and state offices vested in the PCC and its expansion, don't understand Center City and what it needs. When it comes to master plans, particularly if the word "Pennsylvania" is affixed, it's tough to expect more than a cash strapped burden.

Can it ever get better? Maybe. The Delaware River Waterfront Commission incited a bit of excitement surrounding the release of its new master plan. But "master plan" has developed a pejorative connotation when it comes to civic projects. Hargreaves Associates master plan for Penn's Landing and the vicinity is far from the first. Despite the fact that it's a good design, one that includes speculative commercial and residential development, on its own it provides no new reason to go to the river that isn't already there.

With more destination attractions, residents, and events, Festival Pier is not a bad space.

Like PREIT and City Hall, the DRWC doesn't understand its audience. It's unfortunate. More so than the PCC or the Gallery Mall, Penn's Landing is a potentially unrivalled asset for the city. But it's operated by bureaucrats that understand two things: pushing paper and maintaining the status quo. It should be filled with events every weekend: concerts, movies, exotic animals to promote the Philadelphia Zoo and the New Jersey State Aquarium, local restaurant booths, beer gardens. But the DRWC doesn't field events, it maintains those willing to return.

Unfortunately, until these organizations are employed by visionaries working with businesspeople who know how to execute a vision, we'll be faced with nothing more than renderings and master plans, and perhaps someday, a new Convention Center, Mall, or Waterfront Park afflicted with the exact same obstacles that kept them from ever succeeding in the first place.

Penn's Landing Carnival

Every Spring, our beloved carnies travel the country in camper vans, hauling complete amusement parks to grocery store parking lots, and our nation's cities and towns come alive with the smell of cotton candy and funnel cake, brightly lit roller coasters and carnival rides. More rural areas open up county fairgrounds for mud slinging monster truck shows and demolition derbies, rodeos, and greased hog sacking contests (yes, that exists, and yes, I've seen it).

Philadelphia enjoys spring in its own way. The Schuylkill Banks hosts its Schuylkill Soiree, Fairmount Park has its Cherry Blossom Festival, and thanks to popular demand, the Channel 6 Zoo Balloon is back.

But where's my Tilt-a-Whirl? My Mirror Maze? Where are the stuffed animals behind the impossible-to-win Ring Toss?

Perhaps Philadelphia resists the urge to host a cast of transient carnies in front of the Art Museum out of some historic sense of civility. I'm sure you can come across the occasional carnival in the Northeast or the suburbs, but they're small, poorly advertised, and only locally known.

Well, we do have one venue perfectly suited for bright lights and candy apples, a venue begging for attention. Every year as part of Portland's Rose Festival, CityFair is held at Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park, Portland's much more successful answer to Philadelphia's Penn's Landing. Visitors enjoy local beer, exotic animals, carnival rides, and all the fried fare you would expect.

So where's ours?

Penn's Landing attracts thousands of ice skaters during the city's coldest months, but Festival Pier will be vacant for the rest of April and most of May. Architects have been focused on the ongoing effort to redesign the concrete park and cap the interstate, but despite the fact that even the most hopeful visionaries are looking at a few years of construction that won't begin this summer, plans for the space in the interim seem focused on maintaining the status quo.

Why are Philadelphians always waiting for the next pie in the sky proposal, many which will only be replaced by another proposal the following year? We're in civic second gear, promised a better Gallery or a better Festival Pier, then anxiously wait for a decade only to find ourselves faced with another money pit like the Convention Center.

All carnie jokes aside, the industry is far more than a Simpsons plotline or the traveling caravans of stagecoaches they were a century ago. They're legitimate corporations operated by businessmen and women. More often than not they rent spaces from municipalities or private parking lots because they make money from the events. In some instances they even provide their own security.

While we anxiously await a new Penn's Landing that may or may not come, let's put the space to use. We don't even need to stop short at a weekend carnival. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation could work out a long term contract with an amusement service to provide rides and carnival games for the entire summer season. And there's a giant, almost always empty parking lot already available. That contract would be too delicious for a reputable carnival service to ignore, it would cost the city nothing, and it would put thousands of visitors - local and tourists - on Penn's Landing every weekend. Most importantly, it would give the waterfront the purpose it needs for a realistic investment in its revitalization.

Hargreaves Penn's Landing

Philly.com and PlanPhilly are calling it a first look. Philly Magazine calls it the future.

The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation's Thomas Corcoran stated, “We don’t want this to be another plan sitting on a shelf," and boy has Penn's Landing seen it's share of those.

Hargreaves and Associates' redesigned Penn's Landing extends the existing I-95 cap to Walnut Street, completing the block, carrying the park over Columbus Boulevard, Penn's Landing's large parking lot, and to the water. It replaces the concrete Great Plaza and finally removes the useless west end of the nonexistent aerial tram to Camden.



From 1997 to 2004, the Delaware River Port Authority wasted over $13M on preliminary construction of an aerial tram called the Skylink, with more than $1M spent on additional "studies."



Additionally, Hargreaves employs a Calatrava like pedestrian bridge at South Street completing the street's connection to Penn's Landing.

The design is highly conceptual and open to speculation. Parking at the landing appears to be replaced by an elevated park, although it's not clear if parking will remain under the green plaza. The renderings also make some assumptions, for example the Chart House is gone.

As one of the few businesses catering to Penn's Landing, the Chart House will likely remain or will in someway be incorporated into Hargreaves new architecture.



In 2003, City Hall held a costly design competition. The Atlantis was one of the more outrageous proposals. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the competition was all part of a corrupt scandal that ended with an FBI investigation.



As it is, Festival Pier is huge. But as a concrete venue it's largely unused unless it's reserved for an event. Hargreaves proposal triples the amount of contiguous space, but transforming the entirety into a green space makes it an inviting public resource.

Add the Lombard Street pier to the mix, where the South Street pedestrian bridge ends, and the DRWC has itself a nice collection of inner city landscaping.



At one point Cesar Clarke Cesar of Cira Centre threw their name in the game, incorporating Penn's Landing's Skylink into what it referred to as Founders Square.



Perhaps one of the best elements in Hargreaves Penn's Landing is its openness to private development. The nonsensical flyovers between Market and Chestnut have been camouflaged by mid-rise apartment buildings, three setting right on the river.

So far no private developers have signed on, but if the city and the DRWC are willing to relinquish this property to make way for apartments and businesses, Penn's Landing's biggest obstacle - a lack of any reason to be there - is finally addressed.

The layout of Hargreaves and Associates Penn's Landing, and the DRWC's most recent pitch for a new waterfront.

More apartments on the water may not be enough to entice Society Hill's pedestrians and tourists to Penn's Landing, but it certainly helps offset such a costly endeavor, one the Seaport Museum and a few old ships can't carry themselves.

Penn's Landing as envisioned by Hargreaves and Associates, perhaps Penn's Landing's most hopeful proposal to date.

Hargreaves likely wants to stamp its brand on the design, evident in the fact that the firm has erased the existing park atop I-95, simply called I-95 Park. As it is it's a nice space, with it's truncated oval cut in half it was clearly designed to extend onto a nonexistent cap that was never completed.

Hargreaves completes the transition, but with their own design.

All of this may be moot when you consider the numerous empty promises and costly design studies performed by PennPraxis, the DRWC, the Delware River Port Authority, or whatever organization happened to be managing Penn's Landing at any point in the past forty years.



One of Penn's Landing's more...interpretive renderings. Personally, I love art that looks like the dreamscape of a junkie's K-hole, but I'm not sure where an engineer would find the fourth dimension required to actually build this.



The Race Street Pier was the DRWC's first major project since they were created in 2009. Prior to that nothing had been done with Penn's Landing since the Seaport Museum and the Great Plaza were built in the 1990s.

Although the Race Street Pier has been wildly popular, it's still new and the longevity of its success remains to be proven. Unlike Sister City's Park and a redesigned Dilworth Plaza, both of which are a response to Center City's residential growth that provide park space for people already on the ground, the Race Street Pier is an attempt to lure people to the water. We've seen how the "build it and they'll come" approach has worked in the past with the Festival Pier we have today. People love new parks, but quickly tire of them when they realize there's not much else around.

If the DRWC can muster the funds to bring even part of this project to fruition, particularly greening Festival Pier, it will be a vast improvement of what's there. Unfortunately, there will still be little reason to be there once the newness wears off.

The fatal flaw in Hargreaves plan echoes a mistake that the DRWC and Penn's Landing's managers before them can't seem to grasp. Without a wild destination attraction at river - think the St. Louis Arch or the London Eye - Penn's Landing will always be a detached lawn with a view of Camden far from anything interesting.

With Philadelphia's tradition of obscene cost overruns in everything it builds, a new Penn's Landing could easily exceed the cost of the Pennsylvania Convention Center but doesn't guarantee any return. It's understandable that those in charge are reluctant to pull the trigger on a design that isn't perfect. Still, when you consider the amount of money wasted on the Skylink, costly design competitions, and studies that found nothing but their own irrelevance, we could already have a pretty damn fine Penn's Landing.

Hopefully the DRWC can prove that they aren't just another organization in a long line of inept paper pushers, but rather the management that Penn's Landing has needed for the past four decades.



JKR Partner's BridgeView

JKR Partners - Bridgeview

JKR Partners has drafted a plan for 75 townhouses on vacant land near Columbus Boulevard and Catharine Street. Dubbed Bridgeview, the respectfully scaled townhouses could help bring life to Penn's Landing and carry Queen Village residents to the water.

So far the renderings are preliminary and have been informally pitched to the Queen Village Neighbors Association, with a more formal presentation planned for the zoning board.

From Chestnut Street to the Water: Poor Planning

Philly.com recently posted Stu Bykofsky's article gushing about a city planner who's assisted in some of Center City's most irreparable damage. And unlike Ed Bacon - who once proposed tearing down City Hall to make way for a giant traffic circle - Ross Brightwell's bright ideas came to fruition in an era when we all should have known better.

Ross Brightwell was a management consultant for the Chestnut Street Association in the late 1980's, planning the redevelopment of the Chestnut Street Business District. Assisting Ron Rubin (who's disregard for the "bricks" inadvertently created Philly Bricks, and gave us The Gallery at Market East and the Disney Hole), this "fountain of creativity" upped the district's taxes and created the thriving business, retail, and residential corridor that is our now successful Chestnut Street.

According to Stu Bykofsky's article, he helped save Center City.

Well let's back up. Where does Center City succeed? It succeeds on Walnut Street, Society Hill, Rittenhouse Square, University City.

Wherever Brightwell employed his "fountain of creativity" is an utter disaster. Where Chestnut Street succeeds is where, in very recent years, the success of Walnut Street has spilled over to Chestnut's deplorable infrastructure and bargain basement rent.

Brightwell is creative. Ed Bacon was a creative visionary as well. But the visions they shared gave us blocks of cold Soviet era concrete, inflated taxes to improve the sidewalks no one used, and at one point, blocked Chestnut to traffic and saw a street of Jetsonian pods carrying shoppers that didn't exist down a corridor with no business.

This didn't happen.

Basically, Brightwell is a utopian visionary. He comes from an era when Philadelphia, and most major cities, were struggling. Rather than wait out the slump, they poured huge sums of money into infrastructure improvements, and the assumption that the reason businesses were avoiding Center City had something to do with our sidewalks and traffic and nothing to do with the fact that the city had just lost the population of Atlanta.

Instead of adhering to the principle that has revived every successful post-industrial city in America, that new residents bring business, and new business affords us the luxury to plant trees, build plazas, and lay down brick sidewalks, the mid-century visionaries practiced the idea that "if you build it they will come."

We've learned from our mistakes, and by the time Brightwell was managing Chestnut Street in 1987, he could have looked at Market East and seen the scars of poor urban planning. Instead he charged full speed into the brick wall of reason insisting the mistakes of Ed Bacon could work.

The fallacy in this vision is evident in the success of Walnut Street. Our most diverse business corridor was a largely organic. The city fussed with Market and Chestnut because they were closest to our core. Walnut was ignored, and while it suffered the same lack of business throughout the 70's and 80's, it came around in the 90's because it hadn't been touched.

Now it's so successful that the boutiques that helped put it on the map are moving to Chestnut Street because they're being out priced by high volume retailers that have recognized how successful it is.

If Brightwell had done his job and his model worked, his domain wouldn't be the refuge for businesses struggling to make rent, it would be on national retailers' radars.

Lately he's been focusing his vision on the alleged I-95 debacle, a red herring for the Penn's Landing quagmire.

I-95 is an easy target. Sure, it was poor planning. The budget should have accounted for it to be capped. Hell, it should probably be in New Jersey.

But it is what it is, and the reason for that is that no one really cared about the waterfront or the industrial district it replaced at the time. It was the result of a lack of foresight from planners like Bacon, a lack of foresight Brightwell shares.

A good planner is more than an idealist and should have recognized a need for the built environment that I-95 replaced. Le Corbusier was a visionary and proposed leveling Paris for his Radiant City. They laughed, but Philadelphia did it.

City planners walk a fine line between architectural artistry and realistic business people with a respect for an organic infrastructure. Bacon and Brightwell lean towards the former.

As Brightwell envisions acres of real estate atop a buried interstate, capped with everything from an amphitheater to an aviary ferrying us to the water, he's ignoring what most of us ignore: Penn's Landing isn't a failure because we don't want to walk across eight lanes of elevated park space. It fails because it's a failure in and of itself.

On any given day hundreds of residents and tourists find their way to Penn's Landing. Locals ignore the poor museums and concrete, while tourists scratch their head and ask "why?"

Baltimore's waterfront doesn't succeed because it's not separated from the city by a highway. Inner Habor is disconnected from the city by a canyon, it's called Baltimore. It still succeeds because it's destination attractions are destinations.

If the National Aquarium was on Penn's Landing it would be surrounded by the same high rises, tourist malls, and street vendors that make Inner Harbor a lovely place to spend a day. Dumping millions of dollars into a concrete park over an interstate won't make Penn's Landing better, it will just get the same people to crap faster.

Brightwell envisions a cap over I-95 as a blank canvas for the city to work with while the city's had over 40 years to play with the canvas that is Penn's Landing, and it's still a disastrous money pit.

He sees I-95 as the space for the world's biggest merry-go-round and a roller coaster - which would be amazing - but why doesn't he see that on Penn's Landing?

I'd love to see high rise condos lining Delaware Avenue and sitting atop a capped I-95, but until developers are fighting over property that faces the river on solid ground, they aren't going to embark on the engineering feat of building anything on top of an interstate.

It's easy for us to see the river as an inaccessible pain and blame it on I-95. I do it all the time. But we aren't urban planners. An urban planner's job is to realistically assess the situation and recognize the fact that despite the interstate, we get to the river every day.

Give us something to do when we get there and maybe we'll have the means to cap the eyesore many of us have already come to terms with.

Celebrating Thirty Years of Hype

Let's cut through the bull shit. With the amount of money Philadelphia has spent throwing design contests and hiring firms like Hargreaves Associates to paint us the same pretty renderings Temple architecture students have been churning out for the past three decades, we could not only afford to cap I-95, we could throw the biggest party the world has ever seen at a top notch waterfront concert hall...with enough left over to buy every Philadelphian a used Jetta.

There are no excuses left for this sorry ass piece of prime property or those slum lording over it since the 70s with costly, empty promises.

To every ass hole at the DRWC pocketing the city funds and grant dollars you funnel into these annual empty promises: nut up and build something already or shut the fuck up about it and sell it to someone who will.

Cities smaller and poorer than Philadelphia are doing amazing things on the oil soaked shores of their swamps. Everyone who thinks it should take 30 years to build a fucking park is the reason it takes 30 fucking years to build a park in Philadelphia.

Piazza at Penn's Landing

After decades of rendering grand plans for the Delaware waterfront that we could never afford, Thomas P. Corcoran, Director of the Delaware River Waterfront Corp., has come up with a scaled back plan that actually seem doable. 

Lining the river with ten parks - green parks, not concrete - he leaves most of the river's success in the hands of private development hopefully attracted to the parks.

Penn's Landing's concrete flyovers would be removed, improving its connection with Center City in spite of I-95. 

Corcoran helped with Camden's waterfront, unarguably Camden's only living success.

Race Street Pier - Walk There

Field Operations and James Corner, who designed New York's High Line, have released the initial rendering for the redevelopment of the Race Street Pier on the Delaware River, just below the Ben Franklin Bridge. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation is working with a $5M budget to reconfigure the 109 year old pier into a recreation attraction. The biggest complaint from the Negadelphians so far? You guessed it. Parking. Here's my advice, check out one of the literally ten surface parking lots in the vicinity, or better yet, walk. There's something about driving to an urban park that's akin to using a wheelchair for fun. For real, people, come on. We are the fattest, ugliest, most unhealthy, and most depressed city in America for a reason. It's no coincidence that so many of you adamantly refuse to walk a block.