Barely Human: TLC

For the past year, Philadelphia, a city once synonymous with sports fans chucking snowballs at Santa and deliberately barfing on the children of our Men in Blue, has become an inexplicable comeback story. It takes a lot to bring a city down. And if that city has stared the devil in the face and said, "bring it on, Butt Plug!", it's damn near impossible.

But there is one way. And just when we were doing so well, we found it. How? Well, you take one of the region's greatest Cinderella Stories, Penn's Landing, and invite four of five of the world's worst people to take a proverbial shit all over it.

An un-ironic Dee Reynolds with veneers?

Yep, this May 30th, Kate Gosselin, Buddy Valastro, and the Duggar family will be the source material for a block party at the Great Plaza. Apparently the reanimated corpse of Strom Thurman was unavailable. 

If you don't know who they are, well, count yourself amongst the few who can still claim to be human. Unfortunately, I know better (or worse). They're reality "celebrities" from TLC's infamous sideshows: people with litters of kids and an irate New Yorker so annoying he couldn't hold a job in the same building as Rachel Ray.

TLC, the ironic acronym for "The Learning Channel," has been peddling what amounts to Freak Porn since it abandoned educational content in the late 1990s. I'm not saying that prolific mothers, dwarves, or the obese should be objectified, but TLC - and apparently the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation - sure as shit seems to be.

If you're one of the soulless fans of Kate Plus Eight or Cake Boss, head down to Penn's Landing for a photograph with some unrealebrities who I'm quite certain can't cast a shadow. If not, get out of town. Philadelphia was doing so well, but in a month I'm pretty sure it will be flushed down Hell's toilet bowl. 

Pier 68 and Beyond

Following the success of the Race Street Pier, the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation has honed in on its industrial relics much the way the Schuylkill River Waterfront Corporation did on its own banks. 

Two more piers, Pier 53 and Pier 68, have found new life as park proposals. As mentioned before, Pier 53 may house Jody Pinto's Land Buoy, an illuminated and climbable tower at the end of the dock complimenting Camden's proposed Skyview Tower.

The most recent park/pier proposal is for Pier 68 near Walmart in South Philadelphia. Don't let Walmart fool you. This pier anchors a bike and jogging trail that carries recreationalists north to Penn's Landing.

A unique feature not available at Race Street Pier will be the promotion of fishing and ecology. Despite what you may think about fishing in an urban river, it's a popular pastime along both of Philadelphia's rivers. Creating a legal venue will also provide education about fishing in the area, essentially what's safe to eat and what should be thrown back.

However, when I looked at a thumbnail of the proposed Pier 68, I confused the blue lines in the rendering with power generating windmills and for a moment, got even more excited. I immediately thought of Jennette's Pier in Nags Head, N.C. 

After Hurricane Isabel destroyed Jennette's Pier for the last time, it was replaced with a concrete pier completed in 2011, one that houses a museum, aquarium, and gift shop all powered by three windmills atop the pier.

Perhaps someday.

The unique approach the DRWC has taken in not only proactively addressing its existing assets - its abandoned piers - is proving that the Delaware Waterfront doesn't necessarily need to copy the success of the Schuylkill Banks by focusing primarily on its shores, but by reaching out atop the water. 

Detached from residents by I-95, these pier parks aren't complimenting neighborhoods as the banks of the Schuylkill does, but creating destination attractions for South Philadelphia, Pennsport, Old City, and perhaps someday, Northern Liberties and beyond.

As the trend continues - a trend not only dedicated to creating a portfolio of river top parks, but one that is truly considering the pastimes these piers have offered - we might one day see Pier 124, otherwise known as Graffiti Pier, sured up to provide a haven for aspiring street artists. 

Center City's Final Frontier

Reviewing past proposals for last night's blog revealed an overwhelming number of failed projects in Center City's first, yet final frontier: the Delaware River.

The wild success of the Schuylkill River continues to defy local convention with endless projects coming to fruition, and developers eagerly sidle up to the river. Why not the Delaware? Had the waterfront's industrial infrastructure not been demolished for Interstate 95, would it be an extension of Old City today? Perhaps, but we'll never know.

 
America's favorite billionaire gas bag and comb-over enthusiast, Donald Trump, didn't bring its A-game to Philadelphia, neither in location nor style, particularly when compared to those in New York or Chicago.

But even without a sunken highway separating Penns Landing from Society Hill, the Delaware River has some ills that have nothing to do with Philadelphia's grid.

The truth is, the Schuylkill is the perfect urban river. It's conveniently sailed and kayaked, it's narrow enough to stroll across one of its many bridges, and most importantly, whichever bank you're on, there's something on the other side.

Mark Mendelson's Liberty Landing was one of the Delaware River's wilder proposals, claiming to be a city in itself residents would never need to leave. Pitched around 2002, it surfaced at an overwhelmingly optimistic time.

If the banks of the Delaware were lined with its post-industrial port environment, it would likely be Old City on the river. It would be a neighborhood, still detached from Philadelphia's core by a wide boulevard. It would be packed dense with lofts and nightlife, but with little room for recreation. Had that been its fate, it would be of no concern. Joggers would take to the Schuylkill Banks and the Parkway for their daily runs, just as they do today.

Varenhorst proposed relocating a restored SS United States at Penns Landing.

Penns Landing's debacle is two fold, and its cyclical problems continue to reaffirm themselves. Developers propose condos and apartments, then walk away because the moderate development that exists doesn't succeed, leaving it desolate for future developers to do the same. Dockside and Waterfront Square attempted to bring life to the Delaware River, buy isolated themselves behind suburban landscaping, offering no way for future development to interact. The Hyatt is Penns Landing's best attempt at urban design, yet despite its height, relationship with the sidewalk, and access to one of the interstate's best caps, its guest treat it like a suburban Hampton Inn, opting to drive to Society Hill for dinner.

The waterfront's absent development isn't its only obstacle. The Delaware River itself is massive, post-industrial, and intimidating. The Race Street Pier brings some of the quaint manageability that recreationalists seek in a park, but the bank's vast nothingness stares across a wide river at even less. As it is, it just isn't a pleasant place to be. Will landscaping change that or simply paint the nothing green?

Hargreaves Associates' latest proposal for Penns Landing caps a sizeable portion of Center City's I-95, carrying a large lawn to the water. But the most important component is residential.

Parks are typically a reaction to these dire situations, but successful parks and born from demand. As much as I enjoy the outdoors, Philadelphia already has some of the best urban parks in America and many are easily accessible by foot. Although developers continue to prove they see the Delaware River as a risky investment, the best solution for Penns Landing would be to replace the built environment that was lost.

The most important component in the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation's latest proposal will be residential as it brings its own demand for public space. Fortunately it was included in the plan, but requiring private investment, it will be the hardest component to sell.

 

Penn's Landing 2.0

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.

Summer Dreams

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.

Revisting Market East

I was home for Christmas discussing Philadelphia with an uncle from Long Island, who travels to Philadelphia yearly for a convention, staying near Market East. I quickly found myself defending Philadelphia's uniquely local entertainment environment when I realized he was making the point I've been arguing since I first set foot on Market East.

I told him he couldn't judge Philadelphia by the area surrounding the major hotels, that you have to be willing to explore. My knee jerk defense mechanism kicked in when he said he liked Baltimore so much better. After all, talk about a city you have to explore before finding its gems.

Only you can't explore Baltimore on foot. If you're based at Inner Harbor, you have to get into a car and drive across the Badlands to find a truly Baltimorean experience. But that's when I realized, and my uncle validly pointed out, it isn't this native experience that conventioneers and most tourists are looking for. They're looking for what Inner Harbor offers and that is where Baltimore far exceeds Philadelphia.

They don't want the Trading Post or Passyunk Square. Most tourists want to see Independence Hall, a couple museums, and buy a snow globe at a gift shop while dining at a familiar restaurant on their way to an attraction they found in a brochure they picked up in the lobby of their hotel.

Our locally grown restaurants, quirky museums, and obscure historic landmarks do well enough on their own, catering to Philadelphians, suburbanites, and the seasoned tourists accustomed to wandering off the grid. But that leaves a large fraction of our tourism market with nothing to do but hurry past vacant retail spaces, take a few pictures in front of the Liberty Bell, and then retire to their hotel room at 12th and Market wondering why anyone likes Philadelphia.

I'm not sure where this home-grown resistance to commercial progress comes from. Philadelphia is a very proud city, but that same pride keeps visitors from understanding where that pride comes from. When you walk from the Marriott to Independence Hall you're greeted with a vacant mall and a poorly adorned street scape.

It's understandable that our average visitors from Oklahoma might go home questioning our city's historic heritage. While it's true that an illuminated orgy of commerce on Market East wouldn't pay tribute to our city's history, at least not in a conventional sense, it would stimulate the senses and encourage pedestrians to explore. Most tourists will continue to head straight to 5th Street, but they're willing to spend money along the way. And most importantly, a handful will drift north to Chinatown or south to the Gayborhood. This is the experience we want to convey. Unfortunately, because this main thoroughfare offers nothing, no one is going to assume that the side streets do.

While my uncle may be seeking a different source of pride, I want all visitors to be proud of this town. We have enough room to accommodate those looking for the familiar and those looking for something more unique. Market East is a blank canvas dying to offer that.

I want visitors to draw comparisons to Baltimore's Inner Harbor while saying, it's so much bigger, better, and more convenient. I want them to find themselves wandering into our real, local neighborhoods and that starts with a more appealing and convenient Market East fostering foot traffic.

Add to this lively environment the economic benefits of offering the creature comforts to those dying to pay for them and we might find ourselves with the cash to carry this experience to our forlorn Penn's Landing. This diamond in the rough to the locals who use it could be reborn as a destination for tourists and summertime sunbathers who accidentally find themselves there because Market East was so exciting they just didn't want to stop walking.

How to build a successful waterfront

Why is everybody still talking about Portland, the city that stole PhillySkyline.com legend Bradley Maule? That city is like coffee in the 90's. And why shouldn't it be? They do things differently there.

I like to think I beat the hype with my brief stint in the City of Roses just after college graduation. Portland was lovely in 1999. Hipsters were still Emo, you could smoke in their gritty beer holes, and the Me Generation couldn't walk yet. When you told someone you were moving to Oregon, people would ask, "Why on earth would you move there?" It wasn't overpopulated with Brooklyn refugees scarfing down Soy Joy. It wasn't full of Prius driving idiots decked out in $300 peasant jeans from Urban Outfitters. Pioneer Square was full of homeless kids from wealthy suburbs and "Vaseline Alley" lived up to its name. Like Philadelphia, it was real, albeit in a very different way.

It still retains a unique funk regardless of the transplants. Like all cities, demographics will continue to shift. The real estate market certainly fed the nomadic droves looking for something new. I assume as the economy calms down, when people start looking at their houses as homes again instead of investments, the weirdos that invaded all of our American cities will return to that strange limbo known as suburbia.

Ongoing rant aside, Portland continues to do things right. With all these proposals, renderings, and discussions about our Delaware Waterfront which ultimately amount to one giant pipe dream, Portland, roughly one third the size of Philadelphia, managed to move a major interstate across the river and implement one of the most successful urban waterfronts in the country. It wasn't rocket science, it was action.

In Philadelphia we love to talk but do little else. When discussions begin to encompass droves of unqualified neighborhoods organizations that aren't schooled in urban planning or economics, you might as well stop the conversation right there because that plan isn't going anywhere.

Portland found - after the herculean feat of moving Interstate 5 across a river - that the simplest solutions are the best solutions. The waterfront is little more than a patch of grass between Front Street and the Willamette River lined with a handful of unique fountains. Aside from the absence of the interstate, what makes it succeed isn't in what it is but in what it can do.

Almost weekly throughout the summer the park hosts concerts and events, Fleet Week, even brightly lit carnivals. Philadelphia, perhaps because of our inferiority complex, insists on doing everything big or not at all. An aerial tram across the Delaware River? Really? Instead of going grand, the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation should be spending its time looking for local carnivals, circuses, small concerts that don't require a huge stage and a staff of fifty.

Give people a reason to walk across the interstate and maybe you can stir up enough money for the lavish luxuries later. I'd make the short trek to Penns Landing if I caught a glimpse of a neon clad ferris wheel.