Escaping the Cold...Underground

Now that it's nut shriveling cold outside, your cardio routine has probably taken a hit. The Schuylkill River Trail is so much more inviting than a stationary bike next to twelve others that smell like feet.

Well, have you ever thought of taking to SEPTA's expansive underground concourse for your evening jog? No. That's insane. Your gym's foot smell is way better than that piss smell. 

But what if the concourse looked like this?

That's a rendering of Manhattan's proposed Low Line. Utilizing an abandoned trolley terminal under the Lower East Side, New York hopes to bank on the success of its High Line and turn it upside down. Skylights will filter sunshine into the subterranean park offering a bit of nature during New York's brutal winter.

As Philadelphia wrestles with the logistics of creating our own variation of New York's High Line atop the abandoned Reading Viaduct, others have proposed converting its abandoned extension sunken below the city at Broad and Noble that continues all the way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

While New York beat us to both the High Line and now, possibly, the Low Line, Philadelphia's potential is unique in that the two are already integrated. 

It's a tough sell. The Reading Viaduct Park has faced an uphill battle since it was first conceived but it's finally gaining a strong foothold in reality. But the proposition of an underground "park" anywhere in Philadelphia has been the butt of more C.H.U.D. jokes than actual praise.

That's understandable, but partially because it's been pitched primarily as an underground incarnation of the more logical Reading Viaduct Park. It seems hokey. "If we're using old tracks for an elevated park, why not make one in the tracks underground too?!" It's reactionary, not innovative. 

Obviously the best use for Philadelphia's abandoned rail - both above and below ground - would be to reopen it to subway/elevated trains carting people to black holes of speedy transportation like the Art Museum, the Zoo, and other neighborhoods in the Northwest.

Well, that's not happening. 

And to understand why an underground park is a good idea you have to stop thinking of it as a park. Even in New York, while the Low Line may offer similar plant life found above ground, it will likely find its best use as a well dressed concourse ferrying pedestrians throughout the Lower East Side during the winter and on rainy days. Clean, it will also offer recreationalists a unique reprieve from their boring gyms.

When you think about it that way, jogging throughout Philadelphia's concourse - and our own Low Line - don't seem like such a half baked idea. Philadelphia's abandoned tunnel, The City Branch Line, extends from Broad to Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not a long walk but the urban planning missteps that created Franklin Town make it an awkwardly disjointed one. One an underground concourse could easily address.

Viaduct Impossible

After reading about the so called "marriage" of the Friends of the Rail Park and the Reading Viaduct Project I decided to take a look. Like many who live within spitting distance of Callowhill's industrial district, I don't spend a lot of "me time" in the vicinity.

While pricey loft conversions have sprouted up in the neighborhood between 11th and Broad, it's still a very real, working industrial zone. I've been to Prohibition Tap Room, The Trestle Inn, Café Lift, and the wildly pretentious Bufad Pizza boutique, but many in the neighborhood are still struggling to identify with what Callowhill is.

Callowhill is doing what it was designed to do, to work. Currently that's servicing Chinatown's restaurants and grocery stores and harboring outsider artists who like its grit. It's been doing that since the early 1900s.

While some of the louder neighborhood voices are fighting for a Reading Viaduct Park, and now a City Branch Park, they've done little to prove that it would ever be a viable concept.

Part of the problem comes from residents' insular view of their neighborhood. Sure, their lofts are hip and expansive, but they're fortressed behind parking lots and the echo of real estate agents spouting, "you're so close to Center City."

The Reading Viaduct Park is a great vision, but that's what it is, a vision. Aside from the complex ownership of the structure, much of the neighborhood still needs to prove they want to spend their free time there. Right now, its more upscale residents view Callowhill as a gritty Conshohocken. They're detached.

Urban enclaves are more than planned communities surrounded by tax funded freeways and parks. Urban communities, often strapped for cash, are communal.

Locked within a condominium complex in Callowhill, you'll find a lot of like minded people who wonder why the Reading Viaduct hasn't been demolished, turned into a park, or turned back into a transit line. But many of those residents moved to the city with the same resistance to urban realities that maintains a private parking space. In their mind, they're near Center City, not in it.

Callowhill, callously referred to as the Loft District by realtors, isn't that. It's not a dead industrial zone awaiting the salvation of suburban refugees blessing Philadelphia with its next hip neighborhood. Unlike the Northern Liberties' Piazza, Callowhill isn't a blank slate. Its proximity to Center City and industrial infrastructure make it a viable work horse.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in Callowhill's upscale voice is its impression that the neighborhood outside their condo is dysfunctional. Whatever they perceive it to be, that won't change because the neighborhood financially succeeds as it is.

Master plans can't be employed in a neighborhood that already works. As working urban enclave Callowhill will never be a planned community, and that means compromise. That's where advocates are lost. The neighborhood can be improved, but it means working inside the neighborhood, not above it.

Some of the more cynical residents might not see the beauty in Callowhill's gritty diversity, and parks are the canned response of shortsighted design. That's not to say Callowhill couldn't benefit from a splash of green, but starting big isn't just risky, it's illogical.

Callowhill is full of small, unused vacant lots, land on solid ground. Where is the community? Instead of transforming these small, potential oases into community gardens and pocket parks, they're illegally parking their unregistered cars on them.

It's hypocritical to defy the PPA with makeshift parking lots and then ask the city to burden itself with a park for neighbors who rarely spend time outside their own private terraces.
If Callowhill's lofty residents want their neighborhood to be lofty, they've got to do some of the legwork themselves.

Instead of proposing extremely expensive, tax funded park space they should be working to redevelop vacant property, wrangling retail and service business, and trying to make their neighborhood feel more like a neighborhood.

The combined advocacy groups operating under the name Friends of the Rail Park plan on converting the SEPTA spur into a park. Friends is certainly capable of raising the funds to transform and maintain this two block stretch of rail.

But the bulk of the viaduct's ownership is complex and uninvolved, and engineering the truly elevated portions of the rail is complicated. With all the talk from Viaduct advocates over the years, no one has formally addressed the real estate nightmare ahead of them.

For now, unless Callowhill's cushy residents are willing to put their foot to the pavement and grab a broom, this industrial neighborhood will remain unchanged.

As long as the industrial relic provides the neighborhood's backdrop one way or another, Callowhill will always feel exciting. Until Friends figures out how to transform and maintain, or more importantly buy the viaduct, they might want to try encouraging its neighbors to enjoy the neighborhood directly outside their doors.