River City Redux

by Kate Salute

Along the Delaware River there is a 10-mile stretch of land from Center City to Bucks County just waiting for a face-lift. The Philadelphia City Planning Commission compares the potential of the majority of the vacant riverfront land to that of the Hudson, Potomac and Thames rivers. It was this picture of a beautifully revitalized waterfront that led the PCPC to conduct a study, which would ideally lead to a transformed waterfront with housing communities, recreational trails and maybe even a marina.

The study started small, according to Patrick Starr, Pennsylvania Environment Council Southeast regional vice president.

"One summer, around June 1996, we started talking to people in communities about what the riverfront should be," he says. What came out of those discussions, and an urban area study being conducted around that time, was that it should be a "front door to the river," an open-space corridor connecting the inner city to the riverfront community.

"People really do want, and are ready for, change and improvement — they want to be included and informed, which is hard with such a big project," says Starr. That's precisely the reason why panel discussions have been taking place at University of Pennsylvania, to bring together "champions for the riverfront" such as Starr, Tacony Community Development Corporation president Peter Naccarato, economists, real estate developers, Penn professors knowledgeable about development's ecological issues and, of course, the public.

Starr says some of the industrial lands include the grounds of leveled Philly Coke factory in Bridesburg; the Dodge Steel site near the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, which has been cleared; the Northern Shipping Yards (a potential site for a marina) next to Pennypack Park in Holmesburg; the Conrail Switching Yard's 200 acres of half-cleared land; and the Tacony Warehouse property.

The latter was once used as an Army storage building, which was demolished to nobody's dismay.

"You had to see the building that used to be there," said Naccarato. "It was an eyesore, holes, vandalism."

Since the building's destruction, this 14-acre piece of land has been zoned solely for residential development.

Naccarrato prefers residential communities over commercial development, at least in Tacony. Starr would rather see greener infrastructure with public access and no closed-off communities. The PCPC proposes revenue-generating facilities such as restaurants, market places and cultural amenities in its summary report "North Delaware Riverfront: A Long-Term Vision for Renewal and Redevelopment."

"There is going to be a great variety along the river," said Naccarato.

"We're really at a wait-and-see point in development," said Starr.