8 April 09: Interim load of SHT



Much like the Phillies are starting the new season with a cold splash of reality that the joy and jubilation of championship is history, Philadelphia's New Day and New Way have faded into New Yesterday and the Same Old Way. If this push for an "interim" Sugar House is any indication, anyway.

Look at that picture right there. Or if you can stomach it, open and enlarge the PDF for the details. It, and several other "new and improved" renderings of the slot barn that may eventually be a casino -- let's call it the Sugar House Thing ("SHT" for short, one syllable, rhymes with "spit") -- are at the bottom of Kellie Patrick Gates' really well done story on Plan Philly HERE. Speaking strictly upon the objectivism for such a painfully drawn out and contentious issue, Kellie's has been superb.

Here on Philly Skyline, the casino issue has been largely nonexistent for several reasons: 1, there are a million people out there, mostly anti- but some pro-, already shouting through megaphones and riding buses to Harrisburg and generally making a ruckus about the casinos we've heard about for so long but for which we've still seen little more than dirt pushing; 2, I really don't buy all the worst case scenarios -- I don't, for example, think there will be a sudden well of prostitution at Penn Treaty Park if a casino opens next door; and 3, a casino really can be well done if its developers let it, participating in an existing/growing energy and infusing the local economy as promised. My wife and I bought a home six blocks from where SHT was awarded a license after it was awarded a license. SHT wasn't even close to being a part of that decision.

But it's hard to ignore the 'new design' that's being pushed by the Nutter administration, to the tune of "do[ing] everything within our power to assist Sugar House's efforts to move forward with this design and to open an interim facility by this time next year." It's the "interim" design that's the problem. "These economic times" lead every newscast and car commercial and standup comedian routine . . . and if they carry into the next several years, the "interim" is what we'll have to live with.

And the interim . . . is AWFUL.

There's a Phase I and a Phase II, and prior to those, the interim. So really, it's three phases: two further out that depend on the economy and a closer one, the interim, that depends on design approvals from the state gaming board, the extension of the gaming license already expired, the acquisition of another property (which also requires approval from the gaming board), and the pesky issue of funding. Let's suppose those things happen and Philly takes an interim SHT. Man, does it stink.



Just look at that SHT. The pink outline there, and on the plot just downstream on the other side of Waterfront Square, and on the two insets -- central Penn's Landing on the upper left and the Pier 70 Wal-Mart on the lower right -- are same-scale comparisons of the surface parking lots that currently dot and will really dot our forlorn Delaware Riverfront that tries so hard.

It's the surface parking lot that makes this interim SHT so hard to swallow. The biggest key, the key, to the Central Delaware study, was to cohesively sew the riverfront's many pieces together with pedestrian oriented activity and development, transit encouraged where possible. At the 'Declaration on the Delaware' last June -- at the very beginning of the Summer-turned-year of the Delaware -- both Penn Praxis' Harris Steinberg and Mayor Nutter stressed that as planned, the Sugar House (and Foxwoods, who had not yet proposed the move to Market East) development did not fit within the Civic Vision, the plan endorsed by the city.

The idea being pushed now is that the long term -- phase II buildout -- Sugar House Thing does fit within that vision. These economic times, however, call for an interim plan, and the interim seems poised to be the most realistic, and lasting, of the three phases. Even Phase I embraces Delaware Avenue with two enormous surface parking lots, two "primary" entrances (one which will employ the traffic light at Frankford Avenue and the other which is slightly off of the one at Shackamaxon Street), and a smaller third parking lot and third entrance, presuming Sugar House is able to purchase the Bogatin parcel to the north.

All in all, it's a very ugly picture. The interim SHT, whose length figures to be indefinite, will feature the largest surface parking lot yet on the central Delaware Riverfront. (The one from Best Buy to Ikea to Target, on the other hand, has them all beat, giving even Camden's riverfront parking lots a run for their money.)

The Spectrum is scheduled to be demolished at the end of this year, despite the Phantoms not having a new home, and despite Ed Snider's admission that the development of Philly Live will rely on a healthy market. In the interim? Can't imagine they'll let a big hole in the ground sit there idly when they can make money from paving it over with more surface parking, leaving the Broad Street Subway's patrons to walk through three city blocks of surface parking just to reach Citizens Bank Park, Lincoln Financial Field and the Wachovia Center. The ballpark is the only one of these even remotely close to pedestrian orientation, and still then you encounter two logjams along Pattison Avenue in which cars cross the path of the pedestrian to enter the parking lot, just like I called it on Radio Times six years ago and was shot down by the so-called ballpark "expert" guest who said that that would not happen.

Remember St George's Hall? The kinda-sorta historic building no one fought for that sits directly across the street from two other surface parking lots that was demolished with no immediate plans for a replacement? Guess who just applied for a permit for a surface parking lot.

The early 19th century maritime buildings demolished two years ago? Surface parking lots, still good and interim.

Seems like the more we talk about the right way to move ahead, the more we keep doing the same old wrong SHT. I don't get it.

–B Love




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