Aided by an army of lawyers, consultants, and architects,
Children's Hospital seems well on its way to winning approval for a huge,
auto-centric office park in the middle of a thriving rowhouse neighborhood on
the Schuylkill. All it needs is an endorsement on Tuesday from the Planning
Commission; then it's off to the Zoning Board for a routine variance.
So, that's that, folks. On to the next megaproject.
After years of effort by the Nutter administration to forge
a more balanced approach to planning and zoning, the likely approval of the
Children's high-rise campus in its current form is a disheartening reminder of
how little progress actually has been made since the
any-development-is-good-development days of Mayors Rendell and Street.
The proposed campus next to the South Street Bridge, where
Children's plans to conduct computer-based research, is among the largest
projects that Nutter's team has evaluated in the past two years, equal in
square footage to both Comcast towers. And yet city planners stood passively by
while the institutional Goliath ran circles around the David-sized neighborhood
groups trying to shape it into a more urban development.
The design - a joint effort by Pelli Clarke Pelli and
Philadelphia's Ballinger - is little changed from the original shown to
residents two years ago. Four glassy office towers, up to 375 feet high, would
ultimately be built on top of a long, three-story garage, forming a solid wall
beside the blossoming Schuylkill Banks park. To provide access to this
monstrous structure, Children's wants to cut two driveways into the South
Street Bridge. While less central than Comcast's campus, the site is served by
bus, shuttles, and the University City Regional Rail stop.
The impact of the design is sure to reverberate beyond the
Graduate Hospital neighborhood. Thousands of pedestrians and bicyclists cross
the bridge daily on their way to jobs in West Philadelphia's expanding
hospital-and-university district. The driveways will turn their commute into a
game of chicken. You can also bet that the Children's garage will set a
precedent for all future waterfront projects.
As a city, we talk about upholding traditional urban
planning values. We want buildings that fit into William Penn's perfectly sized
street grid, and have human activity on the ground floor to make us feel
welcome and safe. While the complex may end up with a bit of retail tucked in a
corner, the design calls for a blank garage wall at street level along most of
Schuylkill Avenue, shielded by a heavily planted berm. The park that Children's
calls "Bainbridge Place" is a glorified driveway.
In the phrase adopted by the design's opponents, which
include the Design Advocacy Group, South Street West Business Association and
South of South Street Neighborhood Association, there will be no human
"interface" along the street.
Because the buildings are set back nearly 80 feet from the
sidewalk, opponents had suggested that the hospital build rowhouses or an
apartment house to screen the garage, much as Edgewater apartments did at 23d
and Race Streets. Such mid-rise structures would have gone a long way to easing
the transition from the neighborhood's rowhouse scale to the hospital's
skyscraper heights, but Children's rejected the idea.
Ideally, city planners should have rezoned the site from its
current industrial status to a mixed-use, commercial one. The change would have
forced Children's to produce a detailed plan for what's known as a Special
Institutional District. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital has one. So does
Drexel University and most large institutions. Because these monocultures
consume real estate at such a rapacious clip, district plans give nearby
homeowners a clear idea of what's ahead.
Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger told me in an interview that
he, too, would have liked to see the site rezoned for a special district, but
Children's - the city's second-largest employer - declined. "They made a
decision to proceed without it," he said. "They chose that path.
People have a right to choose their own path."
Then why bother having planners?
In the absence of a strong hand from city planning, almost
all the negotiations fell to neighborhood volunteers, who put up a valiant,
informed fight to fix the design. There were none of the usual NIMBY complaints
during their talks with Children's. No one objected to having skyscrapers edge
their way to the diminutive rowhouse neighborhood. They simply sought the basic
elements of good urbanism.
The volunteers got little support from Greenberger, who
vigorously defended the Children's garage. "They need the parking, as much
as we would like to think that people can get there by foot," he told me.
Meanwhile, Joseph Syrnick, who heads the Schuylkill
Development Corp., the agency with the biggest stake in a lively waterfront,
was also full of praise for the project. "I thought the renderings were
quite handsome," he said. "We're OK with it."
The one agency that was not OK with it was the Civic Design
Review board, an outgrowth of the city's zoning overhaul. Although it is only
advisory, it refused to rubber-stamp the design. Instead, it issued a 10-point
list of suggested improvements, all consistent with what neighborhood residents
had requested. The board's chair, Nancy Trainor, also admonished Children's for
failing to submit comprehensible renderings. "I'm an architect, and I'm
having a hard time understanding the geometry," she complained.
Thanks to the board's courage, Children's finally agreed to
a few concessions. It committed to building a pedestrian bridge connecting its
campus to the riverfront, and is donating a small piece of land for the
extension of the Schuylkill Banks trail. It also agreed to carve out retail
space in the part of the garage next to the bridge. While these are significant
additions, they do not fundamentally change the antiurban design.
None of this should surprise us. It is the nature of big
institutions to push their own interests. That's why Philadelphia needs the
vigorous leadership of its city planners.
Source: Philly.com
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