New Fairmount Park plans call for I-76 redesign

Fairmount Park is set to become more accessible to Philadelphians, as plans to connect the east and west sides of the park with surrounding neighborhoods will be unveiled Tuesday night.

Originally conceived as a watershed park to protect the city’s water supply, Fairmount Park was never designed to be a leisurely destination like Central Park in New York City, and that’s because it’s not all that convenient for Philadelphians.

It had no “attempt to develop parts of the city,” said Harris Steinberg, executive director of PennPraxis, the applied research arm of the University of Pennsylvania. “And, because of that, it doesn’t have that park-like connective tissue that other parks have — it’s a series of other parks pieced together.”

So in order to address this, PennPraxis has partnered with the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation, The Fairmount Park Conservancy and The Parks and Recreation Commission to create a plan that is an "underlying plan of connectivity and mobility," Steinberg said.

One step (no pun intended) would be opening up steps, previously hidden by growth, to lead visitors down to Kelly Drive from the Girard Avenue Bridge.

Major and long-term plans include a reroute of Belmont Avenue, connecting the east and west sides of the park, creating a “park within a park,” and a redesign of part of I-76 to be built on stilts to bring the park underneath the highway “like a Roman aqueduct,” Steinberg said.

Other plans include a development of a safer, more attractive park entrances and a new public boathouse.

Steinberg will present the plan from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Smith Playground on Reservoir Drive with introduction by Deputy Mayor Michael DiBerardinis. The project team is set to present key ideas, illustrated through maps, demonstrate an interactive PDF and lead walking tours to early action projects.

Check out the full report for the “New Fairmount Park” here.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal