Jim Kenney ran for mayor as the great coalition-builder,
bringing together a collection of the city's strangest bedfellows: New
Philadelphians and the old. Bike-riding millennials and the building trade
unions. Real estate developers mining the city for buildable lots and people
unsettled by the explosion of new housing in their once-unchanging
neighborhoods.
This week, Kenney pulled off a similar magic trick when
he named a planning director who manages to appeal to all those groups.
Anne Fadullon, 52, who takes over the newly created
Department of Planning and Development on Monday, has been a city planner, a
real estate developer, an influential lobbyist for the construction industry,
and an advocate for affordable housing. She has done stints at the
Redevelopment Authority, which focuses on helping blighted neighborhoods, and
the Dale Corp., a development company nestled in suburban Glenside. All the
while, she has remained a darling of the city's Jane Jacobs-loving urbanists,
serving on the boards of PlanPhilly and the Design Advocacy Group.
So it's no surprise her appointment was lauded by the
folks who spend their days parsing zoning bonuses and planning guidelines. I
checked in with a half-dozen people, representing the full spectrum of
ideologies, and nearly all called Fadullon an inspired choice.
For Kenney, Fadullon's greatest strength is that she's
practical. In our conversation, he made a point of noting she has a good
relationship with Darrell L. Clarke, the powerful City Council president and
the mastermind behind the recent reorganization of the city's development
agencies.
Fadullon lobbied hard for Clarke's new flow chart, which
puts the city's housing agencies and planning functions under one roof, and
Clarke returned the favor this week by sending out a news release heaping
praise on her. "She's one of the sharpest development professionals I
know," Clarke wrote.
But can any planning chief really be all things to all
people?
The reason given for creating the new department was that
it would streamline the development process, making it faster and easier to
build, thereby fostering the city's growth. The reconstituted department, which
required a change in the City Charter, passed easily in a November ballot
initiative.
Yet, even now, it's hard to fully understand why the
reorganization was needed. Mayor Nutter was, if nothing else, consistently
pro-development. He came into office promising to marry this business-friendly
approach with high design standards and street-friendly urbanism.
He certainly did well with the growth part. Construction
is booming like never before, and whole swaths of the city are being renewed.
But despite some notable design victories under chief planner Alan Greenberger,
such as the Divine Lorraine conversion project, the administration often
struggled to get those go-go developers to do the right thing with urbanism and
architecture.
During the last eight years, garage-fronted rowhouses
were approved by the dozen. City planners gave Children's Hospital carte
blanche to plop a car-oriented skyscraper on the popular Schuylkill Banks, next
to a fragile rowhouse neighborhood. Civic associations continued to find
themselves on the front lines of development battles, with minimal backup from
city planners. When you consider the scale of the boom, there have been
depressingly few works of architecture that can be considered memorable.
Fadullon told me in an interview she would like to focus
more on street-level planning issues. "The Nutter administration often
operated at the 50,000-foot level," by turning out big master plans, she
said. "I want to look at the 10-foot level." She singled out the
Schuylkill as an area badly in need of fine-grained planning to ensure that new
development reinforces the links between the neighborhoods and waterfront
amenities.
That's heartening. She has the background for such
resident-centered planning, having started her career at a North Philadelphia
housing nonprofit. She also spent three years in the late '90s running the
planning department in Cocoa, Fla.
One reason Fadullon left Philadelphia is that she had
grown weary of being in a stagnant Rust Belt city. "In Philadelphia, it
was all about managing decline," she explained. "I went to Florida
because it was growing. There were astronomical numbers of people moving in. I
wanted to be in a growth environment."
So, expect Fadullon to be just as pro-development as the
Nutter administration. She is probably best known in Philadelphia for her two
years at the helm of the Building Industry Association.
The organization led the fight to overhaul the zoning
code, which helped unleash the building boom we're seeing now. She wants to
fast-track the second phase, which involves updating all the zoning maps,
making it even easier to build without variances and community review. The
danger is the faster process could be devastating for neighborhoods without a
commitment to good design standards.
Helping private developers isn't Fadullon's only goal,
however. She is expected to shift the Planning Department's focus to affordable
housing in an effort to counter gentrification. That was one of the big reasons
for combining housing and planning in one super-department. It happens to be a
cause close to Fadullon's heart. Not only did she work on many subsidized housing
projects at Dale Corp.; her partner, Nora Lichtash, runs the Women's Community
Revitalization Project, which provides housing for low-income women.
But building subsidized housing - which would sell for
around $200,000 - is tough in a city with strong unions, high wage rates, and
convoluted work rules. Construction unions are one of Kenney's main
constituencies, and Fadullon stayed on the sidelines of the Goldtex union fight
during her tenure at the building association. Nutter, to his credit, managed to
add a hefty 3,991 units of affordable housing at a time when the economy was
tanking and federal funding was being slashed.
Though Fadullon acknowledges the challenges, she argues
that her experience working for a private developer taught her how to craft
creative funding strategies.
She's also convinced the city can have it both ways:
growth and good design. "The city is in a better position than ever,"
she said. "We're at a point where we can say it's a privilege to be in
Philadelphia. . . . We need to get into that mind-set."
That's a good thing, because Fadullon has a lot of people
she has to make happy.
Source: Philly.com
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