The 30th Street Station District team released a draft
plan for overhauling the station and the surrounding area in advance of the
plan’s penultimate public feedback meeting, which will be held this
Wednesday, March 16th from 4 to 7 p.m. at the station.
In its draft form, the plan calls for reopening the
tunnel connecting 30th Street Station to SEPTA’s nearby subway and trolley
station, building two new bridges over the Schuylkill River, opening a new
intercity bus terminal, expanding public space surrounding the station, and
launching new retail options inside.
Most ambitiously, the draft plan calls for covering the
rail yards and Northeast Corridor lines next to 30th Street Station with a
partial cap, allowing for the development of an expensive new neighborhood
above.
The
30th Street Station District plan is being devised by Amtrak, Drexel
University, Brandywine Realty Trust, SEPTA, the University of Pennsylvania,
University City District, and others.
Drexel
and Brandywine are also partnering on the Schuylkill Yards development, across 30th Street
from the station.*
30th
Street Station’s $5.25 million planning process includes a $4 million engineering study on covering the rail yards; an
earlier study by some Penn graduate students estimated the cap would cost over $3 billion.**
Philadelphia wouldn’t be the first city to cap an active
rail yard. Chicago covered a yard to build Millennium Park, and New York capped
Hudson Yards. Washington DC is a bit further along in developing Burnham Place,
a planned cap over Union Station’s rail yards and Northeast Corridor tracks.
But to put things into perspective in just how massive
the 30th Street Station District’s draft plan is: Burnham Place would be 14
acres; Millennium Park is 24 acres; Hudson Yards, the largest private real estate development in New York City’s
history, is 26. The draft plan for 30th Street Station would cover
somewhere between 50 and 70 of the 88 acres of rail infrastructure north of the
station.
Millennium Park cost $495 million. Burnham Place is estimated at $1.5 billion, and Hudson Yards a staggering $20 billion, with nearly $1 billion
coming from NYC taxpayers. Schuylkill Yards, which does not
involve any capping, projects $3.5 billion in construction costs. Like
Burnham Place and Hudson Yards, 30th Street Station’s cap would be paid for
mainly by private investors, who would cover its costs in exchange for rights
to build huge skyscrapers on top.
In order to make financial sense, the expected rents from
commercial and residential tenants in the buildings above the yards would need
to be extremely high. That wouldn’t just require higher property values in the
surrounding area — it would require significantly higher rents across all of
the greater Center City and University City area, otherwise firms would locate
slightly further away for significantly cheaper.
In a previous interview with PlanPhilly, Drexel President
John Fry described developing Schuylkill Yards as a first step in proving to
investors that covering the rail yard makes financial sense.
Capping the tracks “would be too big a risk to try by
itself,” said Fry. “But if we have 20 years of progress in this area, I think
it will presage something that can happen there.”
The 30th Street Station District draft plan calls for
beginning work on a cover around 2030 and finishing construction by 2050.
In effect, the draft plan, in conjunction with plans for
Schuylkill Yards, presents a roadmap for dramatically increasing property values in the
area surrounding the station’s rail yards over the next 15 to 20 years.
At the same time, Drexel and Brandywine have committed to developing Schuylkill Yards inclusively,
without “disrupting the fabric of [the surrounding] neighborhoods.”
The draft plan doesn’t make many changes from the physical framework released in December—a city
block-sized cover over SEPTA’s elevated regional rail lines was scrapped, along
with an extraneous pedestrian bridge over the Schuylkill River (there are still
two pedestrian/bicycle bridges in the draft).
Instead, the draft largely builds upon the framework,
offering a more fleshed out vision of some of the improvements and, for the
first time, a timeline for implementation. The plan is set to be finalized by
the end of the year, following a fifth and final round of public feedback a few
months from now.
The draft’s first recommended action: reopening a tunnel
connecting 30th Street Station to SEPTA’s nearby subway and trolley station.
Ever since the underground passage was closed following an assault in the
1990’s, passengers have had to walk outside and cross 30th Street to get
between the two stations.* Reopening the tunnel was not included in any of the three initial alternatives proposed, but was
included in the framework after the public overwhelmingly demanded it.
“The most lauded aspect of the station framework was the
new underground connection with retail between the Station and SEPTA’s subway
and trolley services,” reported a summary of stakeholder feedback.
Currently, SEPTA’s twelve-year capital budget does not
allocate any money for reopening its tunnel at 30th Street Station, but funds
could be shifted from other projects in the next budget.
In addition to the tunnel, the plan’s Phase 1 calls for
reopening the North Concourse as a passenger facility, increasing access to
Amtrak and NJ Transit platforms below and providing access to the vacant East
SEPTA Mezzanine slightly above, which should help prevent the platforms
occasional overcrowding.
Phase 1 also includes station plaza upgrades to
ultimately quadruple the station’s public space, adding new retail inside the
station, and realigning the I-76 onramp. All told, Phase 1 is expected to last
until after 2030. Compared to capping the rail yards, all of Phase 1’s
improvements are less ambitious, and thus more likely.
Timeline for 30th Street Station District Plan
construction
Some elements of the 30th Street District’s draft plan
and Schuylkill Yards’ plans don’t seem to line up just yet. Schuylkill Yards’
first proposed building, located just west of the Station and fronting the part
of JFK Boulevard where passengers for Megabus and Boltbus currently board and
alight, is tentatively scheduled for 2018. That development, along with plans
to recreate JFK Boulevard as a treelined “shared street”, would preclude
continuing to use the area as a de facto bus depot. But a new intercity bus
terminal planned for next to (or on top of) the Cira Centre’s parking lot isn’t
scheduled until 2029.
Perhaps Megabus and Boltbus would relocate to Greyhound’s
bus terminal at 10th and Filbert in the interim, meaning even more buses
weaving their way through Chinatown’s pedestrian-packed streets?
Through
the many stages of open houses and other feedback, the public also expressed
skepticism over the plans designs for increasing the amount of public space
around the station from 27,500 sq. ft. to 120,000, and for proposing new retail
options inside the station, wondering whether there was enough foot traffic at
30th Street to justify either. 30th Street Station welcomed over 11 million
regional rail and Amtrak passengers in 2014.
The
plans and renderings were prepared by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with
collaboration from Parsons Brinckerhoff, OLIN and HR&A Advisors.
Individuals who cannot attend the open house this Wednesday are encouraged to
review the draft plan and submit comments online.
*CORRECTION:
This article referred to the street directly west of 30th Street Station as
31st Street. It's 30th Street.
**CORRECTION:
This article originally said the $4 million engineering study was separate from
the planning study. That was incorrect: the engineering study is included in
the plan.
Source: Plan
Philly
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