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Street's son, law firm out of River City plan

One minute you're part of a team working on arguably the biggest Center City development plan in Philadelphia history. The next, well, you're not at the table.

One minute you're part of a team working on arguably the biggest Center City development plan in Philadelphia history. The next, well, you're not at the table.

Welcome to Sharif Street's world. He's the mayor's son and an attorney at Wolf Block Schorr and Solis-Cohen. When developers and Logan Square residents meet with City Councilman Darrell Clarke today to discuss the future of the "River City" development, an eye-popping $3.5 billion, 10-skyscraper gargantuan as originally conceived, Street won't be in attendance.

But as late as yesterday afternoon, Clarke and the neighborhood leaders were saying that Street would be present as legal counsel for the developers.

Kelly Boyd, a public-relations consultant who Clarke called the "point person" on the River City project, initially said yesterday that she wasn't sure if Street would be at the meeting, adding that the lead attorney is Alan Kessler, a Wolf Block partner.

Shortly after, Boyd called the Daily News to say that although Street had been on the legal team, a "conflict of interest" had arisen and Wolf Block is no longer representing the developers, World Acquisition Partners. That group includes developer Ravi Chawla and businessman Richard Zenger.

Declining to specify the nature of the conflict, Boyd said she didn't know when it came to light or why Clarke and the community leaders thought Street would be attending the meeting. Street could not be reached for comment.

Last December, when the River City proposal was made public, it ran into heavy neighborhood criticism in spite of the lobbying by Gov. Rendell, who called the president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association to urge his support.

"It was a very aggressive proposal," Clarke recalls, "and I anticipated it would cause concerns because of the significant height of a substantial number of buildings they wanted."

Rob Stuart, the neighborhood association president, said the original plan was a "non-starter."

Boyd said developers now want to discuss their new ideas for a mega-development that would run along JFK Boulevard and above the rail tracks all the way out to the Schuylkill River with millions of square feet in residences, offices and retail space.

"The whole thing is being redone," Boyd said. "We're just having this meeting because they want to really get the input of the community on what they thought of the past design and then rework things."

Complicating matters for the developers is a law pushed through Council by Clarke that limits the height on buildings to 125 feet, roughly 10 or 11 stories, along Benjamin Franklin Parkway and in the area between 23rd Street and the river where the developers may want to build first.

After urging the developers to slow down and talk with residents, Clarke said today's meeting "may be them coming back with some revisions." Meanwhile, Stuart said his group has hired a professional planner and worked out a deal with the city Planning Commission to develop a plan for the area. Janice Woodcock, executive director of the Planning Commission, said her staff will help the neighborhood group "do a plan that actually tries to resolve conflicts inherent in change and growth on the one hand and neighborhoods on the other.

"If you don't have a good plan that guides growth to where it benefits the city as a whole, then you are leaving it up to the market and the market is imperfect because different people own and control different parts of the city," she said. *