SugarHouse clears final bureaucratic hurdle

A divided City Planning Commission voted yesterday to approve the new project design for SugarHouse, a casino that will be built on 22 acres along the Delaware River, in Fishtown.

With City Council handing off final approval to the Planning Commission, the 4-2 vote marked the last major bureaucratic hurdle for the long-delayed casino, approved in December 2006 by the state Gaming Control Board.

Two commission members, Nancy Rogo Trainer and Natalia Olson de Savyckyj, derided the SugarHouse plan as "suburban" and wrong for the riverfront.

"It looks like a Wal-mart dressed up," said de Savyckyj. "I really don't think that casinos fit into the waterfront. I just don't think that is going to be the kind of development that's going to catalyze the type of development we want on the waterfront."

During deliberations, Trainer called the plan a "missed opportunity" to develop the riverfront.

"It could be almost anywhere and not on the banks of the Delaware," she said of the design.

The last Planning Commission, appointed by then-Mayor Street, approved the original SugarHouse design 25 months ago but the plan languished as Council and then Mayor Nutter's administration pushed the casino's investors to find a new location.

Nutter and Councilman Frank DiCicco, who this year sponsored zoning for the project, are now on board after a string of pro-casino rulings by the state Supreme Court and a threat from the General Assembly to strip the city of gaming taxes already being used to lower the city's wage tax.

Council unanimously approved the casino zoning two weeks ago. Nutter signed that legislation into law last week.

SugarHouse now plans an interim casino wrapped by parking lots. Profits from the casino, expected to be open with 1,700 slot machines between April and June of next year, will then be used to build a 10-story parking garage on the 22-acre site.

The rest of the project, and possibly hotels, retail space and a performance venue later, will be built around the interim casino.

Two warehouses just north of the site, on Delaware Avenue at Shackamaxon, have been leased for parking. The investors are also negotiating with the Delaware River Waterfront Corp. for parking on a pier near Spring Garden Street during the two-year garage construction.

About a dozen anti-gambling activists and neighborhood residents protested before the hearing and heckled the commission while it considered the project.

Three protestoers read the same short statement when called to testify, criticizing the hearing as a "farce" and SugarHouse as "testament to poor city planning." They tossed onto the stage where the commission sat bags filled with fake money, representing the political influence of the casino investors.

Also tossing a bag of fake money on stage was Debbie King, vice president of the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association.

"If this is built, it will be just an extreme monument to poor planning and the legacy that you are leaving Philadelphia," King told the commission. "I urge you, if you don't have the courage to take a stand against something like this, please resign today." *