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Changing Skyline: Time to play hardball on site for Foxwoods
The old-boys club known as the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (yes, they're all men) hardly seems equipped to be making crucial decisions about land use in Philadelphia.
Only one of its 10 members actually lives in the city. A couple of others busy themselves with activities like dairy farming and horse breeding in the more rural parts of the state. One suspects that the board's members would have trouble finding their way around Pennsylvania's largest metropolis without a GPS device.
Yet, late last month, the gaming board issued a surprise edict ordering Foxwoods to move its planned slots parlor from Market Street's commercial core to a Delaware River waterfront greenfield in South Philadelphia. In a single stroke, the board succeeded in wrecking the development prospects for two promising city neighborhoods.
Thanks again, Harrisburg.
Foxwoods' effort to set up a Market Street gambling operation in the elegant spaces of the former Strawbridge & Clothier department store was not without its challenges - or controversy. But the site appealed to a broad constituency who believed that an entertainment use represented the last, best hope for the historic emporium - now going into its fourth year of darkness - as well as a tonic for Philadelphia's ailing retail street.
U.S. department stores are in a perilous state, and the chances of finding a replacement for Strawbridge's grow slimmer by the week. Foxwoods would have not simply filled that retail space, but would have brought it to life - especially at night, when Market Street falls into a deep slumber. The danger now is that the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), which owns the store and the adjacent Gallery mall, will be tempted to pack Strawbridge's three empty floors with 9-to-5 office users, who will simply draw the blinds at closing time.
Meanwhile, over at the waterfront, the gaming board's action effectively imposes a death sentence on the city's dream of creating a lively urban neighborhood. After allowing big-box chain stores to pave over the lush Delaware waterfront, the city at last has a more urban vision for that long stretch of vacant land. The Nutter administration is taking the first steps to extend a grid of housing, parks, and businesses to the water's edge.
But the gaming board and its patron, Gov. Rendell, aren't interested in Philadelphia's dreams. As the board has said repeatedly, its aim is to get Foxwoods' 5,000 slot machines running so it can extract its pound of flesh from the city - 54 percent of the casino's revenue. The board has given the company until December - four months - to produce a design for its 16.5-acre site.
With such a tight schedule, the company is likely to go for expediency and plop a box in a parking lot, just as SugarHouse plans to do on the Delaware a few miles northward. Not only do these big-box, low-budget slots barns take two prime development sites out of the waterfront mix, they set the tone for all future construction there. Why would other developers agree to build urban now?
Worst of all, forcing these boxes onto the waterfront is an antidemocratic slap in the face to the hundreds of people who participated in the PennPraxis waterfront forums in 2007. They also violate City Council's waterfront zoning overlay, passed in June in response to PennPraxis' work.
And all the Nutter administration can do about this is hope that Foxwoods fails to meet the gaming board's deadlines and loses its operating license.
Actually, that may not be such a bad strategy.
Although the gaming board says it awarded Foxwoods one of the city's two slots licenses in 2006 because of its strong financial position, the company has had nothing but money troubles since then. The Mashantucket Pequot tribe, which holds a minority stake in Foxwoods, is nearly bankrupt, while the three main Philadelphia partners - PREIT's Ron Rubin and sports moguls Ed Snider and Lewis Katz - haven't shown eagerness to pick up the slack. Securing bank financing remains a problem.
There's another reason to bet against Foxwoods. In all the years it has been talking up its Philadelphia slots parlor, it has never once produced an architectural design. Even the renderings submitted during the licensing hearings were secondhand, picked up from Harrah's when Foxwoods bought its waterfront site at Reed Street.
"Judging from our experience [with Foxwoods] over the past year, anyone would be skeptical about their capacity to meet the board's requirements," said Alan Greenberger, the city's acting commerce director and chief planner.
Given that track record, Foxwoods is likely to try to persuade the gaming board to let it wriggle out of past commitments, such as road improvements on traffic-clogged Columbus Boulevard. More than ever, the city needs to stand tough with Foxwoods: No more excuses.
If Foxwoods fails, everything involving casinos will be up for grabs. The gaming board will be forced to issue a new license, and that will trigger public hearings. The city must be a real player in that next round. It can do that by designating a single, preferred slots site, rather than leaving it to the applicants. Market Street would be good, but the soon-to-be vacant food-distribution site near the Sports Complex and the airport's former international terminal, both in South Philadelphia, wouldn't be bad.
And if Foxwoods does manage to finance its slots barn? Again, the city needs to hold the company to its promise to alleviate Columbus Boulevard's famous traffic snarls. Since there are just as many reasons to fear the road's widening as the jams, the city may want to propose a trade: What about a light rail line along the boulevard? Could Foxwoods come up with a true urban design for its waterfront site? What about minimizing its proposed 5,000-car garage?
The proposals must come from City Hall. Otherwise, Philadelphia's future rests with the guys from out of town.
Contact architecture critic Inga Saffron at 215-854-2213 or isaffron@phillynews.com.
