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SugarHouse gets go-ahead to build on waterfront
The Philadelphia City Planning Commission yesterday gave the SugarHouse Casino project the last approval it needed to begin construction of what could be the city's first slots parlor.
SugarHouse expects to break ground at the 22-acre site on Delaware Avenue in Northern Liberties and Fishtown at the end of August, said Leigh Whitaker, a casino spokeswoman.
The casino has told state gaming regulators it expects to open by spring with 1,700 slot machines.
"This is the last hurdle we had to overcome to start construction," Whitaker said.
The project will be built in three stages: an interim casino followed by an expanded gaming facility with a 10-story garage and, finally, additional hotels and retail space.
While the SugarHouse Casino moves forward, the status of the Foxwoods Casino remains unclear.
Foxwoods wants to open a downtown casino at the old Strawbridge's department store at 801 Market St., but still has no lease. The developers have asked state regulators for an extension on their slots license.
Both projects were approved by the state in 2006, but have faced years of challenges from residents and some politicians.
In April, SugarHouse changed its design, and the modifications needed new approval from the planning commission.
The revised design calls for a scaled-down, single-story interim casino surrounded by surface parking for 1,430 cars. The developers have simplified the entranceway and eliminated an elevated promenade that hung over the Delaware River. Instead, the project will maintain the natural river's edge and have two tiers of walkways for pedestrians, said Ian Cope, of Cope Linder Architects.
Cope told the commission that the building would be set 50 feet from the water's edge. An upper walkway would be 15 feet wide, separated by landscaping from a lower walkway, which would be 8 feet wide.
Yesterday's 4-2 vote came amid sharp criticism from dissenting commissioners.
Natalia Olson de Savyckyj, an urban planner appointed by Mayor Nutter, called the casino "a dressed up Wal-Mart or Home Depot" that did not fit the city's new vision for the waterfront.
She said public hearings conducted last year by the PennPraxis urban design group had come up with a plan to better integrate the waterfront into the cityscape and make the waterfront more accessible to the public.
Nancy Rogo Trainer, an architect and another Nutter appointee, said the SugarHouse project was "a missed opportunity."
The revised design, with its acres of blacktop parking and big-box design, "could be anywhere and not necessarily on the banks of the Delaware," Trainer said.
Cope, the architect, told commissioners that a later phase of the project would bring buildings right up to the curb of Delaware Avenue and create more of an urban feel.
He added that the casino would phase out surface parking once it began building a 10-story garage.
Unlike previous hearings on casino issues, the meeting at the Natural History Museum drew only a few dozen anti-casino activists.
In testimony before commissioners, four of them repeated the same words, calling the proceeding a "farce" and saying an approval of the redesign "was clear testament of poor city planning."
Each activist then threw a plastic bag of fake money on the stage. On Monday, Common Cause of Pennsylvania reported that casino-industry interests had contributed more than $4.3 million in the last seven years to candidates and political committees in Pennsylvania.
Matt Ruben, president of the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association, complained to commissioners that the new design would create "an ocean of surface parking."
On top of that, he said, the Delaware River Waterfront Corp. is talking to SugarHouse about leasing land at the old incinerator site on the waterfront at Spring Garden Street for a temporary casino parking lot.
Ruben said that could tie up that prime city-controlled land as a parking lot for three to four years.
"They're replaying a tale of woe on the waterfront," Ruben said.
Contact staff writer Jennifer Lin at 215-854-5659 or jlin@phillynews.com.
