Camden's Parkade Building was a monument to the follies of the urban renewal era. A block-long box built atop what had been a park and garden, this unwieldy mashup of parking garage and office building at Fifth and Federal was dysfunctional, ugly, and unloved. And when it was demolished three years ago, few mourned (although city filmmaker Jesse James Jackson Jr's short video, linked below, does offer an elegiac meditation on the Parkade's fall).
The demolition immediately liberated street-level views of the magnificently odd Art Deco milk bottle that is City Hall, and the resulting Roosevelt Park became an instant oasis. It also became home to an ever-growing field of crosses erected to protest the city's skyrocketing homicide rate in 2012.
Lately the carnage has eased and the city is basking in some positive national publicity. So it seems an auspicious time for a 'placemaking' project at Roosevelt Park. As my colleague Julia Terruso reports, $30,000 from the William Penn Foundation helped pay for imaginative 'pop-up' amenities aimed at attracting people and building a bit of buzz.
Unlike the grandiose postwar schemes that obliterated much of downtown Camden, leaving behind a prairie of parking lots, the placemaking project -- guided by the Cooper's Ferry Partnership -- is small and savvy. Like the fresh stirrings of community downtown and in other Camden neighborhoods, it's a start.
--KEVIN RIORDAN