$1 million grant propelling Pier 11 park plans forward

Plans for a park on the Delaware waterfront's dilapidated Pier 11 are well under way thanks to a $1 million grant from the William Penn Foundation, city officials announced yesterday.

At a news conference at the pier, Mayor Nutter, City Councilman Frank DiCicco and William Penn Foundation President Feather Houstoun touted progress in several waterfront developments, including the park, a recreational trail and a formal master plan for the riverfront.

Over the past 30 years, several redevelopment plans have been proposed but little has come of them.

The Penn's Landing Corporation, which was plagued by accusations of corruption and secrecy, was recently dissolved to make way for the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation.

But Andy Altman, deputy mayor for planning and economic development and chairman of the new planning group, said that the latest effort will produce results.

"We are starting off differently," he said. "You have to do it piece by piece and mile by mile."

As plans for two casinos and a horde of condo towers along the Delaware were announced in recent years, neighborhood groups and planning advocates clamored for a master plan for riverfront development.

The economic downturn stalled all but a handful of the residential projects and neighborhood opposition prompted one of the casinos, Foxwoods, to consider locating at the Gallery mall instead of Columbus Avenue and Reed Street. The other casino, SugarHouse, intends to stay at its site farther up the river near Frankford Avenue.

Meanwhile, Penn Praxis, a branch of the University of Pennsylvania's design school, created the Action Plan for the Central Delaware, which covers the seven-mile stretch of the waterfront from Oregon to Allegheny avenues.

According to Penn Praxis' executive director, Harris Steinberg, the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, which is responsible for carrying out Penn Praxis' plans, is more efficient and takes public opinion into account.

"The old corporation had lost the public's trust," Steinberg said.

The plan calls for the creation of a number of parks like Pier 11, which for now is a rotting wood deck covered in overgrown shrubs and weeds under the Ben Franklin Bridge at Race Street and Columbus Boulevard.

"We want it to look like the piers on the west bank of the Hudson River," Altman said.

The park's design is only a tentative blueprint, but the planning agency will hire landscape architects in the coming weeks to draw up a final design planned to be released this month, officials said.

DiCicco said he plans to introduce to City Council on Thursday a zoning bill that would protect public access to the river and set guidelines for future development.

"As you can tell, we're pretty excited about this," Nutter said. "There's still a lot of work to do." *