City retreats on duck tours

Two months after Mayor Nutter announced that he was handing over a section of Schuylkill Banks park to the amphibious tour operator Ride the Ducks, his administration now says it plans to seek competing proposals from other companies and will consider moving a controversial access ramp.

Administration officials said they reversed course after they belatedly realized that state law requires any concession on city-owned land to be competitively bid. According to Deputy Managing Director Brian Abernathy, a request for proposals will be posted on the city website by Tuesday.

The new process opens up the possibility that a different duck boat operator might propose an alternative launch site, one that does not encroach on the Schuylkill Banks, a popular recreation path. For that reason, the bidding instructions do not specify a location for the boat ramp, Managing Director Richard Negrin said.

"I think there are places on the west side where they [tour boats] might enter," he added.

Ride the Ducks began looking to move its operation to the Schuylkill this summer after one of its boats collided with a tugboat, killing two tourists, on the heavily trafficked Delaware River, where the company had operated since 2002. While the causes of that July 7 accident are still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, and several lawsuits are pending, the Ducks operator now sees the Schuylkill as a safer, less-congested option.

But, as the company soon learned, getting down to the Schuylkill is considerably more difficult than slipping into the Delaware. Rail lines and highways block the water in areas most convenient to connecting with Center City. Although there are several duck boat companies in the United States, it is unclear whether they would want to deal with such a difficult landscape.

Until the city announced plans to open the concession to competitive bidding, Ride the Ducks had been working intensively with Abernathy to finalize a route down to the river through a wooded glade at the Schuylkill Banks' north entrance, just off Martin Luther King Drive.

Abernathy and the Ducks had both refused to disclose the route's details in interviews last month, but The Inquirer recently obtained a copy of the proposal, along with a conceptual map.

It shows that Ride the Ducks had been considering building a sloped trench through the glade, just east of the park's entrance. Very likely, the Ducks would have had to raise the height of the park's asphalt recreation path to allow the trench to angle below it and continue down to the river, which sits about 20 feet below the bank.

The Ducks plan also would have resulted in a dramatic change on King Drive.

If the Schuylkill became its home river, Ride the Ducks planned to run its tour boats crosstown from Independence Mall to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. After pointing out the cultural sites, the bus-sized boats were to loop around Eakins Oval and proceed west on King Drive. To reach the glade, the Ducks suggested that a new U-turn be carved into a traffic island separating the east- and west-bound sides of the drive.

After the rough outlines of the Ducks' concept plan became public last month, Abernathy argued that the glade was the only convenient spot along the lower Schuylkill where the tour boats could access the river.

The Ducks seemed so confident that their scheme would win favor that they hired an engineer, Duffield Associates, to work out the design details. They also amended their website to inform visitors that "splashdown" on the Schuylkill would begin in March.

Now the city appears to have modified its intentions.

In an interview last week, Negrin conceded that there may be several spots along the river where duck boats could enter the water without disturbing the park, which connects with the Kelly Drive path.

"We're proud of this park," Negrin emphasized, adding that no final decisions about the route would be made without community input.

According to Negrin, the city never had any intention of handing the concession to Ride the Ducks.

"The city never announced they [the Ducks] were going to Schuylkill. What we announced was that we would look at the options," he argued. That map, he said, "is just a proposal."

His account differs, however, from the impression given in the city's own news release. On Sept. 29, the city and Ride the Ducks issued a joint statement announcing that the company would move its operation to the Schuylkill.

After stating that the company's safety protocols had been "reaffirmed" by the Coast Guard, the release quoted Mayor Nutter as saying, "I am pleased the Ducks will resume operations on the Schuylkill River."

The mayor's quote continued, "I believe this route will offer an interesting tour experience for Philadelphia visitors and residents."

After the joint statement became public, Jonathan Bari, who runs a competing company, the Constitutional Walking Tour of Philadelphia, filed a Right to Know request in an attempt to learn the city's intentions. He received a package of documents relating to the city's discussions with the Duck operator, including the map showing the location of the proposed trench.

Bari, who has filed a lawsuit claiming that the Independence Visitor Center gave preferential treatment to his competitors, also obtained a lengthy e-mail exchange between city officials and Ride the Ducks. Several of those e-mails are devoted to the Sept. 29 news release. They indicate that Ride the Ducks officials pretty much wrote the statement.

At one point, the company's vice president and director of marketing, Bob Salmon, even offered to craft the mayor's quote himself, although he then added, "This is something you may want to write."

In an interview Monday, Salmon said he could not remember who wrote the news release or provided the mayor's quote.

Abernathy says the confusion relating to the city's arrangement with Ride the Ducks is attributable to "a miscommunication on our end. I made a mistake."

Salmon said he was not disappointed by the city's decision to open the concession to public bidding.

"Clearly, when we first started having conversations with the city, we did not realize there would be an RFP [request for proposals] process," he said. "We will abide by the rules."

Despite the city's decision to open the process to competitive bidding, Bari said he wasn't satisfied. "I see lots and lots of problems," he said, "and there has never been one hearing about any of this."