Inquirer Editorial: CHOP can be a good neighbor

What was once the site of a tank factory and a School District office building may soon be home to a 23-story research center for Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. But the plans have raised good questions about how the neighborhood tucked on the Schuylkill's eastern bank below South Street should evolve.

This is about more than one neighborhood, however. The broader issue is how development in any community should complement the city's comprehensive strategy to restore vitality to areas flirting with decay.

The new leg on the Schuylkill River Trail, which runs from the Art Museum to Locust Street, and soon to the South Street Bridge, has raised hopes for the area where CHOP plans to build. An uptick in population and businesses has already raised the area's status from marginal to thriving.

It's no wonder that the site's neighbors and members of the city's design community are interested in this landmark project. It will certainly influence all future development along the southern Schuylkill.

Some criticism has been directed toward the enormity of the project's first phase, which would erect a skyscraper amid a neighborhood of row houses, placing an imposing structure between residents and the water. An alternative might be a more accomodating mixed-use complex that includes not just the one café that CHOP plans, but an assortment of residential and retail facilities sharing space near research buildings. A vibrant city must make various land uses coexist.

To its credit, CHOP says it is keeping an open mind about the evolving project. Already, it has reduced an area for workers to be dropped off so pedestrians on Schuylkill Avenue will have more space. CHOP has also given the city an easement on land immediately abutting the waterline so the river trail can stick to to its southern course.

The hospital says it is open to considering mixed uses for future phases of the project and to the possibility of providing river access south of the center. That would be in addition to the green space in its plans leading to the water and South Street's bridge ramp to the boardwalk.

The hospital expects to bring about 1,000 well-paid jobs to the community and industry to an idle site. CHOP President Madeline Bell, seeking to allay fears that the research area will become a shadowy cemetery after workers scurry home for the night, said scientists work to their own rhythms, not just 9 to 5.

Meanwhile, the city Planning Commission continues its efforts to re-envision the area. On its to-do list are the types of zoning changes necessary to permit the mixed land uses that post-industrial Philadelphia must have to thrive, particularly along its hidden river.