Camden's newest next big thing will be an $82 million waterfront practice palace for the 76ers.
I'm glad that many folks in this rather sad old town are thrilled to have landed a brand-name development. But I'm troubled by the resiliency of the myth of the megaproject.
Consider the Commerce Building, an eight-story landmark at Broadway and Federal. Vacant for decades (the bustling ground-floor pizzeria is pretty much the sole slice of life), the building was once hailed as the salvation of downtown. And the notion that buildings alone can rebuild a community has stubbornly endured.
Perhaps that's because so much of downtown has lain fallow since being obliterated by various redevelopment schemes, most of them grandiose, ill-advised and unrealized, in the 1960s and '70s. What's been built is a smattering of 'object' structures -- solo acts that are set back from the street, far apart from each other and disconnected from their surroundings. These institutional, non-profit, publicly subsidized developments are lonely islands amid a sea of parking lots and too-broad boulevards.
So I'm more heartened by the city's newest neighborhood planning effort, launched Tuesday, than by the prospect of a (purportedly) job-creating and, undoubtedly, thoroughly fortified NBA outpost. The Cooper-Grant/Central Waterfront Neighborhood Plan promises not grand edifices, but a process to tap into and connect the clusters of residents, churches and other elements of community life that have survived -- despite the megaprojects around them.
--KEVIN RIORDAN