Another $4B in PA taxpayer funds for local, private projects
Your tax dollars at work
The $4 billion latest edition of Pennsylvania's capital budget appropriations bill contains fat cash grants to a string of Philadelphia developers and suburban institutions.
Developer Bart Blatstein's Tower Investments would pick up at least $95 million, for projects including a hotel and parking development at the Piazza at Schmidt's, a hotel and parking facility at 2d and Poplar Sts., and the purchase and redevelopment of the former state office building at Broad and Spring Garden, a project that's been held up for more than a year as Blatstein searched for financing. The state will borrow to help Bart buy the building, and taxpayers will pay it back over the years.
Blatstein tells me he already has the private matching financing in hand to begin work on those three projects. More from my colleague Angela Couloumbis in a story in tomorrow's Inquirer.
Other taxpayer-subsidized plans in the bill, from Gov. Rendell and our state legislators:
$25 million for developer Dennis Maloomian's Village at Valley Forge shopping center, replacing the former Valley Forge golf course
$20 million for developer Albert M. Greenfield's Valhalla Brandywine Project, a private country club and resort in Wallace Township, Chester County.
$25 million for an unnamed developer to build "hotel and/or condominium" units near the Philadelphia Museum of Art
$25 million for another unnamed developer's "mixed-use development on North Broad Street"
$45 million for unnamed facilities the Keystone Industrial Port Complex in Falls Township
$11 million for NorfolkSouthern railroad to build a Navy Yard terminal and a trash-shipping station
$2 million for Spanish windmill-builder Gamesa to build more railroad track at its Langhorne plant
$100 million for a new library at Temple
$62 million for Lincoln University, the historically-black state school near Oxford in Chester County, to renovate Vail, Lincoln, Cresson and Azikiwe-Nkumrah Halls. That's more than legislators put aside for Penn State building projects, in this round.
$30 million for a new Life Sciences Building at Penn
$29 million for the University of Pennsyvlania's planned animal-health diagnostic laboratory at New Bolton Center near Kennett Square. (Plus $33 million for a similar lab at Penn State.)
$20 million for Immaculata Univesrity's new science building
$13 million for Delaware Valley College's new science building
$12 million for LaSalle University's busienss school
$10 million for a new business school at Holy Family University
$10 million for a research facility at Drexel
$3 million for the Lutheran Theological Seminary's Krauth Memorial Library
$10 million for a new Bucks County Welcome Center, by PennDOT
More than $200 million for improvements at Septa's Conshohocken, Croydon, Glenside, Jenkintown, Levittown, Paoli, 69th Street and Villanova stations, and to buy new buses and other equipment
$100 million to redevelop Norristown State Hospital's site
$10 million for a development on Norristown's Fornance Street
$10 milion to redevelop the former Montgomery Hospital in Norristown
$5 million for redevelopment of Norristown's former Sared Heart Hospital
$5 million for Ambler's Main Street project
$5 million for the Nicetown Community Development Corp.'s "revitalization project"
$25 million for Lankenau Hospital expansion
$6.6 million for Holy Redeemer Hospital projects in Montgomery County
$4.8 million for expansion at Aria Health Frankford Campus' emergency room
$3 million for Abington Memorial Hospital projects
More than $100 million for unnmamed developers to build housing, commercial projects and charter schools at more than 10 separate sites in South Philadelphia
$20 million for unnamed "economic development projects" in Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties
$10 million for new buildings at the financially imperiled, state-subsidized Aker Philadlephia Shipyard
$45 million for other, unspecified "facilities" at the former Philadelphia Navy Yard site
$14 million to expand and renovate the National Constitution Center
$20 million for the proposed American Revolution Center
$10 million for the African American Museum
$10 million for The Plaza at Enterprise Heights
$7 million for a supermarket in Brewerytown
$10 million for a medical office buiding at Broad and Olney
$6.6 million for a hangar and terminal at New Garden Flying Field in southern Chester County
$3 million for improvements at what's now being called the Pitcairn-Willow Grove Air Field
$3.6 million for geothermal heating at state-owned Pennsbury Manor, Pennsylvania founder William Penn's Colonial mansion in Bucks County, now surrounded by trash dumps