Backers of the planned three mile "Rail Park", which would turn the defunct Reading Viaduct and City Branch of the former Reading Railroad into a "three-mile linear park and recreation path" linking the renovated apartment neighborhoods and "Loft District" near North Broad St., Drexel's medical campus, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and nearby hotels to Fairmount Park, plan to gather March 18 at the Union League for a breakfast meeting, sponsored by the Urban Land Institute, "to discuss this transformative project."
A panel led by developers Matt Pestronk (Post Bros.) and Robert Zuritsky (Parkway Corp.) and Friends of the Rail Park board member Michael Garden will hear landscape desginer Patrick Cullina, founding vice president of Manhattan's High Line (he also worked on the Bethlehem Steel redevelopment, New York's High Line and Battery Park City, and Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway), on the concept of railroad retread recreation.
The program will be moderated by James P. Creedon, ex-Pennsylvania state property czar under Gov. Rendell who now heads construction for Temple, where he oversees, for example, the planned bulldozing of the former William Penn High School as the school grows down Broad St. toward Center City
It will cost millions to assemble and redevelop the Rail Park property, which has been partly owned by Septa and partly by the Reading's successor land company. Callowhill St. neighbors refused in 2012 to tax themselves for the project.