First look at the future of Penn's Landing

In the future, Philadelphians and visitors could make their way from Old City, across I-95 and Columbus Boulevard and down to the Delaware River by passing through a series of "outdoor rooms," with carousels and dog parks, public gardens and amphitheater spaces.

This large bridge of a park would span from Chestnut Street to Walnut Street, from Front Street to the river's edge, said Hargreaves Associaties' Mary Margaret Jones, who presented these ideas from her firm's design work for the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation at a Tuesday night event.

A promenade would provide a north-south tie through the park and beyond, connecting it to the Hyatt Hotel and Seaport Museum to the south and an imagined cluster of mid-rise residential and mixed-use development near Market Street. The promenade would traverse green space, but there would also be commercial and possibly residential development along it as well, though not nearly as dense as at Market Street.

The South Street Pedestrian Bridge would no longer drop walkers off on the west side of Columbus Boulevard. It would span the highway with an arched suspension bridge that would become an iconic gateway, Jones said. A very gradual ramp would spiral down from the raised walkway to The Pier Park below.

The Penn's Landing Basin is where people would have the most contact with the water, she told the crowd at Festival Pier. One possibility: A swimming pool on a barge. The early version of the plan also calls for a waterside cafe.

The project is the largest within the Central Delaware Master Plan, the city's long-range plan to better connect the city and the Delaware River, and to use public projects, such as trails and parks, to promote private development of the waterfront.

Hargreaves is about half-way through the design process. By January, key details such as building massing, cost projections and phasing will be determined, and the ideas presented Tuesday night at Festival Pier will be further detailed.  See the slides from the presentation here.

The entire presentation and most of the QnA are contained in the video below this article.  DRWC and city officials explain what it took to reach this point, and talk about how the project fits in with the city's waterfront goals. Jones' presentation on Hargreaves' ideas so far starts at about the 12:47 mark.  To see the rest of the Q&A, go here.

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