Users want more say in expansion plan for Schuylkill Banks park

If a good park is defined by the variety of users it attracts, then Schuylkill Banks in Center City is one of the best. On any given day, the narrow waterfront trail is crammed with strollers, joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, Segway riders, sunbathers, and people just trying to find a quiet spot to read a book.

So perhaps it is no surprise that some of those users want a bigger say in how Schuylkill Banks handles its first major expansion since it opened 10 years ago as a no-frills asphalt strip linking Martin Luther King Drive to Locust Street.

With only days to go before the city starts construction of the first of several improvements - a 680-foot pedestrian bridge over the CSX rail tracks at Locust - various constituencies are mobilizing to stop, or delay, the $5.8 million project.

Some fear the bridge's concrete ramps will loom like a wall over the recreation path. Others say the span should be rerouted to spare mature trees in a community park adjacent to the waterfront trail. The loudest opposition comes from pet owners, who complain the bridge will compromise their dog park. They have hired a lawyer and say they will seek a temporary injunction against the project.

"Many people bought houses in the neighborhood because of the dog park," said Damon K. Roberts, attorney for the pet owners. "There are not adequate provisions for what happens during two years that the pedestrian bridge is being built."

Anticipating the boisterous free-for-all, the city already had scheduled a public meeting for Monday evening at the Trinity Center for Urban Life to discuss the connector bridge. Construction is to begin Tuesday.

The bridge has been in the design phase for more than five years, and Fairmount Park Director Mark Focht noted that this would be third community meeting to explain the project.

As a result of the sessions, Focht said, the city is spending $2 million from the project's budget to replace lost trees, improve the dog park, and reconstruct parkland damaged by construction.

Roberts said the dog owners had not been allowed sufficient input into plans for the dog park, which Focht said would be significantly enlarged and equipped with state-of-the-art irrigation to flush dog waste from the surface.

The steel-and-concrete bridge will start at the Locust Street circle, cross over the tracks, then run parallel to them until it sets down in the adjacent community park, between the dog park and basketball court. The project is funded with federal stimulus money, and is expected to be finished in the fall of 2012.

The city was forced to build the structure after CSX sued, saying the park's two street-level entrances were unsafe because people had to cross CSX's tracks to use them.

In a 2007 settlement, CSX agreed to let park users cross its tracks if the city built safety gates at the Locust and Race Street entrances. The compromise also required the city to build an alternative entrance over the tracks at Locust, the busier of the two grade crossings. Some thought the city had given away too much in those negotiations, especially since CSX also won the right to build a new spur at 33d and Thompson Streets.

The waterfront park had a perfect safety record until March, when a mysterious 1 a.m. accident at the Race Street entrance killed a man in a wheelchair. Still, Adam Schneider, president of the Center City Residents' Association, argued that the planned safety gates should be enough to prevent accidents.

"The demand for the pedestrian bridge is crazy," he said, even while acknowledging that it was too late to stop it. "We're not going to undo this project now. You can't put the genie back in the bottle."

Although the bridge will be an intrusion, said Russell Meddin, a founder of the Schuylkill River Park Alliance, a friends group, the park ultimately benefits. The bridge will let bicyclists cross the tracks even when trains block Locust, and it will be lavishly landscaped and lighted.

If the bridge was controversial, a planned expansion of the park trail may prove even more so. The Schuylkill River Development Corp., which manages the waterfront park, will seek bids this summer to extend the trail to the South Street Bridge. Because there is so little land west of the CSX trains, the city plans to build a boardwalk south of Locust.

The 16-foot-wide pathway will float about 40 feet from shore.

With 25,000 people a week now jostling for space on the park's trail, many expect even bigger crowds once the boardwalk opens in fall 2013.