Week 7 in Review (April 18 - 24)

I’m really excited about the buzz that my blog is creating, even if it’s among my own friends.  I currently have over 700 page views.  That seem like a lot to me.  Thanks all for reading. 

This past week was really busy for me, I had a job interview, a small project to work on and I moved.  However I somehow ended up cycling almost 30 miles!  Mostly through Center City, and West Philly.  Below is a map of my week’s worth of travels.

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
7	29.3	133	13.23	1,563

I’ve only slightly increased my percentage of Philadelphia to 9.92%. Once I get settled I plan on biking a bit more. 

Again thanks all for reading and make sure you check out the new Geographic Analysis page.   It’s full of useless biking data J

Industrial Philadelphia: Lower North Delaware and Hunting Park East

This post is a continuation of the epic bike ride I took through the northeast. On that ride I biked through two industrial areas: the area that is just north of Fishtown along the Lower Delaware River and Hunting Park East. This conveniently (and nerd-aly) allows me to compare the two areas in a very plannertastic way.  Additionally, while doing research on this ride I came across an amazing Industrial Land Atlas allowing me to really geek out.  The atlas was prepared for the City of Philadelphia by the innovative planning and design firm, Interface Studios. I love these guys; they do some amazing work and have some of the most compelling and well designed infrographics.  Anyway, with this atlas I was able to really understand both areas.  I was inspired to make a map for this post. The following is a map of the two industrial areas and my bike ride for reference.

Lower Delaware Industrial Area

The Lower Delaware Industrial Area area stretches from the under-utilized Delaware Generating Station (near Penn Treaty Park, where I left off last post) to just north of the Betsy Ross Bridge, about 4 miles long.  According to the Industrial Land Atlas the area is approx. 950 acres with a land vacancy rate of 19%, a tad bit higher than the city’s average of 8.1%.  

Part of the reason for such high vacancy is the area contains one of the largest vacant parcels in the city, the former William Cramp and Sons Shipyard.  Dating back to 1825, the yard built the first battleship in the U.S. Navy, the USS Indiana and some of the first major American-built ocean liners.  The yard was sold in the 1920s and closed shortly thereafter, only to be reopened during World War II in order to build destroyers and submarines.  The yard officially closed in 1947 and has practically remained vacant ever since. In 2004, Pinnacle Entertainment proposed building a casino on the site, but the plan was abandoned and SugarHouse was late developed. Today the site has reverted back to natural grassland with a few trees having popped up throughout the decades. Along the edge of the site (where Beach and Richmond streets intersect) the roads are hard to maneuver and completely trash strewn.  However on the sunny day I went there were families traversing the cobblestone street on their way to Penn Treaty Park.  If that doesn’t show latent demand for a greenway I’m not sure what does! 

As I biked further north along Richmond Ave, then eventually along Delaware Ave again, I found areas that were still productive industrial uses, huge uses. Some of the highlights area as follows:

Riverside Material, at the corner of Richmond and Allegheny, a company specializing in asphalt materials. The company occupies only a small portion of a land parcel on which was home to the Reading Company’s terminus for anthracite coal. 

Westway/Kinder Morgan Petroleum terminals, I don’t have much information on the area but I have this awesome picture that shows a bridge of pipes that cross the extremely wide Delaware Ave. 

Tioga Marine Terminal, a 116 acre shipyard that is fairly active.  According to the Industrial Land Atlas a fun fact is that the terminal is home to ships that bring much of the region’s fruit in from Chile. 

A large waste water treatment plant

Lastly the Richmond Generating Station, an abandoned relic similar to the Delaware Generating Station that is used only during peak load periods.  It has been the back drop for two movies filmed in the area:  12 Monkeys and the Decepticons’ lair in Transformers 2.  Unfortunately I have no good pictures of the building.

Further past the intersection of Lewis and Delaware is a bridge over the Frankford Creek which looks like it was built by a local Boy Scout troop. I, of course, had the desire to check it out.  After biking through a puddle, crossing the bridge, and snapping a few photos, I came face to face with TWO semi-trucks attempting to cross the rickety bridge.  It was scurry.

An interesting point in this ride along the Delaware was the discovery of a small park, at the end of Allegheny Ave, named Pulaski Park. Named after a Polish commander in the American Revolution the half acre sliver is owned by the New Kensington CDC and seemingly used primarily for fishing. The park is about as forgotten as the person for whom it’s named.  With geometric mounds and very straight paths that lead to a rather bland plaza, the park looks as if it was designed in the 1970s and hasn’t really been touched since (with the exception of a new-looking railing along the river).  There are no trees in the tree wells, two benches, one of which is busted, and an area of rocks which you could go down onto through a 7 foot chain link fence. Additionally, I was fortunate to be in the presence of a very grumpy fisherman (pictured) and an odd many doing some sort of yoga on the rocks/tires below. 

Hunting Park East

After journeying through several non-industrial neighborhoods I ended up at the corner of Luzerne and I Streets and the edge of the Hunting Park East industrial area. Sidenote: Who knew that Philly had lettered streets? AND they go all the way to O St. in the neighborhood of Juniata. This area is located between the Juniata and Hunting Park neighborhoods of North Philadelphia, just west of the Frankford Creek.  According to my research the area is 821 acres and is privy to a considerably lower land vacancy rate than the Lower Delaware, 10%

One of the fun facts I learned from the Industrial Land Atlas is that the area is home to one of the nation’s largest Coca-Cola bottling plant/distribution center, along G St. between Erie and Luzerne Avenues. The plant produces 30 million bottles of Coke a year and employs 1,200 people. I guess that would have been a serious closure if Coca-Cola went through with their threat if the soda tax was passed, luckily it wasn't. The area has much smaller industrial parcels and therefore many more business scattered among its acreage. Some of the larger manufactures/warehouses are: Conoco Phillips, Case Paper Company and J.B. Hunt Distribution Center.  In addition to the smaller parcels, the lower land vacancy rate and the fact that the area is sandwiched between two dense neighborhoods gives the Hunting Park East industrial area a much more diverse feel than the Lower Delaware.  It’s more vibrant in a way, scattered among the industrial buildings are shopping centers, school and civic buildings attracting much more traffic than found along Delaware Ave.  This provided quite the quandary for me on my bike as people were much less aware of their surroundings as they sailed down Luzerne Ave, but there were many more cars for me to watch. 

One last note, even though the Frankford Creek lies east of the industrial area, it is just as disgusting if not more so than when it enters the Delaware.  In fact, it’s like a mini-L.A. River in this area. 

Week 6 in Review (April 11-17)

Even though it was really nice this past week, I only had a few miscellaneous rides.  I think that I’m still thinking of last year when I was working and bike commuting I biked 10 -15 times a week and therefore am disappointed when I only have 1-3.  However one of the rides this week was a trip along the Schuylkill.  A nice ride to the Falls Bridge and back, except that the day I went it was beautiful and there were SOOO many people on the trail, so many that I watched a biker hit and unsuspecting and over-dramatic pedestrian.  Therefore, I decided I’d rather chance it with cars and cycle back via University City.  

Routes	Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
2	15.1	65	14.0	758

I’ve now biked through 9.48% of Philadelphia!  Insane. 

I’m still working on a separate neighborhood section so I haven’t calculated any updates for that. Coming soon, hopefully. 

A Journey through the Philadelphia Navy Yard

I know I haven’t finished my other bike ride yet, there are more blog posts coming about it.  However, last Friday my friend Zack and I decided to take a trip to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and honestly I’m more interested in writing about it right now. We had tried this trip a few months back but it was during a weekend and the Navy Yard is apparently closed to visitors on weekends.

On this sunny, yet very windy day, Zack and I set off through Point Breeze down 24^th St. and then followed 20^th St. to FDR Park, practically to the entrance of the Navy Yard on South Broad.  

All in all the stats and route for this ride is below:

http://www.dailymile.com/people/Jerome9883/entries/6537849

Miles	Minutes	Speed	Calories Burned
14.3	85	10.1	1,023

The Philadelphia Navy Yard is not actually owned by the U.S. Navy anymore; it was decommissioned in 1991. Even though Philadelphia is the where the U.S. Navy began, the Navy Yard’s current location is only 140 years old. The yard moved from Southwark (Columbus and Reed) to what is/was known as League Island, over time the island was enlarged and isn’t really an island anymore. In the height of World War II, the U.S. Navy employed more than 50,000 people at the navy yard.  These workers helped to build 53 ships, including the famed New Jersey (docked in Camden, NJ as a museum) and the Wisconsin (docked in Norfolk, VA as a museum).  By the 1980s the yard employed less than 10,000 people and was recommended for closure by George H.W. Bush in 1991.  Although it was delayed the yard was closed in 1996 and sold to the City of Philadelphia in 2000. 

In 2004, Robert A.M. Stern Architects prepared and presented a master plan for the Philadelphia Industrial Corporation (PIDC) who manages the yard’s redevelopment.  The crux of the plan calls for a transformation of the 1,200 acre site into a business development center, with a focus on research and development, corporate and industrial offices. The plan additionally calls for some residential, commercial spaces. In total, an additional 12 million square feet will be built, home to potentially 20,000 new jobs.

The Navy Yard currently consists of several companies.  Aker’s shipbuilding yard and Tasty Baking Co.’s main bakery is located to the far east of the site, along with several NAVSEA operations (the Navy still has several offices in the yard even though it’s not owned by it anymore). Located in the historic core is the corporate headquarters for Urban Outfitters, several other Navy offices and various Jefferson health clinics. To the north, near the entrance is a PNC corporate office and headquarters for Tasty Baking Co.  Recently, PIDC has been successful in attracting several other future tenants, most notably the corporate headquarters of Glaxo Smith Kline and a $130 million innovation hub developed and managed by Penn State University. 

Even though the Navy Yard is brimming with new development the site is filled with abandoned and underutilized buildings and surrounded by several large ships.  Additionally PIDC has spent millions in infrastructure upgrades, including streets and sidewalks, along large dirt and grass filled development sites. It is by far one of the more interesting places I’ve been in Philly.

Zack and I began our tour of the Navy Yard with a stop at the Urban Outfitter’s restaurant, Café 543.  It is a delicious place in the heart of the Urban Outfitters corporate campus that is a great excuse to spend $14 on lunch.  Urban Outfitters was the first corporate office to move to the Navy Yard in 2006.  It began by readapting a few of the old industrial buildings along the Delaware into trendy loft office spaces. It is currently 5 buildings, 264,000 sq. ft, and employs more than 1,300 people. A few months ago, the company announced that it’s going to expand again, adding 1,000 new employees and an extra 100,000 square feet over the next 5 years.

Most recently the company has taken an old dry dock and created a floating garden and park in the center of its campus.  Although the plants in the floating garden were nowhere near blooming, the park is absolutely gorgeous, set in amongst the hub-bub of urban outfitters employees and large abandoned aircraft carriers. 

There are several peculiar elements, strewn throughout the landscape of the campus, fitting for a company based on quirky and eccentric fashions.  Bright chairs and reclaimed wood tables surround the floating gardens and café. A forest of trees is alongside the main building, growing through the broken up concrete of the old industrial site. Even the trash cans and bollards contain elements of the industrial past. 

Their bicycle racks were so unconventional that I made Zack go to other ones because I couldn’t figure out how to lock my bike.  Apparently the company has a bike-share policy where employees can take a bike to ride around and then just return it when finished and then they lock them up at night.   

After biking trough the Urban Outfitters’ campus we biked down a road along the Delaware where the wind was so strong it felt like we could get off and walk our bikes faster. We eventually got to a large abandoned airplane hanger, which at one point was converted into a commissary. Currently it functions as a movie set from time to time.

We also found this goose that was not enjoying the wind either.

From there we ventured into an abandoned residential development that was used as barracks at one point. At the beginning it didn’t seem that creepy but the further we biked into this 1970s housing development and the more broken out and collapsing apartments we saw, the creepiness set in.  Zack was adamant that some crack head was going to jump out. However I’m not sure what a crack head would be doing in this area.  It’d be a pretty isolating place seeing that we were a good mile from the main part of the yard and the Navy Yard is a good mile from anything else.

We did eventually came across a place where someone had set a car on fire and it had exploded, taken out the entire car and sending shrapnel into the surrounding buildings. 

We eventually ended up at the far end of the abandoned airstrip, along with two people making out (heavily) in a car. Awkward.  After biking up the windy airstrip we ended the ride by the corporate offices of Tasty Baking Co. and PNC, two of the city’s first LEED Gold certified buildings. 

Tuckered and overwhelmed by everything I just saw we headed back up through Point Breeze, back to civilization.  

A Spring Tour of the Central Delaware Waterfront

The beginning of this epic ride began with a warm, sunny 74 degrees and so many trees with spring flowers it was like riding an allergy cloud.  Despite the sniffles it was absolutely gorgeous!  I took the ever popular Pine Street bike lane all the way to Front Street, over I-95 to Penn’s Landing. Even the ominous, expansive Columbus Blvd. was decked out in spring colors; attracting birds, bees and even bikers!

Penn’s Landing/the Center City waterfront has some interesting bike infrastructure. First off the place is not very friendly for anyone who is not in four wheel vehicle; it includes a freeway and a six lane “boulevard”. In full disclosure, I have a personal beef with the Penn’s Landing as I think the concrete and asphalt design is the WORST festival space ever, one of the main functions it is billed as. In the summer when the city is 92, Penn’s Landing easily has to be 112, and it’s on the water. Anyway, apart from my personal feelings the area has TWO bike”ways” thorugh it. First, there are the standard 4 foot bike lanes adjacent to the lanes of traffic along Columbus Blvd. Then there is an awkward, yet valiant, attempt of a bike path along the river cutting through Penn’s Landing’s promenades. This path was very recently opened (Early 2010) and is a part of the  Center City District's efforts to reprogram the waterfront and make it more user-friendly.  The trail begins as an off-road, multi-use trail behind Wal-Mart at Pier 70 and continues off-road until Reed Street. Then the path becomes a blundering painted swath along the boulevard’s sidewalk until it ends currently around Race Street.  

Speaking Race Street, I biked past the new Race Street Pier which is well into final construction stages for its May opening. This project is probably one of the most innovative and hopefully transformative projects along the Central Delaware River. The pier, formally known as Pier 11, was an abandoned finger pier that is best known for as the area where the Duck Boat tours previously launched into the river and being directly next to the Ben Franklin Bridge.

As part of the Civic Vision for the Central Delaware Plan, the Delaware Riverfront Corporation led a design contest for the multi-million dollar project. The final design by the renowned landscape architecture firm Field Operations was chosen in 2010. The pier is on par with the type of design that is found along the High Line in New York City, another one of Field Operations’ project. When finished the space will have essentially two parts, a gradually rising promenade and a passive lawn area. 

Continuing up Columbus Blvd/N. Delaware Ave I abandoned the sidewalk for the bike lane and veered right onto Penn Street, home of the Waterfront Square monstrosity.  Now if there wasn’t enough to dislike about this place: the disregard for scale, the deficit of public waterfront land, the uninspired architecture, there also is a lack of infrastructure upgrade. I’m not really sure how such a huge development got away without repairing the road right outside of of its gates. When attempting to sell condos for $600,000 one would expect that you wouldn’t get a flat when leaving your abode. Maybe they wouldn’t be on the auction block if they repaired the road…nah, that's wishful thinking.

On the other hand Waterfront Square's neighbor, SugarHouse [Casino], has a surprisingly lovely public path along the river; if one can find it through the sea of parking. For those of you unfamiliar with the Philadelphia casino battle, in short, SugarHouse is one of the two casinos that were placed in the city when the state passed gambling legislation in 2004. While the six-year battle to rid the city of casinos has successfully been able to revoke one of the licenses, SugarHouse opened in late 2010 to the chagrin of many city officials and residents. The current building is actually meant to be a temporary structure from my understanding. A more permanent, larger, structure will be constructed when/if there is a market for a hotel and meeting space. For now we are left with a building that is a spruced up Home Depot. 

After biking through the parking lots and then back up to Delaware Ave. I noticed the asphalt pathway that was beckoning. Running along the main entrance to the casino and past a stormwater runoff ditch, the path led to a little urban oasis

 The “path” consists of a wide promenade with benches placed along the northwest side to overlook the river. Along the southeast side of the main promenade is a wavering strip of gravel running down a rocky, fenced-off shoreline. In between the two paths is a landscaped buffer with fairly mature trees and lighting. The whole area has a relatively peaceful air about it despite being next to a casino; it is probably different at night.  There are also some amenities that boggled my mind, like bike racks.

Along the river is an array of industrial ruins, pylons for old dilapidated piers and a cluster of old industrial pipes. While unsuccessfully researching what these pipes are/were used for I came across two interesting facts. First fact, the Jack Frost Sugar Refinery that used to stand on the site was HUGE. It was an 18 building complex (some buildings were 10 stories) and in its heyday employed 1,500 people. Also, there is an annual magazine for casino design. One of those facts is more interesting than the other. However, all I could surmise about the pipes is that they are remnants of bygones past and don’t do much now. 

Jack Frost Sugar Refinery in the 1990s
Credit to: myng_arlong on Flickr

Practically right next to the casino is the only large area of green space one can currently find on the Central Delaware, Penn Treaty Park.  Situated next to an aging power plant and the former site of a massive sugar refinery, this swath of green has actually been a park since the late 19^th century.  As the name indicates the park is the supposed spot where William Penn signed a treaty with the Native Americans, in the 1680s. In old paintings Penn is standing under a great Elm tree, well currently there is an obelisk that stands in the same spot. 

The park is roughly seven acres and is managed by the Friends of Penn Treaty Park. It is a fairly passive park with much of its area dedicated to lawn. There are a few picnic tables and a playground next to the obelisk on the north side of the park. Along the river is a rocky shoreline one can step out onto for a spectacular view of the Ben Franklin Bridge and Camden. 

That concludes the tour of the Central Delaware. Next topic is the industrial lands that lie further north beyond the power plant.