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City law on transferring parkland requires land swap; Temple offers cash instead
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
City law on transferring parkland requires land swap; Temple offers cash instead
Just last year, City Council passed legislation requiring anyone who wants a plot of city-owned parkland to offer up another piece of land to replace it, noting that "it is vital to the public interest to preserve and protect the City's public park and recreation spaces and ensure that future developments in the City do not result in any net loss of public park and recreation land." Pretty soon, we'll get the first chance to see if, when the right proposal comes along, that admirable principle gets flushed down the Schuylkill.
The proposal in question is from Temple University, which wants to build a 23,000-square-foot boathouse off of Kelly Drive near the East Park Canoe House. The school's crew teams have been operating out of tents and trailers (which is apparently pretty miserable) since the East Park Canoe House was condemned in 2008; a Temple rep told the Inquirer that rehabbing the canoe house itself (which would be allowed under the 2011 law) wasn't an option, because it's not big enough. The hitch: Temple can't meet the law's requirements to provide nearby, comparable property to substitute for the riverside plot. Instead, they're offering $1.5 million to help with the estimated $5 million fix of the East Park Canoe House, and what may be around $1.5 million more to help fix up land in the area that Temple believes is "all but unusable."
You may not have a problem with one of Philly's major universities getting a boathouse, just like its counterparts have a couple miles downriver. But theoretically, the city should: The established price of that plot of land is not the $3 million Temple put on the table, but another plot of land.
Temple's proposal reads: "City Ordinance requires that Temple provide substitute land for the land being transferred, but this is not practicable given the unique nature of the property in question." Which raises the question: Is the unversity's proposal flawed, or was it the legislation itself creating an impossible demand on applicants?
A call to the Parks & Recreation Deputy Commissioner's office wasn't immediately returned this morning. But the proposal includes a letter of support from 4th District Councilman Curtis Jones, among others. There will be a hearing on th proposal Jan. 16. Philadelphia Parks Alliance executive Director Lauren Bornfriend says advocacy groups will be taking a close look at the issue before then. "This is very important: it's the first major test of Philadelphia's new land protection ordinance, and the Parks Alliance is reviewing this very carefully."
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