A look at the design chosen to reconnect Chinatown over the Vine Street Expressway
In 1966, residents heard that a highway was going to be built through Chinatown. Now, a plan to restitch the neighborhood together has a chosen design to go forward — but it still needs funding.
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The Chinatown Stitch Project, which aims to reconnect areas of the community bisected by the Vine Street Expressway, has a chosen design that will partially cap the highway from 10th to 13th Streets.
The plan — a partnership between the city and the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. (PCDC) — would reconnect the commercial center of Chinatown to the northern part of the neighborhood, where many residents live. Cost of construction is estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The journey to get here spans 57 years,” said John Chin, executive director of PCDC, standing with city officials at the Crane Community Center of Chinatown on Tuesday with the expressway visible behind him.
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In 1966, the neighborhood got word of plans to build a highway through Chinatown, he said. Since then, three generations of residents have lived with it.
In September three possible designs were unveiled, taking into account community feedback. The designs ranged in their expected cost and construction difficulty, but all included ways to cover part of the Vine Street Expressway and potentially connect the built area with the development of an expanded Rail Park in the future.
The design announced Tuesday caps about 2½ blocks of the expressway between 10th and 13th Streets. It was chosen in part because of its minimized construction impact and cost, said Christopher Puchalsky, director of policy and strategic initiatives for the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability.
Chinatown is the only neighborhood in Philadelphia without a public green space within its borders, said City Councilmember Mark Squilla, who represents the 1st District, which includes Chinatown. Ongoing planning for the project includes designing spaces that could include areas for recreational sports and green space.
Funding is needed to bring the Chinatown Stitch Project to life. Improvements to local lanes of Vine Street and phase one of construction on the section of the project from 10th Street to west of 11th Street would cost $160 million, Puchalsky said.
Project officials are working on securing federal funding. The Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law made funds available for projects that reconnect communities separated by the construction of transportation infrastructure.
If all of the funding is secured, construction could begin in 2027. The project would take three to four years to complete.
“This highway, since it was constructed, constitutes a scar in our Chinatown neighborhood,” said Mike Carroll, deputy managing director for the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability. “It represents a chapter in our nation in our city’s history that we want to rectify.”