'Floating' boardwalk opens along the Schuylkill's bank

The Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk, an $18 million concrete walkway that seemingly floats atop the Schuylkill with spectacular views of University City and Center City, opened to the public Thursday.

Officials and citizens praised the sleek walkway as an amenity that will endure for generations.

Supported by caissons drilled into the riverbed between Locust and South Streets, the 15-foot-wide walkway is the latest milestone in a years-long effort to convert eight miles of the industrial banks of the Schuylkill into interconnecting walking, cycling, and running trails between the Delaware River and the Fairmount Dam.

With a ramp to the walkway visible behind them, Mayor Nutter, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, and other dignitaries took to a podium under overcast skies to lavish the project with accolades.

"This is one of the great legacy projects we will leave behind," said Rina Cutler, deputy mayor of transportation and utilities, who emceed the ribbon-cutting ceremony near the Locust Street entrance to the boardwalk.

"We are making our city over again," said Fattah, who designated earmarked federal transportation funds for the project in 2006, which helped finance early designs.

Those earmarks, officials said, gave the project enough momentum that it later qualified for far more valuable federal stimulus grants that became available after the financial markets crashed in 2008.

In all, the project received more than $10 million in federal transportation dollars, $3.5 million in state grants, and the balance from contributions to the nonprofit overseeing the trail development effort, the Schuylkill River Development Corp.

"It is a great day, isn't it?" said Gerard T. Sweeney, president and chief executive of Brandywine Realty Trust and chairman of the SRDC board. "Welcome to the boardwalk!"

"Our next big push," Sweeney said, "is extending the trail 1,300 feet down to Christian Street." Work on that would begin in 2015.

The boardwalk connects to a redeveloped trail that has been worked on since 1998, when bulkheading began along portions of the river. Redeveloped segments have opened since 2000 but efforts date back to 1979, when land was first acquired by the city through condemnation.

The 2,000-foot-long boardwalk offers prime vistas of skyscrapers developed by Brandywine Realty that have risen on the west bank of the Schuylkill near the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in recent years: Cira Centre next to 30th Street Station, and the all-glass apartment complex Evo at 30th and Chestnut Streets, which opened in August.

Brandywine also is beginning work on FMC Tower at Cira, an office and residential skyscraper that will rise to 49 stories at 30th and Walnut Streets.

On the east side of the river, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has its eye on building a high-rise campus near the South Street bridge, to complement its main campus across the river in University City.

Boosters of the boardwalk noted Thursday that their vision for this latest stretch - unlike anything else in Philadelphia - would likely have stalled if not for early Congressional earmarks secured by Fattah.

"We've gotten a lot of grants," Mayor Nutter said, "and part of the reason why is the work and focus of Congressman Chaka Fattah."

Starting in 2006 - before a political battle led to the elimination of earmarks on Capitol Hill - Fattah helped secure $3.5 million in Transportation earmarks that were used, partly, to create early designs of the boardwalk, said Joseph Syrnick, president and chief executive of SRDC.

"You couldn't do this project in today's environment," said Fattah, a member of the House's powerful Appropriations Committee.

Fattah downplayed his contributions. In remarks to the assembled crowd, he instead credited Mayor Nutter and others - Nutter by talking up urban transportation funding with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and a citizenry, Fattah said, "that is impatient, that is insistent."

"The credit actually belongs to the people who decided a long time ago that the status quo was unacceptable," said Fattah.

Drawing comparisons to Manhattan's above-street-level High Line walkway, the boardwalk is the latest in $40 million spent so far on converting the banks of the Schuylkill from a forbidding and forgotten freight-line to a stunning outdoor space.

Cutler, whose staff successfully applied for many of the federal grants that helped bring the project home, couldn't help but throw a joyful jab at Philadelphia's neighbor 95 miles to the north.

"With all due respect to the High Line," Cutler said, "this project is fabulous."

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