Philly moves to wrest control of the Reading Viaduct from its litigious owner and create its own High Line

It’s been 15 years since New York transformed an obsolete railroad trestle into a mile-long catwalk for modern flaneurs and made every other American city jealous.

Atlanta and Chicago soon followed with their own versions of the High Line. Their elevated parks function as green skyways, allowing cyclists and pedestrians to navigate the city high above the traffic.

Philadelphia also has a decrepit railroad trestle that would make a great High Line, the Reading Viaduct. While activists have been working on the project since 2004, the city has managed to complete only a modest, 1,300-foot segment on an adjacent rail spur.

To this day, the nearly mile-long viaduct, which starts at Vine Street in the Callowhill section and terminates at Fairmount Avenue in Poplar, remains a looming eyesore.

Philadelphia’s lack of progress can be pinned almost entirely on the viaduct’s recalcitrant owner, Reading International. Over the last two decades, city officials have tried repeatedly to buy the structure from Reading. The city has even sent emissaries to the company’s Los Angeles offices to make the case directly to Reading’s executives.

At one point, the administration of Michael Nutter attempted to use foreclosure to gain control of the viaduct, citing years of unpaid property taxes. Reading sent the city a check.

Now Philadelphia is about to bring out the big guns. In June, Councilmember Mark Squilla quietly introduced a bill authorizing the city to acquire the steel-and-stone viaduct by any means necessary, including condemnation.

The legislation specifically deputizes the Center City District (CCD) to lead the delicate discussions with Reading, with CEO Paul Levy at the head of the negotiating team.

Never mind that Levy is retiring from the CCD at the end of 2023 after nearly 30 years at the helm of the downtown business district. For Levy, wresting control of the viaduct from Reading is personal, a matter of unfinished business.

Levy was part of the team that met with Reading officials in Los Angeles a decade ago. It was Levy who finally succeeded in transforming a 1,300-foot rail spur — then owned by SEPTA, not Reading — into a sort of mini-High Line in 2018. Named the Rail Park, it’s really more of a landscaped ramp than a true elevated park.

During a long interview, Levy described the viaduct as the capstone to his career at the CCD and said he intended to devote himself to the project until Philadelphia gets its high line.

Levy has promised city officials that he will raise the full amount needed to turn the viaduct into a usable park, a figure that could easily exceed $35 million. Once the greenway is finished, he says, he will hand the viaduct over to the Rail Park’s nonprofit manager to operate.

“I’m optimistic,” Levy told me. But there’s no doubt that many hurdles remain before Philadelphians will be able to enjoy their own high line, starting with the people who run Reading International.

Although it inherited its name from the former Reading Railroad, the company has no real connection to Philadelphia — and appears to feel no obligations to the city.

When the Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy in the ‘70s, its network of tracks was divided between Conrail and SEPTA. It wasn’t until the ‘80s that an enterprising Los Angeles lawyer named James Cotter acquired Reading’s remaining assets, primarily as a way to leverage financing for an international chain of movie theaters.

Somehow the viaduct, which had been made obsolete by the opening of an underground rail tunnel in 1984, was part of the package.

Since then, Reading International has largely ignored Philadelphia and the real estate that came with the deal.

Along with the viaduct, the company owns at least 10 vacant lots along the former right-of-way. But rather than developing them, Reading has allowed those sites to become magnets for illegal dumping. Even as the surrounding neighborhoods boom with new construction, the blighted viaduct remains a forbidding barrier.

“I certainly don’t feel safe walking there with my kids,” Rachel Collins Clarke, who helped start the West Poplar Neighborhood Association, told me. Meanwhile, the area desperately needs more green space, she says.

If Reading’s past behavior is any indication, Levy will have to tread carefully to avoid alienating company executives.

After a Callowhill developer started a legal proceeding in 2021 to force the company to clean up the blighted former rail station on Spring Garden Street, Reading responded by demolishing the handsome structure, creating yet another vacant lot.

Over the years, I’ve made repeated attempts to obtain a comment from Reading CEO Ellen Cotter, but the company has never responded, not even with a boilerplate email.

The good news is that the viaduct will be a lot harder to demolish than the former station building. The structure is a mix of steel bridges and a massive earthen embankment, held together with stone retaining walls.

Given the need for extensive soil remediation, Levy estimates that it would cost at least $90 million to raze the trestle. Even then, you can’t do much with a 60-foot-wide strip of land, other than convert it to a public trail.

Reading’s business challenges could also work in Philadelphia’s favor. As streaming becomes more popular, fewer people are going to movie theaters.

Reading International reported a $26 million loss in 2022, and its share price has fallen dramatically since 2019. Selling the viaduct could help the company’s bottom line.

As head of the CCD, Levy also has an impressive record of getting things done. Although the downtown improvement district did not start out in the parks business, Levy has assembled a small empire of public spaces in recent years, including Sister Cities Park and Dilworth Park.

Unlike many city parks, they are meticulously maintained and enjoy generous programming budgets, thanks to revenue from events and Levy’s private fundraising efforts.

At the same time, Levy has never built a park in a Philadelphia neighborhood before. All the CCD parks are located in the commercial parts of Philadelphia’s downtown, in places where there isn’t a significant residential population clamoring for input.

The viaduct, by contrast, cuts through at least three distinct and growing neighborhoods: Callowhill, Chinatown, and Poplar. All have been actively involved in shaping plans for the viaduct over the last two decades. Indeed, it was the work of neighborhood activists that convinced the city to include the greenway in its comprehensive plan.

Yet Levy did not inform those civic associations that he was starting negotiations with Reading until three days before Squilla’s bill was introduced.

Nor did he reach out to the nonprofit that oversees daily operations on Philadelphia’s mini-High Line until the last minute — a striking misstep.

The Friends of the Rail Park had just spent $100,000 developing a long-range plan for the entire greenway, an effort that involved numerous meetings and conversations with neighborhood residents. The group is now worried it won’t be consulted on future decisions involving the park’s design.

In many ways, Levy’s handling of the viaduct bill reflects an old way of the thinking about the former industrial zone north of Vine Street. Once a lightly settled neighborhood of warehouses and artists lofts, the area has come alive with new housing and restaurants.

Toll Bros. is now wrapping up a 344-unit apartment building on North Broad, steps from the entrance to the Rail Park. The demand for housing has been so intense that the suburban-style driveways in West Poplar are being filled in with rowhouses.

While blight remains a major concern, longtime residents and businesses are now starting to to worry about gentrification.

Levy told me that he appreciates that the neighborhood has changed and that he is committed to including residents in the planning effort. “I have a lot of work to do with the surrounding communities,” he conceded, and noted that Squilla’s bill would trigger a public hearing in the fall.

Still, that hasn’t stopped him from making big decisions on his own: He has already hired two consultants — Urban Engineers and Studio Bryan Hanes — to sketch out preliminary plans for a viaduct park.

It’s not just residents who have been left in the dark. The city’s neighborhood planners say they didn’t learn about Squilla’s bill until after it had already been introduced.

Part of the problem is that the city’s leadership has gotten in the habit of handing off major park projects to private managers. But it’s mind-boggling to think that a major new civic space like the viaduct could be designed and executed entirely by a private group, with city planners offering only occasional commentary.

Those planners are already working on several nearby projects, including a cap for I-676 called the Chinatown Stitch, which is meant to improve connections between Chinatown proper and the area north of the highway.

City planners also overseeing efforts to redevelop the former police administration building and a complex study to determine whether a Sixers arena is appropriate for Market Street. All these efforts need to be coordinated.

Because a viaduct park is likely to accelerate gentrification, city planners will also need to rethink the neighborhood’s zoning. Despite all the new residential construction, the area is still dotted with a sizable number of warehouses and small manufacturers with ties to Chinatown. Should they remain or be relocated?

Without a serious review of local zoning, those businesses — and the jobs they provide — could simply disappear as developers scoop up those buildings for residential development.

John Chin, the head of Chinatown’s development group, had once opposed the creation of a viaduct park, fearing it would turbocharge gentrification. But as the area has grown more residential, he’s had a change of heart.

“This is a good opportunity to create some green space and create an amenity for the community,” he told me. At the same time, he wants to be sure that Chinatown has a voice in the viaduct’s design.

With Levy in charge, Philadelphia finally has a shot at getting its own High Line. But it’s also true that anytime you build a major new park in a big city like Philadelphia, it has to be a group effort.