Advocacy group will release waterfront progress report this month

June 10, 2010

The Central Delaware Advocacy Group will later this month release a progress report detailing Philadelphia’s progress in implementing the long-range plan for the Central Delaware Waterfront.

A big part of CDAG’s mission is to advocate for the goals established in the Action Plan for the Central Delaware – a document that sets benchmarks for the implementation of the city’s vision for the waterfront. The Master Plan for the Central Delaware, now underway, will draw heavily from this document.

The new report will take a look at the progress the city and its agencies have made so far. After an executive session at which the release was discussed,  CDAG chairman Steve Weixler said part of the document’s purpose is to help CDAG see the areas where its advocacy efforts need to be focused.

CDAG communications committee chair Rene Goodwin said the public release will be as close as possible to June 26. “It was two years ago on June 26 when Mayor Nutter, at the Independence Seaport Museum, adopted and publicly supported the Civic Vision,” Goodwin said.

Prior to the public release of the document, copies will be given to groups and organizations which have been working to implement the action plan. Both this step and a name change – the progress report used to be called a report card – were made in response to criticism CDAG got in November 2009,   when the group was first going to release the document.

In other CDAG news, Weixler told the group during the public session that he has been invited to represent CDAG on the PennDOT I-95 Girard Avenue Interchange Project’s Sustainable Action Committee. CDAG members said that participation in this and other groups could be a very valuable way to make the organizations of the groups CDAG represents heard, and to bring back vital information.  But they were also concerned that CDAG’s presence on any board could be used as a sort of rubber stamp message that waterfront communities were okay with another organization’s proposals, without CDAG having any real say in those proposals.

Weixler was instructed to attend meetings to scope things out, but no decision was made on whether he, or another delegate from CDAG, should join any other group.

-Posted by Kellie Patrick Gates