As it fills in final missing bits, Philly’s nearly-complete city plan exposes gap between neighborhood hopes and political realities

But that would require action from Councilmember Jannie Blackwell, not the Planning Commission or even Mayor Jim Kenney. Whether the West District plan gets put into action or collects dust on a shelf depends largely on Councilmember Blackwell.

“You’ve got to put as many properties as possible into the land bank before the Mantua Greenway opens,” Petty told Wenrich, West District’s lead planner. “We really got burned because we didn’t do that around our bikeway [in Portland].”

Petty worries about gentrification: The bikeway in Portland attracted a lot of bicycle-centric new development, higher income residents, and rising housing prices. She felt Portland could have saved longtime residents pain, if the city put vacant parcels along the bikeway into a land bank and developed affordable housing.

“It’s really important to learn that even small infrastructure investments could generate a lot of real estate investment in the context of a pretty booming economy,” said Petty. “Immediately tying affordably to infrastructure investment, that was the lesson we learned in Portland.”

Wenrich thanked Petty for her advice and assured her that he’d recommended just such a course to Councilwoman Blackwell. But, he cautioned, the Planning Commission and its staffers play a purely advisory role.

Although Weinrich did not say so, it is unlikely Blackwell will take him up on that particular idea. In her 24 years in City Council, she has been slow to adopt newer land use initiatives, especially those proposed under the Nutter administration. Blackwell hasn’t placed any parcels in the land bank since it opened in late 2015. Until recently, she only rarely updated her district’s zoning maps, many of which date back to the 1950s. In 2013, Blackwell held hearings on the district planning process because she did not like the fact that the Planning Commission was making land use recommendations.

Blackwell’s office did not return several requests for comment on Tuesday about the West District plan.

That isn’t to say Blackwell is reflexively opposed to the Planning Commission or unique in protecting her prerogatives: Much of any district City Council person’s power stems from their power over land use and zoning. And Blackwell surprised her critics earlier this year, when she became the first councilperson to take advantage of new zoning options to encourage transit-oriented development.

“Some councilmembers are very invested in the idea that all land use decisions go through their office first and are suspicious of non-elected civil servants,” said Alan Greenberger, who lead the Planning Commission during much of the comprehensive planning process as deputy mayor under Nutter.

“It’s an uncomfortable change for some, but not for others,” said Greenberger. “I was hopeful that when councilmembers saw the value they would eventually embrace it. A logical argument doesn’t make someone change their mind on a dime about something they’ve believed for decades.”

“The argument from Council is that they know how to get things done so they are in a better position to produce outcomes,” said Landis. “The argument against that is just by the nature of politics City Council will be more interested in individuals they know and trust and have worked with before. Whereas a community planning process will include persons who aren’t in the City Council person’s loop.”

The West District plan includes a proposal to preserve the area’s preponderance of single family homes by changing the neighborhood’s zoning, which currently would allow developers to build large apartment or condo buildings. The plan also calls for guiding such denser development towards commercial corridors and transit stations by upzoning parcels around these locations.

Such remapping is a major part of the district plan, but that’s no guarantee that it will be enacted.

A recent Planning Commission study found that less than half of the acres where remapping has been proposed have seen it enacted. Most of the action stems from just three City Council members: Bobby Henon, Maria Quiñones-Sanchez, and Council President Darrell Clarke. Throughout the meetings about the West District, an undercurrent of tension periodically flowed through this corner of the city, where private divestment and a lack of public resources have soured residents on the city’s ability to deliver. Still, the planning process itself, coupled with some of the popular proposals emerging from it, raised expectations for positive changes among many who attended the sessions.

“I’m actually really impressed that the city would have this much concern for the residents and their input,” said Aaron Winthers, a Willow Grove resident who is considering moving to West Philadelphia and attended the district planning meeting to get a feel for the neighborhood.

Injecting optimism among an understandably jaded populace comes with the risk of entrenching a deep cynicism if those raised hopes end up dashed. While some residents might chalk up inactivity to the disconnect between councilmanic control of land use and a purely advisory planning agency, many will just see the inaction — no matter the structural causes — as another promise unkept.

“It’s a tricky position,” said Greenberger. “The plan is meaningful in the sense that it coordinates the values of people in a set of unified aspirations for how things ought to go. But there’s that disconnect between stated goals and actually getting things done.”