Delaware River master plan goes to Planning Commission

After years of visioning, planning, and a healthy civic debate about our city’s waterfront – not to mention the disbanding of the Penn’s Landing Corporation, the birth of the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation – the Master Plan for the Central Delaware is final. Next up, the waterfront plan heads to the Planning Commission for approval.

PlanPhilly’s Kellie Patrick Gates was at the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation meeting this morning, and will have the full story soon. For now, she reports: The Central Delaware Waterfront Master Plan was unanimously adopted by the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation Friday and now heads to the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

Representatives of several community groups praised the plan, which calls for extension of the street grid; the establishment of public spaces every half mile, linked by a waterfront trail, and mixed use development.

Representatives of land owner James Anderson asked the board to exempt his acreage from the plan, saying the public trails and extended streets amount to a public taking of private land. They said the uncertainty the plan brings to the land’s future would hamper potential development opportunities, and would also make about 40 percent of the land unusable.

The board did not grant an exemption. DRWC officials said the zoning requirements that will grow out of the plan are similar to those commonly used elsewhere, and are not problematic.