Philadelphia City Hall apron to get much-needed face-lift

 After two years and millions of dollars, the front yard of Philadelphia City Hall, better known now as Dilworth Park, has gotten rave reviews.

But the sparkling improvements are making the rest of the area around City Hall look shabby by comparison.

Help is on the way.

Philadelphia Public Property Commissioner Bridget Collins-Greenwald admitted that after two years of construction, the concrete around City Hall, known as the apron, has taken a pounding. There are some rough and potentially unsafe spots just steps away from Dilworth Park, she said.

“What we are doing now is meeting internally, and we’re in the preliminary stages of coming up with what does the apron look like? How do we make the north portal ADA accessible? What do we do with the portals, things of that nature,” Collins-Greenwald said.

The city has set aside money to repair parts of the apron, and work can begin as soon as the bidding process is complete. Other improvements also are planned.

“We’ll be getting about a million dollars in capital funding, we also have dedicated funding in the out years of the capital budget, ’16 through 2020, which will give us a total of $7.5 million,” she said.

The city has also set aside several more million dollars over the next several years to upgrade the City Hall exterior, although exactly what those improvements will be is still up for discussion.