Waterfront wayback trap | Eastern Tower | Healthier bodegas | Tax nonprofit properties | Berm for Eastwick?

Get the wayback machine away from the waterfront, the Daily News editorialize, lamenting the Planning Commission’s approval of three development proposals that fail to meet the standards of the Master Plan for the Central Delaware – largely in the name of stimulating development. “That compromise was undoubtedly the rationale for the building of Walmart and Home Depot on the waterfront. Unfortunately, the development those projects spurred was more of the same: big-box stores like Lowe’s and Ikea. Which are good if you need a hammer or a bookcase, but not such great uses for the kind of valuable real estate that demands complexity and thought and should have people at its center.”

Chinatown has been trying to overcome the Vine Street Expressway since it was built, and the proposed Eastern Tower development at 10th and Vine “would go a long way toward stitching the two Chinese neighborhoods together,” writes Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron in her column today.

Patrick Kerkstra checks in on the Healthy Corner Store Initiative, which “could be “the nation’s largest fresh-food availability experiment.” Far from an empty foodie-driven initiative, the City/Food Trust program may be our best hope for encouraging healthy eating, curbing obesity rates, and improving public health.

A group of unions and activists are calling on the Nutter administration to send property tax bills to all of the city’s nonprofit real estate owners, forcing nonprofits to prove that they meet the stricter test for property-tax exemption set in a judicial ruling this spring. Finance Director Rob Dubow will not commit to the idea, reports the Daily News. Also, be sure to check this map of tax-exempt properties.

What would it take to protect Eastwick from Cobbs Creek floodwaters with a big berm? PlanPhilly’s Kellie Patrick Gates looks into the process and learns that construction wouldn’t take long, but before anything can happen the Army Corps of Engineers and Water Department would have to do studies about the best flood control mechanisms and project impact, and strike a deal on financing and upkeep.

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