Parkway improvements to include park updates

Benjamin Franklin Parkway is about to get a makeover that designers hope will make the tree-lined boulevard more pedestrian-friendly.

Gov. Rendell, Mayor Nutter and philanthropic representatives yesterday revealed plans for $17.1 million in cosmetic and traffic improvements that will cover a three-quarter-mile stretch between JFK Plaza and Eakins Oval.

Plans call for realigning lanes and curbs to slow traffic in the outer lanes in the 2100 and 2200 blocks. Those blocks will also get new bicycle lanes and wider sidewalks.

The urban section of the Parkway, the 1600 and 1700 blocks, will receive new granite curbs, new concrete sidewalks with brick edging, and new benches, trash receptacles and landscaping.

The small parks on the north and east sides of Logan Square, facing the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, will also be reconfigured and upgraded.

"This is a great day because we're going to take what has been given to us by prior generations, this incredible Parkway, and we're going to make it better," Rendell said.

The work, which is scheduled to start next year and be completed in 2011, will maintain the style of the recent improvements to Logan Square, officials said.

A mix of state, local and foundation funding was assembled for the project. The city has promised $6.4 million, and the state will pay $6.45 million from transportation and recreational funds. The Pew Charitable Trusts has committed $2 million, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation $1.25 million, and the William Penn Foundation $1 million.

Officials also announced a public-private partnership yesterday to finance the $2.15 million construction of Hawthorne Park at 12th and Catharine Streets in South Philadelphia, where a high-rise public-housing complex once stood. The central focus of the park will be an amphitheater.

The Benjamin Franklin Parkway, designed to emulate the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, was carved diagonally out of the city's dense rectangular grid a century ago to create the iconic Philadelphia streetscape connecting City Hall and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

But the 20th-century triumph of the motorcar transformed the Parkway into a virtual expressway.

"Changes made in the name of progress have often diminished the grandeur of the space and have impacted particularly on pedestrian use," said Mark A. Focht, executive director of the Fairmount Park Commission, which administers the space.

The improvements will coincide with several major expansions to the cultural institutions on the Parkway - the Art Museum and the library - and the $107 million taxpayer-supported move of the Barnes Foundation art collection from Lower Merion to the site of the Youth Study Center, on the Parkway at 20th Street.

In conjunction with the Parkway improvements, the Art Museum also announced that it is committing $2 million to rejuvenate the landscaping of the interior garden of the Rodin Museum, which occupies the 2100 block of the Parkway. The project, designed by Olin Partnership, will be done in partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the Fairmount Park Commission.

At yesterday's news conference, on an unshaded stage set up in the Parkway in the 90-degree heat, Rendell singled out Center City District president Paul R. Levy and Michael DiBerardinis, state secretary of conservation and natural resources, for selling the idea of improving the entire Parkway rather than approaching it with piecemeal projects.

Levy said the Parkway "is emerging as one of the great pedestrian places in Center City, not only for visitors but for all of us who live here."