Thanks so much to everyone who came out to Race Street Café this Tuesday to get involved with Race Street Pier, Philadelphia’s newest park on the Delaware River!  The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and PennPraxis, DRWC partners on the Race Street project, organized the kickoff meeting for the Friends of Race Street Pier, and over 30 Philadelphians attended.

Over 30 interested residents attended the kick off meeting, hailing mostly from Old City and the surrounding neighborhoods.

At this kick-off celebration, DRWC Master Planning Manager Sarah Thorp and VP for Operations and Development Joe Forkin discussed the current state of the project and the time line moving forward, announcing that the park should be ready for a grand opening in late Spring 2011.

Joe Forkin and Sarah Thorp discuss the Race Street Pier project.

Participants were asked to “give a minute” to the park and talk with the project team about what kinds of programming and activities they would like to see as the park opens this spring.

Participants take time to 'give a minute' to the new park, expressing what kinds of programming and activities they'd like to see offered in the space.

DRWC is pleased to announce that the City of Philadelphia the recipient of a $1.3 million dollar grant from the Pennsylvania Community Transportation Initiative, a PennDOT program to encourage sustainable transportation. The funds will be used for the Race Street Connector project to improve connectivity between Old City and waterfront activities, parks, and trails along Race Street. This is great news for the Race Street Connector and the Central Delaware Waterfront! You can learn more about the Race Street Connector project here.

Philadelphia’s newest park space, Washington Avenue Green, has been open for several months now – have you been there yet?  Although it’s winter and much of the vegetation is in its most bare-looking state, we thought it would be nice to describe in more detail some of the parks unique and distinctive elements.  We think these elements are definitely worth a visit to the park, regardless of the season!

Dendritic Decay Gardens: Two areas of existing concrete and asphalt, one at the north end of the park and one in the center, display stream system drainage patterns cut into the surface and then filled with soil and planted with native plant species.  This approach to cutting the existing impervious surface and then planting is intended to speed up the natural decay processes that these man-made surfaces will begin to experience over time, hopefully demonstrating nature’s power to reclaim the traces that man leaves behind.  In the asphalt decay garden, glass beads have been embedded in the permeable trail carrying the stream pattern towards the Delaware River.  Once the stream reaches shore, the garden ends with a native river rock pattern that reuses river rocks found onsite.

Floating wetlands: Community volunteers built these wetland platforms during a public workshop held this past summer.  The structural elements of the floating wetlands are made of hardwood, coir fiber, and fabric sock material. In an effort to reuse waste materials, plastic bottles were collected and placed in the cells to provide the flotation for the wetlands. The floating wetlands, planted with native wetland species, provide an element of aquatic fish & wildlife habitat while helping to filter river water on a localized scale.

Rubble Meadow: This element of the park re-uses some of the large concrete slabs created during the initial demolition of the site’s paved surfaces. The rubble, which otherwise would have simply been trucked away, takes on new life in this designed native meadow garden.  The contrast between the natural plantings and the man-made surfaces suggests a visual conversation between the sites past and its future restored ecology.  While Washington Avenue Green is primarily intended as a space for passive recreation, on the parks opening day, several children were already having fun jumping from concrete pad to concrete pad across the rubble meadow.

Rain Garden: This garden is designed to collect localized rainwater flowing off of paved surfaces in the surrounding the green so that they might be absorbed back into the ground before running into the Delaware River.  This allows the water to be filtered through the earth, improving its quality before it enters the water table.  This example of a stormwater management ‘best practice’ is located at the end of the northern Dendritic Decay Garden and is filled with special filtering soil mix and planted with native species of grasses and wildflowers.

Delaware River Trail: Washington Avenue Green is located at the northern end of the first segment of the Delaware River Trail, a multi-user recreational pathway that connects Pier 70 Boulevard and Washington Avenue.  This combination of a publicly accessible recreational path along the waters edge with an ecologically-designed park space is an realization of one of the key elements of the Civic Vision for the Central Delaware as well as the current master planning process.