[hammersklavier]

OP extended. Paine's Park info added.

Other news: A City Paper article on kayaking down the tidal Schuylkill is to be found here.

You don't notice it so much on the water, but the Schuylkill winds. Past the halfway house, around a big bend, is a fantastically green, lush, snaking stretch that might make you think you're in Montgomery County, or somewhere wilder. Jittery ducks fly off as we approach, hollering like car alarms, the tips of their wings skimming the river's surface. From the west the historic Woodlands Cemetery peers down; to the east is the DuPont Crescent, so named for the Dupont plant at 34th and Grays Ferry Avenue. This land was donated by the DuPont family. The SRDC has received $150,000 in grants — part of the Take Me to the River program — for trail expansion and a river-crossing feasibility study. The plan is for a trail to run along here and for the old, out-of-service railroad swing bridge just south of the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge to support a bike bridge. This would bring people one step closer to Bartram's Garden, the hidden bucolic jewel of Southwest Philadelphia. Bartram's, with its manicured foliage and sprawling meadow, is the country's oldest botanical garden with plant strains dating to pre-revolutionary America. It is an Edenic oasis in what's known as a rough neighborhood.

Judging by the number of people we see sitting with fishing poles, the fish enjoy Bartram's, as well. Off the pier of a former gypsum plant, three locals — Kenny Bennett, Kevin Smith and Jada Moye, all of nearby Bartram's Village — tell us they're casting for catfish. Over the course of the morning, the trio will pull five or six fat fish out of the water, with every intention of eating them.

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Also pertinent: I saw in the Metro recently that the Safdie Central Library expansion might be getting federal stimulus funds, interestingly enough.
Yes indeedy. http://www.metro.us/us/article/2009/...6-85/index.xml

Federal money could mean library expansion

CENTER CITY. Construction of a 180,000-square-foot addition to the main branch of the Free Library may begin after all, as early as the summer, if federal stimulus money is secured in the next couple of months, a library official said yesterday.

Library Foundation vice president Sandra Horrocks said construction could begin in two to three months if $35 million in federal money is secured to augment the $105 million already raised.

“We’ll break ground if we get to about $140 million,” Horrocks said at the third annual Free Library Festival. “We would know in about two or three months. ... This fits with what [the federal government is] trying to do. Create jobs and green buildings and we’re ready to go.”

The project originally designed in 2003 became a casualty of the local economic crisis last December amid Mayor Michael Nutter’s proposal to shut 11 neighborhood branches to help close a $1 billion city budget deficit.

The library board indefinitely postponed the expansion, which would include a new 300-computer media center and 550-seat auditorium, at a Dec. 3 meeting. Officials said they would re-examine the project every few months.

Horrocks yesterday said the project was never off the table and that now officials were increasingly optimistic because the project meets the federal stimulus’ requirements in areas of green construction and “shovel-ready” job creation.

“There is a lot of federal money available for Broadband, green sustainable buildings and shovel ready construction,” Horrocks said.