[SEFTA]

Originally Posted by Nanyika

While the promise of 19,000 future jobs in the "Bellwether District" sounds enticing, a great many questions still remain. For one thing, the market for constructing giant warehouses appears to be increasingly saturated. While new warehouses are proposed throughout the region, Amazon might have provided a real “bellwether” for the industry when it pulled back from the warehouse project it had planned in Southwest Philadelphia. And while life sciences are growing, there are many competing life-sciences projects around the city and region that are already in the works.

We also don‘t know how this project plans to deal with increased traffic, once it becomes built up. How many more tractor trailers and cars can adjacent portions of the Schuylkill Expressway and I-95 bear — to say nothing about local streets and neighborhoods? Is there any consideration for augmenting mass transit opportunities for the workers?

And finally, little has been said about environmental concerns. Renderings show warehouses stretching right up to the banks of the Schuylkill, with no green buffer or trees, let alone spaces for the public to stroll along the river. Also, right now, a portion of the property lies in a flood plain, with some ground even below sea level, while it is projected that the rivers will rise some four feet at Girard Point by the end of the century, due to climate change. Hilco states that they will truck in more soil to raise the property above flood stage. But further channelizing the Schuylkill will only increase the flood risk downstream, at places like the Navy Yard and the Airport.

I think the project, as much as we know about it, has positive aspects. But Hilco needs to be much more forthcoming and concrete about what they plan to build there, and how they plan to deal with social and environmental concerns.