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American Street: Open Houses Explain What’s In Store for South Kensington Corridor


  The American Street Improvement Project is a federally funded initiative facilitated by the City of Philadelphia to redesign 1.9 miles of North American Street from Girard to Indiana Avenue. Developments to the roadway will include bike lanes, new lighting, wider sidewalks, a reduction to one lane of traffic per direction, a landscaped median and stormwater management systems.

  On November 15th and 17th, project coordinators held open house meetings as a means of public involvement. People who live and work in the vicinity of the project were given a platform to voice their opinions and to help prioritize elements of the project that they feel personally invested in.

  Since construction is not slated to begin until January 2018, the project is still at a phase in which it can be restructured as per public opinion. Project coordinators have made it clear that they are eager to hear and help accommodate community voices.

  The budget for this renewal project is $15 million dollars and corridor construction is split into three sections: Girard to Cecil B. Moore, Cecil to Lehigh, and Lehigh to Indiana. Each section will receive specific attention based on the needs of the people who live in it.

/Google Street View

/Google Street View

  Kathryn Drake, a civil engineer from the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD), explained that North American is a perfect site for developing stormwater management infrastructure because of the rail lines that run down its median. There aren’t any utilities (such as plumbing or electrical wires) underneath those rails; utilities being one of the main things that get in the way when building infrastructure to manage stormwater. Their absence creates a blank canvas for developing stormwater management systems.

  What Drake and the PWD are proposing is something called a bioswale, a kind of ditch that retains stormwater and allows it to sink naturally back into the earth. The ditch would run the entire length of the developed area and be planted with indigenous vegetation which would in turn benefit and filter the stormwater runoff, reducing sewer overflow.

  “We’ve paved too much of the city for this process to happen naturally,” Drake said.

  Darin Gatti of the Philadelphia Streets Department is the chief engineer for this project. According to Gatti, the project has been in development for almost a decade.

  “It takes a long time to get $15 million together,” he said.   

  Gatti and his associates selected North American Street mainly because of the amount of space taken up by the defunct rail tracks.

  “We want to make this area more attractive for more commercial development which would bring more jobs into the neighborhood and stimulate the local economy,” Gatti explained.

  Gatti and his team also wanted to make the area safer. According to him, wide streets have been proven to be more dangerous, which is why the project focuses on narrowing the roadway.

  They began putting together a blueprint for a new streetscape long before funding came through. Eventually, the Philadelphia Water Department got on board with their Green Stormwater Infrastructure program. With their focus now honed on clean water, economic development and public safety, the team applied for and were awarded a TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) Grant. TIGER is a grant organization run by the U.S. Department of Transportation. It was this grant of $10.2 million that made all these ideas and blueprints behind the North American Project into a reality.

  Public meetings concerning the redevelopment of North American Street will continue throughout the next year.

For more information visit http://www.southkensingtoncommunity.org/ or email AmericanStStreetscape@gmail.com

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