In reality, the shores of the Delaware haven't been pristine since the tribal chiefs met William Penn at an historic site best viewed from the porches of one of the many tropical-themed discos that dot the waterfront. The last development plan for the shoreline north of Market Street was written 26 years ago to make way for industrial sites like that festering eyesore of a sugar refinery one casino is being named for.
As for access to the shoreline, the city in its infinite wisdom cut that off years ago when it wedged I-95 between the river and the streetscape. Not since the book of Genesis have the waters been separated from the dry lands so effectively.
The area abutting the Foxwoods site at the south end of Columbus Boulevard has been zoned for lap dances. Seems nature will take its course if no one else does.
Which is why Mayor Nutter has called together the smartest planners in the country to come up with a plan consistent with a more lofty vision of the waterfront.
PennPraxis, good guys in any telling of this story, have put together a document outlining its conclusion that casinos "would be better suited elsewhere."
But how do you get casinos to go "elsewhere" after investors have spent a ton of money preparing the sites that they were awarded by the state?
Those issues weren't considered by PennPraxis, which is a nonprofit planning entity of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Design.
All the mayor asked them to do was review the casino plan to see if it was consistent with 2007's "Civic Vision for the Central Delaware."
Coincidentally, the mayor had already concluded that casinos would be "better suited elsewhere."
"It was absolutely not predetermined in any way," Harris Steinberg, of PennPraxis, insisted. "This analysis was not undermined in any way by politicians."
That would make it the only aspect of this entire casino flapdoodle that wasn't.
