Changing Skyline: SugarHouse's looks are beside the point

The new SugarHouse recreation path is precisely the tonic the forlorn Delaware River waterfront has always needed, a broad, tree-lined walkway that offers full-body immersion in one of Philadelphia's most majestic landscapes. The river feels close enough to touch, yet you're never disconnected from the protective Oz of the city's skyline. Even the floating remains of the Jack Frost sugar refinery are a beautiful, bittersweet reminder of the city's industrial heritage.

My only regret is the price of the SugarHouse path: the SugarHouse Casino.

SugarHouse is, of course, the first legal gambling hall built in Philadelphia since the state legislature imposed those nuisances in a midnight vote in 2004. During the years of legal wrangling that followed, the original megaplan for the 21-acre site - a virtual city of condo towers and highway cloverleafs - was miniaturized into a single, modest box the size of a suburban supermarket.

As gaming houses go, that makes the new casino a rather benign example of the genre. Cope Linder Architects, the Philadelphia firm responsible for Atlantic City's Borgata, also brought a welcome bit of sophistication to Sugarhouse's exterior by disguising the rectangular box in handsome, folded planes of gray-green aluminum (though they look blue from afar). Considering the tight construction budget, about $80 million, the results are impressive.

Credit also goes to the owners, who include political insiders Daniel Keating and Richard A. Sprague, for exercising restraint and eschewing the industry habit of decorating casino facades like giant slot machines.

You won't see a digital screen, neon sign or towering billboard on the SugarHouse property. The casino is so understated that an out-of-towner (or, someone sunk in a coma for the last six years) might mistake it for a completely different building type, perhaps an ice rink or a small regional airport.

Yet, as grateful as we are for their refined taste, Sugarhouse's looks are really beside the point. Who cares about formal architectural qualities when so much asphalt has been slicked over on the city's beautiful riverfront to provide surface parking for the expected 30,000 daily visitors? That added traffic will only make it harder to restore Delaware Avenue to a walkable boulevard.