Study finds open space a tangible benefit

When Daniel Thut and his brother-in-law/business partner, Douglas Witmer, first considered the West Philadelphia property that is now the flagship of their small Greenline Cafe coffeehouse chain, they had to look past a lot.

Specifically, past the window frames of the dilapidated former flower shop to something across the intersection of 43d Street and Baltimore Avenue.

There sat what eventually convinced the young entrepreneurs that the property was worth sinking more than $300,000 into: Clark Park, nine acres of rare urban green space in what was, at the time, a University City neighborhood transitioning from a high-crime reputation.

"We just stood there and looked out the windows and saw the green and the trees of the park and said: 'Wow. This is really beautiful,' " Thut said. "In a lot of ways, the park was part of the inspiration for the cafe."

And, it turns out, part of a much larger and, until now, not fully quantified affirmation of the economic muscle of open space in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Open-space preservationists have long cited economic value as one of the advantages of keeping land protected from development. Now comes a first report on the economic benefits of the region's nearly 200,000 acres of greenway.

Among the findings of the report, "The Economic Value of Protected Open Space," released Tuesday by the GreenSpace Alliance and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission are that land off-limits to developers:

Increases homeowners' property values by an average of $10,000;

Supports nearly 7,000 jobs and generates $271 million in annual salaries and $30 million in state and local tax revenue;

Generates more than $566 million in annual spending;

Saves businesses $500 million in workers' compensation and costs related to lost productivity;

Spares local governments and utilities more than $132 million a year in costs associated with environmental services such as flood control and drinking-water filtration, and,

Helps open-space users avoid $795 million in medical expenses and businesses avoid $485 million in lost-productivity costs.

Because three-quarters of Southeastern Pennsylvania's protected open space is in Chester and Bucks Counties (47 percent and 26 percent, respectively), the cited benefits of open space were, naturally, highest there for many of the impact categories studied in the report, prepared by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, Econsult Corp., and Keystone Conservation Trust.