Changing Skyline: Warehouse-size billboard eyed for Philadelphia site near Delaware River

It's as much a Philadelphia landmark as the statue of William Penn on City Hall, though hardly something that aspires to be an emblem of greatness. Is there anyone who has traveled the south Delaware waterfront and not marveled at the four-story concrete skeleton that lurks behind the RiverView shopping center on Columbus Boulevard, its naked columns flouting both gravity and civic decency?

That ruin, which looks as if it had been airlifted in from Kabul, was purchased more than 20 years ago by Bart Blatstein, who was a run-of-the-mill strip-mall developer before graduating to finer things in Northern Liberties. Blatstein unloaded the RiverView in 2003 - as part of a $75 million deal - but held onto its concrete companion in the hope of making a killing when a casino opened on the South Philadelphia waterfront.

Now it appears there will be no casino and no killing, and Blatstein is seeking other ways to turn a difficult piece of real estate into money. Since the structure hugs the edge of I-95, he's appealing to the Zoning Board of Adjustment for permission to wrap its bones in advertisements, effectively converting the old Pennsylvania Railroad warehouse into a double-sided billboard.

In a preliminary review, a city building examiner turned the proposal down flat, noting that the wrap would violate at least nine zoning provisions. It's too close to a dense rowhouse neighborhood (Pennsport), too close to a historic landmark (Old Swedes' Church), too close to another billboard (Avalon Carpet Tile and Flooring). And although the examiner failed to mention it, Blatstein's billboard would also violate the zoning guidelines recently put in place to turn the Delaware waterfront into something more than a dumping ground for big-box stores and their asphalt lots.

None of this seemed to bother the president of the Pennsport Civic Association, James Moylan. Without calling a membership meeting, he provided Blatstein with a letter of "non-opposition" - that's the weaselly language used in Philadelphia to convey support for a zoning proposal - to submit to the zoning board at a hearing last week. Such letters carry great weight.