Industrial Park

William C. Williams, 83, of Huntingdon Valley, a real estate broker and developer, died of complications from Parkinson's disease Sunday at St. Joseph's Manor in Huntingdon Valley. For 50 years, until retiring in 2003, Mr. Williams operated a brokerage firm in Northeast Philadelphia. In the early years, his daughter Susan said, he sold new homes and later expanded into commercial and industrial real estate with other investors. In the 1970s, he helped convert the former Quaker Rubber Plant in Wissinoming into an industrial park and was one of the first developers to build condominiums in Bucks County, his daughter said.

Dennis Flanagan was a skinny, long-haired 17-year-old when he pleaded guilty to the 1981 murder of a gay man in a Bensalem industrial park. But in July, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted him a new trial, and Flanagan, now a graying 41-year-old, returned to Bucks County Court this week to resume his bid for freedom. Witnesses had died and scattered. Evidence had been lost. Memories had faded. But Flanagan's murder retrial ultimately changed nothing. He still will serve life in prison.

Along the banks of the Lehigh River in Bethlehem, a permanent tribute is taking shape to honor the immigrant workers who built America. Some well-meaning supporters are imperiling the effort, though, by grasping for a more grandiose monument before they have laid a proper foundation. The National Museum of Industrial History is to be built in a 37,000-square-foot building formerly owned by Bethlehem Steel Corp. Created in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution, the museum promises to be the first forum in the nation dedicated to telling the story of the industrial laborers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

What is good for Gloucester County is good for Maggie Smith. The decision this month by Jack & Jill Ice Cream Co. to relocate from Bensalem, Pa., to Logan Township's industrial park was good for her. So were the recent warehouse expansions in Logan, one by a distributor of health-care supplies, another by a restaurant supplier. And so was the groundbreaking this month for an industrial park in Glassboro, and the launching of eight small businesses. Officially, Smith is executive director of the county Department of Economic Development.

In front of dozens of cheering residents, the Township Council unanimously adopted an ordinance that will restrict development near public drinking wells. Washington Township, one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the region, is the first in South Jersey to pass a so-called wellhead-protection measure. A resident who wrote the legislation compared it to a colonial proclamation that prohibited doing the "necessities of nature" within 20 feet of a well. "That is the same principle that applies today," Vicky Binetti told council members last night.

Major corporations are clamoring to build on it, residents are against developing it, and a township official has a financial stake in it. The Cross Keys Industrial Park, among Washington Township's last vacant commercial sites, has become a too-hot property. It covers 162 acres between three major arteries: the Black Horse Pike, Hurffville-Cross Keys Road, and Fries Mill Road. In May, A.C. Moore, the 62-store arts-and-crafts chain founded in Moorestown, withdrew plans to move its headquarters there after vocal opposition from neighbors.

Fearing a possible lawsuit, township officials have taken a step back from proposed environmental legislation. The ordinance, which would restrict development near wells, has provided a lesson in grassroots activism in a municipality where power and land are closely linked. Last month, the Township Council gave preliminary approval to the creation of six Wellhead Protection Overlay Districts. Those districts would create three concentric classifications around the area of wells that take water from the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, which in some places is as close as 20 feet to the surface.

Something about river towns has always attracted developer J. Brian O'Neill. As a teenager busing tables in his father's West Conshohocken restaurant, he admired the industrial architecture of the factories and warehouses strung along the Schuylkill. Then when the borough's manufacturing economy bottomed out in the late 1970s, he sympathized as former steelworkers begged for kitchen jobs. Now O'Neill, 42, is being credited as one of the people responsible for revamping Conshohocken from smokestack borough to white-collar suburb.

Philadelphia tourism leaders estimated yesterday that the toll in lost tourist revenue from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was $47 million. The estimated losses were calculated by hotel and convention officials as they joined Mayor Street to give more details about the city's $3 million promotional campaign to lure out-of-towners back to the city. The campaign will feature two-night stays at area hotels for the price of one and free weekend parking for hotel guests. Since the slump in air and other travel after the hijackings, Philadelphia hotels lost more than 170,000 nights of occupied rooms.

After a year and a half of redevelopment efforts and the publication of a slick promotional magazine, borough officials say the bustling college town they envision may be just a few more steps away. Tonight, the Borough Council is expected to approve an additional $1 million in redevelopment bonds to buy the historic Franklin House - an 18th-century inn where, it is said, George Washington slept - and a 1930s elementary school that Rowan University intends to turn into a business incubator.