Navy Yard

Imagine you're in charge of an old postindustrial city with little open land and a perennially anemic economy. Then a vast district you never knew existed is discovered. It's like a scene from an experimental Czech novel: Pass through a secret door and there's a ghost street grid, handsome buildings from a grand era just out of reach, empty warehouses as big as tankers, and ships as grand as castles. Most of all, a broad waterfront, as close to the sea as your city is likely to get. If your city is Philadelphia, and quite a bit more real than surreal, you've merely walked down South Broad Street, under I-95, and into the Navy Yard.

Edwin A. Schultz, 86, of Plymouth Meeting, a retired naval engineer, died of lung disease Tuesday, Jan. 3, at Mercy Suburban Hospital. From the early 1960s until retiring in 1990, Mr. Schultz was with the Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station at the Philadelphia Navy Base. His last position there was as senior project engineer, responsible for the oxygen- and nitrogen-generating plants that support life aboard aircraft carriers and submarines. Mr. Schultz graduated at age 17 from Olney High School in 1942.

Murray Dubin is coauthor, with Daniel R. Biddle, of Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America As a calendar year ebbs, we find ourselves looking back and trying to take a measure of its flow. What kind of year was it? Who died? Was a job lost or gained? Health problems? The kids? Fall in love? In the end, was 2011 a good year or not? Often that is an easy question (Vince Fumo had a bad year, for instance), but it can be complicated, a balancing act between what life gave you and what was taken away.

High school feels different in the big white mansion at the edge of the Navy Yard - no desks in rows. No 47-minute class periods. No warnings to remove the hat, put the cellphone away, take the exam seriously. Instead, small groups of students are designing their own workshop space. They're drawing up more efficient bus routes for the Philadelphia School District. Their teachers act as mentors, sounding boards, not lecturers. The premise? American high schools are broken.

Andrew Witty, Manny Barrio, and Justin Cellucci all said Wednesday that construction of GlaxoSmithKline's new building at the Navy Yard was going just fine. Witty is the chief executive officer, works from London, and spoke from Japan. Barrio and Cellucci are operating engineers with A.P. Construction, live in Northeast and Southwest Philadelphia, respectively, and spoke beside a bulldozer at the site. "It's good," Barrio said. "I'm delighted to say - and you can see it when you drive to the airport in Philly - that the piles are coming out of the ground for the new building, and we're a little ahead of schedule, actually," Witty said on a conference call regarding quarterly earnings.

Style DesignPhiladelphia. This celebration of art and design is full of exhibitions, lectures, and workshops by Philly's most talented creative types. "Soaring and Submersive P2: A Walking Tour of the un-Viaduct" goes to the underground part of the hoped-for Reading Viaduct park project. The stroll through planned subterranean gardens and picturesque railroad remnants will be led by VIADUCTgreene cofounder Paul vanMeter and local historian and tour guide Harry Kyriakodis.

About 15,000 participants are expected for the 25th edition of the Philadelphia AIDS Walk & Run, starting at Eakins Oval on Sunday morning. The event raises money for 30 groups that provide services for the 30,000 people with HIV/AIDS in the Philadelphia area. Motorists, though, should be advised some usually busy roads will be closed from about 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. because of this fund- and consciousness-raising event. Another Sunday morning event, however, will not shut down any streets, as about 2,000 participants use sidewalks to complete a 60-mile walk to combat breast cancer.

A new Marriott-brand hotel is headed to the Navy Yard, the latest in a string of recent developments and expansions planned for the complex. Liberty Property Trust, a real estate investment trust with corporate headquarters in Malvern and a regional office in Center City, is close to completing the financing for the new hotel. Since 2002, Liberty has worked closely with the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., the city's economic-development arm, to redevelop certain portions of the Navy Yard, including the Navy Yard Corporate Center and the Navy Yard Commerce Center.

Can you have a Neighborhood Concert in something that's not actually a neighborhood? Such was the question when the Philadelphia Orchestra made its debut Tuesday at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, that burgeoning corporate hinterland between South Philadelphia and the airport. The concert hall was Building 543, a huge, warehouselike structure where ship parts once were made and that now is part of Urban Outfitters' ever-expanding headquarters. Outside the window, the rusting aircraft carrier USS Forrestal loomed.

Tasty Baking Co. delivered bad news to employees Friday, announcing the elimination of 32 positions at its former headquarters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The job cuts were expected after the company's acquisition by Flowers Foods Inc. in May for about $165 million, most of which went to repay debt taken on to pay for the move to a new, $78 million bakery last year. "As is often the case when two publicly traded companies merge, we found overlap and redundancy in office functions," said Paul Ridder, president of the Philadelphia operation and former Tasty senior vice president and chief financial officer.