Parkway

A $5 million damage award against the city to the Parkway Corp. has been slashed by a federal judge to just $53,002. That's the amount of revenue the company would have earned during the 35 days that the underground garage it operates at 15th Street and JFK Plaza was shut down by the city in late 1990. In making his ruling Thursday, Senior U.S. District Judge Louis C. Bechtle took the unusual technical step of ordering Parkway to remit to the city $4,946,997.20 of the $5 million awarded to the parking company by a federal jury and later a federal appeals court.

The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is an anomaly - a thoroughfare that wants travelers to stop, a vista that wants to be visited and not simply looked at. Is it park or highway? Place or passage? A sense of the Parkway's unfulfilled promise has led the Center City District over the last several years to rethink the design and shape of the area. A glimpse at the current state of that planning effort came at this month's meeting of the Fairmount Park Commission, which asked district executive director Paul Levy to present a Parkway update.

In the last 14 years, John Merlino coached Franklin Learning Center to the final four of the Public League girls' basketball playoffs. His team never won it all. But Merlino hopes this is finally the year. FLC started toward that goal yesterday with a convincing 79-22 victory over Parkway in a first-round playoff game at the Salvation Army recreation center at Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue. It was quick and it was easy. It was everything the top team in the Public League Gold Division was expected to do against the No. 2 team in the Bronze Division.

City Council yesterday approved the sale of a parking lot to a company that is also one of Mayor Street's top campaign donors - even though the city could have received $1 million more from another bidder who made a late offer. By a unanimous vote, Council supported the $3.7 million sale by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority to a new partnership formed by the Parkway Corp., a major financial supporter of Street's. The parking lot, at Ninth and Arch Streets, is now set to become a six-story condominium, with first-floor shops and a 120-car parking facility.

Two companies competing for the right to build a $68 million apartment, retail and parking garage complex in Center City have decided to allow the Redevelopment Authority to settle the dispute. The companies - Greenwood Group and Parkway Corp. - each own half of the 1.6 acre site on the south side of Walnut between 8th and 9th. They had originally planned to develop the project together. But Greenwood partner Joel Weisbein said the two sides split in December, when Parkway balked at Greenwood's plan to "proceed aggresively with the development.

Eleven floors above Northern Liberties, Jake Winigrad carefully studied the vast expanse of the Delaware Riverfront, bathed in the hazy sunshine of a mid-July afternoon. "The windows are like paintings that change throughout the day," said the Parkway Corp. vice president for project management, offering a nonfinancial, but hugely important reason, for why the venerable Philadelphia company chose this glass-steel-concrete mid-rise at North American and Brown Streets as its first rental apartment building.

After a year of planning, the Million Woman March brought throngs of people to the Parkway yesterday. Black women came from across the nation - and some from around the world - to engender unity.

Deborah Carson helps put up a teepee along the Parkway, as part of yesterday's Inquirer Night Out. Carson, a Cherokee, was representing United American Indians of Delaware Valley.

Dancers put on a show yesterday as threatening clouds don't scare off crowds at the Festival de las Americas on the Parkway. The event featured Latino music and food.

Connie Crawford looks up as one of her helium balloons floats away on the Parkway during Super Sunday. Yesterday's festivities included fencing, jazz, a nature show and food.