Planner

William Bennington, 74, of Newtown Square, a retired economist and market planner for the Delaware River Port Authority, died Thursday at Paoli Memorial Hospital after suffering a heart attack. Mr. Bennington retired from the Port Authority in 1992 as manager of marketing research in its World Trade Division, now the Port of Philadelphia and Camden. "He was very involved in the whole port community," said public information officer Joe Diemer. "Everyone in the port community knew him and liked him. " Diemer said Mr. Bennington was "very effective" in conducting international marketing tours of both sides of the Delaware River.

Township officials will begin to advertise for a master planner for the Haverford State Hospital site within the next two weeks, Township Manager Thomas J. Bannar said Friday. Local officials met with state officials in Harrisburg Thursday to review the township's request for proposals to hire a planner - and got their approval the same day. "They really want us to move ahead quickly on this," said Mary March, the First Ward commissioner, who chairs the township hospital site steering committee.

For many professional planners, the assignment of guiding development in Cherry Hill Township - a sprawling suburb that is already 95 percent developed - would not exactly ignite the imagination. The patchwork of strip shopping centers and housing developments that arose from the rural fields of Delaware Township - as Cherry Hill was once known - have all but filled in the blanks. But three new professionals recently hired into the Cherry Hill's Department of Community Development look at that patchwork and see a challenge.

Joanne Barnes Jackson, 68, a regional planner, died of hypertensive cardiovascular disease Friday, Oct. 29, at her home in the Cedar Park neighborhood of West Philadelphia. Mrs. Jackson was the former executive director of the Advocate Community Development Corp., at 18th and Diamond Streets in North Philadelphia. The agency helped restore housing for low- and moderate-income households in the Diamond Street Historic District and tried to preserve the neighborhood's heritage. "We have the largest, richest collection of Victorian buildings in Philadelphia," she told an Inquirer interviewer in 2003, "and right now they are lost from public consciousness.

The Winslow Township Committee ended its month-long association with former township planner Gail Elbert last Wednesday by voting to pay her for her 35 days on the job. The committee decided, 6-3, to pay Elbert $4,060.80 for working 216 hours at an hourly rate of $18.80. Republican Mayor Norman F. Tomasello, who originally opposed hiring Elbert, voted with the Democratic majority to pay her. The remaining three Republicans on the committee voted against the measure. Elbert was appointed to the new position by an 8-1 vote at a Jan. 3 reorganization meeting, but the Township Committee, embroiled in partisan debate, never voted to include her in the salary ordinance.

For 12 years, Richard Ragan was a man whose name was virtually synonymous with planning in Evesham Township. As both the planner for the township and adviser to the township's Planning Board, Ragan tried to keep the township - one of the fastest-growing in South Jersey - growing in an orderly way. Moreover, he was well-liked and well- respected. But the harmonious relationship between township and planner came to an abrupt halt last month when charges of conflict of interest by prominent developers prompted Ragan to resign from both his positions.

Services will be tomorrow for David B. Williamson, city transportation coordinator during the Green administration, who died Friday of an apparent cerebral hemorrhage. He was 32 and lived in the Queen Village section of Philadelphia. Under Wiliamson's leadership, from 1980 to 1984, the city saw a surge in transit development that impacted on highways, subways, buses and other transit facilities. Lauded by his colleagues as a brilliant planner who refused to fit comfortably into any bureaucracy, Williamson knew how to cut through red tape and bring agencies and people together for action.

Dozens of residents turned out last night to lob final shots at Bancroft NeuroHealth before an independent planner decides how the borough should deal with the nonprofit school's zoning status. "We have to put up with a million buses every day, and my cat's been run over," one man shouted at the public meeting. "I am filled with fear that something terrible is going to happen," added a woman worried about children's safety. Haddonfield hired Elizabeth McKenzie, a planner from Flemington, Hunterdon County, this year to study the touchy Bancroft situation.

After a decade of trying to balance the demands of the business community and the protests of preservationists and residents, Judy Memberg will no longer be a protagonist in the drama of Norristown politics. Memberg will step down in March as director of the Norristown Planning Department, a hot seat she has occupied for four years, to become director of Genesis, a newly formed nonprofit agency. "It was too good an opportunity to turn down," said Memberg, 36. "It is the type of job I always wanted to do. " Genesis will seek federal and state grants to build and rehabilitate homes to create affordable housing for working people in the county.

Edmund N. Bacon, the pre-eminent planner of post-World War II Philadelphia, turns 84 tomorrow, and will be honored tonight at a reception to celebrate his distinguished career. But characteristically, Bacon does not intend to let people look back. Bacon's terrain is the city's future, and as usual, he has a plan. Although Bacon has publicly discussed some of the ideas he developed last year with a group of students from the University of Illinois, tonight's event at the University Museum, sponsored by the Cornell University college of architecture, art and planning, his alma mater, represents a formal unveiling.

Camden planners delayed a vote Thursday night on whether the owner of the Hotel Plaza on Cooper Street can demolish the 1927 building. The city has told the owner to remove the sign and canopy, citing an imminent hazard. The notice was issued March 4, but workers have not been able to act because of bad weather, said Edward Sheehan, attorney for Cooper Plaza Associates of New York, the owner. Cooper Plaza submitted its plan to demolish the hotel in August, after Rutgers-Camden opened its new student housing building one block west and Rowan University settled its deal to acquire a bank building nearby.

Philadelphia's planning commission wants to hear what people think about the six proposals for a second Philadelphia casino. So it's holding a series of neighborhood sessions over three consecutive nights in three locations. Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor and head of the City Planning Commission, said it is meant to be a "listening tour" to gauge public opinion in advance of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board's round of hearings in April and May. The open houses for the commission are scheduled for: South Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Field, 1020 Pattison Ave., March 26, 6 to 8 p.m. Center City, Center for Architecture, 1218 Arch St., March 27, 6 to 8 p.m. Old City, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., March 28, 6 to 8 p.m. Greenberger said he will make opening remarks and then listen.

Think the public restrooms in Portland are really cool and want to bring them to Philadelphia? Now you can share this idea and your other wildest urban dreams with city planners and others in PHL2035: The Game! , an online project launched last week by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission that aims to give Philadelphians more say about the policies and projects that affect them. You can sign up to play here: http://communityplanit.org/phl2035/ The game will be available until Feb. 18. Players answer questions and encounter situations affecting the University/Southwest Planning District, which includes Kingsessing, Cedar Park, Walnut Hill, Spruce Hill, Powelton Village, Saunders Park, West Powelton, West Shore, and University City.

BEHIND THE SCENES Officiant The Rev. James Oliver, pastor at St. Philip Neri Parish, Queen Village Venues The Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, the Atrium at the Curtis Center Food Cescaphe Music Vincent James Band Photography Alison Conklin Photography Videography TAG Visual Media, Pat Taggart, tagvisual.com Flowers Beautiful Blooms Events Dress Coco Anais by St. Pucchi, purchased...

WASHINGTON - Planners of President Obama's second inauguration are soliciting high-dollar contributions up to $1 million to help pay for the celebration in exchange for special access. The changes are part of a continuing erosion of Obama's pledge to keep donors and special interests at arm's length. He has abandoned the policy from his first inauguration of accepting donations up to only $50,000 from individuals, announcing last month that he would take unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations.

A Big East observer of a couple of decades looked at the dollar figures being floated for a television deal involving the seven Catholic schools putting together a new basketball league. "If those figures are even 80 percent true," he said, "that's great news for those schools. " Those schools are Villanova, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, Seton Hall, and St. John's. If the numbers floated in an ESPN.com story are in the ballpark, this new league is hitting the open market at exactly the right time.

Thomas John Murphy, 78, of Ambler, a financial planner for 44 years, died Sunday, Dec. 30, of cancer in the Abington Hospice at Warminster. Born in Philadelphia, he was the son of Regina and John Thomas Murphy, chief of the Philadelphia Police Department vice squad in the 1950s. He served in the Army during the Korean and Vietnam Wars at various times between 1952 to 1964. His last assignment was as an artillery captain in Germany. Mr. Murphy earned a bachelor's degree in pre-law at La Salle University, got his accounting degree at Temple University, and earned a master's degree in financial services from American College in Bryn Mawr.

Developers are back on the Delaware River waterfront with plans for tall buildings, but they're getting a cool response from the Philadelphia Planning Commission. At Thursday's board meeting, commissioners heard about two projects. One development plan features a 164-unit apartment complex on Piers 34 and 35 on Columbus Boulevard. Another, more ambitious proposal, still at the information-only stage, would build 1,458 rental units and retail space on 5.3 acres at Delaware Avenue and Callowhill Street.

A new plan for rail service along the Northeast Corridor will begin to take shape early next year. Federal planners came to Philadelphia on Monday as part of a nine-city visit to gather ideas on how to remake the 457-mile corridor between Washington and Boston with updated equipment, more trains, new stations, possible new routes, and the prospect of high-speed trains capable of cutting current travel time in half. The Federal Railroad Administration is in the early stages of a 38-month process to figure out how to improve rail travel on the corridor for the next 30 years.