State Buildings

Three years ago, the proposed use of waterless urinals in the Comcast Center let loose a stream of labor indignation that threatened the tower's status as America's tallest green building. Get ready for some real commotion. Gov. Rendell is pushing for Pennsylvania's legislature to enact a state building code that would require environmentally friendly, energy-efficient construction. Whether he wants both residential and commercial development included is not yet known. Rendell was short on specifics in his call for a green building code, which he made ever so briefly in his Feb. 4 budget speech.

Gov. Rendell's office is scheduled to announce this morning that Pennsylvania has sold the 19-story office building at 1400 Spring Garden St. to Tower Investments Inc. for conversion into residences. The real estate development firm will pay $25 million for the building, at the corner of North Broad Street, under a contract signed Thursday, according to Tower. "It's the most important corner on North Broad Street," said Tower owner Bart Blatstein, whose previous projects include Avenue North, at Broad and Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

Gov. Rendell wants to sell the 18-story state office building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets just north of Center City. The Department of General Services has retained Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. to sell the building and lease space elsewhere in the city for the 1,000 employees in 18 agencies who work there. Ed Myslewicz, department spokesman, said Trammell Crow has identified 11 sites, including some buildings not yet built, that could house the agencies. He would not name the sites.

Some contracts supervised by New Jersey's $8.6 billion school-construction program have been put on hold pending a review of cost overruns at the agency by the state's newly appointed inspector general. In a letter to acting Gov. Richard J. Codey yesterday, Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper requested that officials at the School Construction Corp. "refrain from completing and/or entering into any contracts, change orders or any other commitments for purchases or services until we have had an opportunity to review those agreements.

Important legislation that was approved Monday by the Assembly and Senate and that would require the placement of defibrillators in state buildings could save an untold number of lives from sudden cardiac arrest. The American Heart Association has called sudden cardiac arrest a "major unresolved public health issue. " At least 220,000 Americans die from sudden cardiac arrest annually. We refer to sudden cardiac arrest as a "major unresolved public health issue" because the survival rate is barely 5 percent.

No trust. Beneath the money squabbles, low test scores and power politics, that's the core reason why the state of Pennsylvania decided to take over the Philadelphia schools. It had no trust in the people running the city school system. Never mind that this reflected at least as badly on state officials as school leaders. The cold fact was Harrisburg would not give city schools more support through dollars and deeds unless it got to call the shots. By tonight's takeover deadline, the state may have the control it sought.

For 15 months it has unfolded, practically unnoticed, in a Philadelphia courtroom, one of the longest civil trials in Pennsylvania history. The context is unprecedented, and the stakes are enormous. At issue is nothing less than whether state taxpayers should pay for a gleaming new $200 million PennDot headquarters in Harrisburg - or whether a giant chemical company should pick up the tab instead. The saga began six years ago, when a five-alarm fire damaged the former state Department of Transportation building, a 30-year-old, 12-story structure next to the state Capitol.

Robert P. Casey, 68, a coal miner's son who rose to become a two-term governor of Pennsylvania, died last night at Mercy Hospital in his hometown of Scranton. Gov. Casey, a lawyer who also served as a state senator and as Pennsylvania auditor general, was known throughout his career for tenacity, a trait evidenced by his five campaigns for governor over four decades. After three losses, he finally won the office in 1986. He was reelected four years later in the biggest landslide in state history.

Officials met yesterday to discuss a proposed $16 million plant that could produce 10 million gallons of ethanol a year and expressed support for building it in South Jersey, preferably in Burlington County. Ethanol, a chemical made from corn, is added to gasoline to clean the air. Unlike methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), another gasoline additive widely used in the state, it does not endanger water supplies. Local legislators support a state-financed plant in Burlington County.

It was clear from the response to my attack on the state office building at Broad and Spring Garden that the time has come to form an official committee to destroy that edifice. It was the biggest and most unanimous positive response this writer has ever received. (There have been bigger negative responses, but that's another story.) Many Philadelphians shared my dismay that the site plan for the proposed new baseball stadium has been changed to save the state office building from the rendezvous with the wrecking ball it so richly deserves.