Report: Casinos Don't Fit with Waterfront Plan

PHILADELPHIA-Following up on its 10-point action plan for redeveloping the central Delaware waterfront, PennPraxis has concluded that the two 5,000-slot casinos proposed for the waterfront are not compatible with that plan or the civic vision PennPraxis unveiled last November. Mayor Michael Nutter, who endorsed the action plan in June, had asked the nonprofit urban planning group to prepare a report analyzing the casinos’ current designs.

Titled “Casino Site Plan Review,” the report scores designs for the two casinos—SugarHouse and Foxwoods Philadelphia—on 84 compatibility questions tied to the 10-point action plan, which had addressed zoning, transit and public access. For each question, the site plans are rated as either compliant with the action plan, non-compliant but “fixable” or non-compliant and “not fixable.”

Both the Foxwoods and SugarHouse plans are scored as non-compliant but fixable on most of the questions. For example, the current site plans do not call for ecologically sound design techniques such as vegetated swales and pervious pavements, although the report notes that there are “opportunities” to install these. On some questions, the ratings overlap between two columns, with footnotes explaining that the plans address some but not all of the compliance requirements.