Gambling on Philadelphia’s Future

Philadelphia doesn’t need to become the next Atlantic City. Even without casinos, Philadelphia has had plenty of success. Over the last ten years, this city of 1.5 million has experienced an urban renewal that has made it one of the most attractive and livable cities in the country. Now, however, legalized gambling is coming to Philadelphia - and its impact is a crapshoot.

In July 2004, the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a law allowing the creation of fourteen gaming establishments, two of which must be freestanding 5,000-slot parlors in Philadelphia. The casinos could draw as many as 40,000 people a day and would make Philadelphia the largest city in the nation with legalized gambling. The law also exempted the casinos from all local land use review and gave the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board sole power in granting the highly sought-after gaming licenses, as well as control over where they would go and what they would look like. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court subsequently struck down that provision on constitutional grounds, but there is a strong possibility that, under pressure from campaign contributors to get gambling in place before the gubernatorial election this November, the legislature will soon pass a constitutional version of that provision.

A Future Worth Gambling On

In the 1990s, Philadelphia was flirting with bankruptcy and reeling from decades of population and job loss. To encourage development, the city in 1997 and 2000 passed a ten-year property tax moratorium on most new construction and rehabilitation projects, fueling a real estate boom. In Center City, thousands of new housing units, including row houses, high-rise towers, and office-building-to-condo conversions, have been built, leading to a significant increase in downtown population. A dizzying variety of new restaurants, arts venues, retail, and nightlife have sprung up. And the streets have become cleaner, safer, and more pleasant. Many projects are being driven by the tax abatement, but they are also benefiting from the return to the urban core of what Richard Florida refers to as the creative class: twenty-somethings who could live anywhere but are choosing dense, edgy inner-city neighborhoods teeming with new life and energy.

In the past year alone, National Geographic Traveler magazine featured Philadelphia as its “Next Great City,” the Urban Land Institute listed Center City among the nation’s top downtowns for urban retailing, and The New York Times asked whether Philly is becoming New York’s sixth borough because of the number of young New Yorkers moving there. Asked what they like about Philadelphia, new residents and visitors cite the historic architecture, appealing streetscapes, human scale, and the city’s amenities: a bounty of restaurants, esteemed cultural offerings such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and high-quality retail.

Yet despite the downtown boom, Philadelphia may not have the tools to encourage beneficial growth over the long term. The city has long suffered a compromised civic vision among both elected officials and civic leaders. The regulatory agencies that should be instrumental in shaping the built environment are weak: the zoning code is generally acknowledged to be inadequate and out-of-date, the City Planning and Historical Commissions are beleaguered by politics-as-usual, and many planning and design issues end up at the Zoning Board of Adjustment by default. Developers, whom the city tried to lure for so long, are still perceived as having the upper hand in negotiations with the city. In addition, a federal probe into pay-to-play culture in local government has compromised the effectiveness of the lame-duck administration of Mayor John Street. It almost goes without saying that advocacy for quality design is lost. But with much of the city’s recent success attributable to the quality of the urban environment, the preservation and enhancement of the physical fabric is crucial to the city’s economic well-being.

Design Advocacy: A Way To Work With, Not Against, Development

A small group of citizens with which we are involved, the Design Advocacy Group of Philadelphia (DAG), has begun to promote high-quality urban development that current city processes do not foster. Established in 2002, the group acts both as a facilitator, bringing city officials and planners together, and as a civic watchdog, offering guidelines for any new development. From the outset, DAG was able to gain credibility by establishing trusted relationships with both of the city’s daily newspapers, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. DAG members frequently contribute op-ed columns to both newspapers, and they are quoted in the news pages. In the exercise of “civic journalism,” newspapers have co-sponsored events, such as a waterfront design charrette, with DAG and have devoted considerable space on their editorial pages to presenting complex public design issues.

DAG now has 300 members hailing from the city’s top design, planning, preservation, economics, law, academic, non-profit, and government offices. The organization has no staff, dues, or overhead; it is a group of active and interested citizens with a depth of collective design expertise. As with many Philadelphia institutions, DAG’s decision-making process is influenced by the Quaker tradition of consensus. Every month, the group hosts an open meeting at which issues are deliberated and information shared. A guest speaker, often a developer or architect, presents a proposed or planned development. Attendees toss out reactions and ideas. If a more deliberative response is called for, an informal task force will form itself to consider the issue and report back to the full DAG membership and the sixteen-member DAG steering committee.

Developers now seek DAG’s blessing on projects and public officials seek its input. Re-cently, for example, a powerful and politically connected parking-magnate-cum-developer proposed a new high-rise condominium in the tony Rittenhouse Square section of town. The developer approached DAG for project review and approval before taking the project on to the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

DAG Takes on Gambling in Philadelphia

After the casino legislation was passed, some Philadelphians feared that the casino would generate intense traffic congestion and would threaten the fabric of Center City’s small-scale, urbane neighborhoods. Rather than protest the entire project with an uncompromising, NIMBY attitude, however, DAG set out to represent these concerns and to ensure that new construction neither marred the aesthetics of the city nor isolated the economic benefits of a casino. Casinos in New Orleans and Detroit had set a worrisome precedent for urban gaming parlors: faceless boxes ringed by oceans of parking and festooned with garish signage. These were nothing more than glorified slot barns - designed to psychologically disconnect the gambler from human life outside their doors, rather than to function as good urban neighbors.

DAG began an intensive advocacy campaign and developed several simple principles to ensure that gaming would benefit, not damage, Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. The first principle is that a quality-of-life impact study, addressing issues such as parking, transportation, pedestrian circulation, noise, and light, should precede site selection for a gaming establishment. Next, gaming establishments should be designed to enhance their immediate surroundings, with special attention given to the massing, scale, material, rhythm, and color to avoid damage to existing neighborhoods. Further, to ensure a vibrant street life, gaming establishments should be part of mixed-use developments that include other uses such as theaters, retail, and hotels. Finally, the siting and design of every gaming establishment should be vetted through an open public process.

Paul Levy, the influential head of both the Center City District and the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation, followed DAG’s lead in working on design principles out of a concern for the impact that slots could have on the successful revitalization of Philadelphia’s downtown. He held a series of early public forums for the local business, political, and academic communities. Early in 2005, Philadelphia Mayor Street named Levy as co-chair of his newly-organized Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force, charged with investigating the potential economic, social, and physical implications of gaming in Philadelphia. Seeking guidance on developing “land use and urban design criteria and standards for proposed gaming facilities,” the group turned to DAG to help create standards for judging casino design.

Levy says that design guidelines, eventually approved by Philadelphia’s Gaming Advisory Task Force, were essential for the city. “DAG made a significant contribution to Philadelphia’s Gaming Advisory Task Force by meeting on several occasions on a pro bono basis with the Site Selection and Design Committee and by preparing a set of design guidelines which were fully incorporated into the final report that was presented to Mayor Street,” said Levy. “DAG has helped create high, but realistic standards that have provided a framework which enables the city to evaluate the comparative merits of competing proposals from national gaming companies.”

Currently, five applicants, including Donald Trump, have proposed gaming facilities in Philadelphia. Four of the proposed casinos are on the waterfront, which is fast being developed without benefit of an overall plan. Meanwhile, efforts continue in the Pennsylvania legislature to rescind municipal zoning and other local oversight of gambling developments. The state expects to issue the first gaming licenses by the end of this year.

Sustaining Philadelphia’s Renaissance

The challenges now before Philadelphia’s planning community will determine whether the city’s current renaissance is sustainable: preserving the livability of the Center City core and the adjacent neighborhoods, including their density, scale, walkability; preserving historic architecture; bringing the long-ignored waterfront into the city fabric, while preserving public access for recreation; and managing the increasing demand for parking, while improving mass transit.

No one, of course, has all the answers. But instrumental responses can come from citizen volunteers outside the political fray. In the great gambling debate, DAG’s voice concerning the physical impact of the casinos on Philadelphia’s dense, historic urban fabric cut through the cacophony of fear. By laying out sound planning principles for casino development, DAG demonstrated that Philadelphia’s future is worth gambling on.

Design Advocacy Group of Philadelphia: http://www.designadvocacy.org

Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force: http://www.phila.gov/gamingadvisory