philly

I attended the casino forum put together by The Daily News and Penn Praxis which was open to the public and announced two weeks ago. It was a huuuge event held in room 2004 of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. I'd say somewhere around 300 people were there. A mix of people from the communities, activists, designers, local politicos, presentation teams, architecture geeks and everything else in between.

Daily News writer, specifically the writer covering the casinos, Sandra Shea and Mayor John Street [both pictured above] said some words at the beginning of the night to welcome the crowd and to thank them all for coming out to be involved in the process of the design of the proposed casinos and their sites. I followed them outside after Street spoke to get this shot of them standing in front of some of the book report poster boards.

I'm not very good with crowd estimation, but I've been in my share of crowds and I'd estimate the head count at about 300. Any other estimates?

The night was to be dedicated to the design aspects of the proposed casinos. How well they fit into the sites. How they incorporated the feel of the neighborhood into the design. How accessible the public land and waterfront they were. Each of the five project teams were allowed ten minutes to show their dinky .ppt silde shows [some set to some seriously cheesy music]. After each presentation, the panel would discuss the presentation and certain aspects of each proposal for five minutes. Above are the panelists and moderator Harris Steinberg, board president of Penn Praxis at the far left. From left to right: Bob Hillier, principal at Hillier Architecture in Princeton; Genie Birch, chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the Penn School of Design; Alan Greenberger, principal at MGA Architects in Philadelphia and co-founder of the Design Advocacy Group; Sarah Thorp, PennDesign Preservation grad and a Fishtown activist and Winka Dubbeldam, principal at Archi-Tectonics in New York City and associate practice professor at Penn.

First up were the people of Jerde who proposed Pinnacle casino. They were the most put together bunch and with the largest entourage. They had a person walking around handing out press packets [she gave me one after asking if I were press to which I answered yes, online press, and she said with a smile, that counts!]. Their presentation mantra rallied around the fact that their idea incorporated the river into the design the best. They had an enclosed bay-like area with a low-profile casino. The full area would also include several restaurants, a skating rink and a twelve to fourteen screen movie theater. Their plan allowed access to the waterfront by people not wishing to go through the casino, but not as accessible as the panel would have liked.

The second presentation was by Cope-Linder who proposed Sugar House casino. They immediately started to reel off a list of other urban casinos including Monte Carlo, Sydney, Detrioit [who knew?], Atlantic City… Trying to hammer it in that casinos in cities work. The panel wasn't too impressed with the layout and one panelist said that the waterfront wasn't truly being utilized as a waterfront to a loud round of applause from the seemingly almost completely anti-casino crowd [myself included]. In this plan, one has to walk through the casino to access the waterfront and the proposed eight acres of public space is all located in tiny island strips by the front entrance "spaghetti" area of criss crossing car lanes which the panelists very much didn't like.

The third presentation was by Friedmutter Group who proposed Foxwoods Casino. This guy was the most boring out of the bunch. He flew in all the way from California to do this. I believe he is the head architect or designer. All I gotta say is that if you're gonna fly in a guy from California for a presentation, make sure he's rested and make sure he's a good public speaker. Monotonous and drawn out were his speech patterns. Their design stressed that the casino was raised a full level from the ground. I didn't get why this was so special. The presenter said that it looks nice when approaching the casino from the street. Eh. One panelist described the design as "festival banal" to hoots and hollers from the crowd.

Fourth was Worth Group and their Trump Street casino. The only one out of the five to be fully inland. They didn't have a design ready to show the crowd. Why? They've apparently already had several [I think he said a dozen] community meetings closer to the proposed casino site. Instead, they played this ridiculous [and I do mean ridiculous, everyone was laughing at it] .ppt slide show about the history of the building they're going to tear apart and how the original occupant was this guy who built the first steel cars… He went on and on until he was out of time.

Last was Bower Lewis Thrower and their Planet Hollywood-Riverwalk Casino. While still on the river, this casino would not necessitate any landfill into the river, they'd actually be just off the river. This site is at the end of Spring Garden St with a large five-story garage river side. One panelists suggested creating a boulevard from the end of Spring Garden St through the casino site and curling back out to have a drop off zone by a smaller garage.

None of the plans were met with much enthusiasm by the crowd nor the panelists. I sensed quite a bit of frustration in the room as the issues of the morality of bringing slots to our city and the "800lbs gorilla," as one Q&A sessioner called it, that is the problem with traffic. The panel discussed a little bit how a grid-system, as Philadelphia has, deals with traffic better than a sprawling city system does. But still, Thorp argued, in her neighborhood, there are so many little streets that cannot and will never be able to cope with the large amounts of automobile traffic that a 2000+ slot casino would bring. Another Q&A sessioner brought up the environmental impact a huge casino would have: the energy it takes to power the whole thing, the added cars and emissions; he jokingly suggested that the cranks on the slot machines be used as a green energy source.

Frustrating is how I'd sum up the night. Questions left unanswered. Presentations which were completely unnecessary. A looming public comment deadline [June 2] without a proper traffic plan. At the end of the night Steinberg asked rhetorically whether or not it was wise to be judging the merits of the proposed casinos instead of the proposed sites. I have no idea how the sites were approved for possible casinos, but I don't recall there ever being a public discussion about it; it seems like companies just applied for gaming licenses and once they got them, they scouted locations willy-nilly and then filed plans accordingly. In the end, I'm still with these people, CasiNO:

There will be plenty of more stuff to read up on the forum. I saw quite a few bloggers in the mix. Aaron from Philly IMC, Ed Goppelt of Hallwatch whom I finally got to meet in person, Marc Stier who got in the final question of the night, Will Bunch who got in a bit late and Jennifer Kronstain of Philly Blog. And I'm sure there was a smattering of Daily News and Inquirer reporters there who were there for more than curiosity. I know Bunch will be writing for the DN at least.

An unedited flickr set of thirty-four shots. I already have a smaller set of edited/cropped/b&w shots which I may post with a little blurb throughout the day.

***UPDATE***
I forgot to mention that the whole evening was taped, I think by the people from the Daily News, and will be presented to the PA Gaming Board so that the entire evening will be entered into the public record for all to have access to.

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