PHILLY.COM: …As Franklin and Marshall’s new president, [John Fry] wasted no time launching a $75 million redevelopment project, one of the largest in Lancaster’s history. It involved demolishing the factory and moving half of a railroad yard on the college’s rim to a site less than a mile away, freeing dozens of acres for development…
Now, Fry has plans to transform Drexel’s neighborhood. In March, the university, along with developer Brandywine Realty, announced a decades-long, $3.5 billion project to turn parking lots and industrial buildings between its campus and 30th Street Station into a dense neighborhood of businesses, retailers, parks, and residential towers, to be called Schuylkill Yards.
Partially capping 30th Street Station’s rail yard would provide land for more future development near Drexel. The university and Brandywine also are working with Amtrak and SEPTA to study the possibility of partially capping 30th Street Station’s rail yard, which would provide land for more development… (more)
EDITOR: As we have said on many occasions, “John Fry does the best possible things in the worse possible ways.”
He has little compunction about hoodwinking the public. Urban renewal will likely result in the removal of disadvantaged neighborhoods and substitution of gentrification.
