Capping two and a half blocks of I-676 in Philadelphia will cost about $160 million and be completed by 2030 at the earliest, city officials announced Tuesday.
Following decades of discussions over how to remedy the harms to Chinatown from the construction of the Vine Street Expressway, community members and city planners settled on a conceptual design that would create park space over most of the sunken roadway between 10th and 13th streets.
The planned Chinatown Stitch project is finally realizing residents’ hope of seeing parts of their neighborhood restored and reunited, said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC).
“This community has lived in despair, having to understand that this highway divided our community,” Chin said at a press conference held at the Crane Community Center, which overlooks the highway.
In the spring, work will begin “to really design a whole plan that shows how a cap can work for this community and create space that we never had,” he said. “Three generations couldn’t imagine this.”
The announcement comes after a community engagement process that lasted more than a year and included several public meetings, surveys, pop-up events, and other multi-lingual efforts to ensure the community had significant input on the plan, according to officials from the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (OTIS).
The project isn’t a done deal yet, as the city is waiting to see if the federal government will cover the cost.
Here’s how the Chinatown Stitch got to this point and what comes next.
What were the options?
In September, the city unveiled three similar design concepts to cover the expressway between 10th and 13th.
Two would provide full coverage and create tunnels longer than 800 feet. While that would provide more ground-level open space, the length would trigger federal rules requiring ventilation, fire safety measures, lighting, a taller tunnel ceiling, and evacuation infrastructure, officials said. A three-block option would take five to eight years to build.
OTIS instead picked a two-and-half-block design that leaves an opening in the highway cap between 11th and 12th streets, allowing for ventilation. It will cost less, can be built one block at a time, and will take four to five years.
The selected design received similar scores to one of three-block designs in a community survey, said OTIS’ Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives Chris Puchalsky.
The selected plan “minimizes construction impacts and it minimizes costs, so it’s something that we think we can actually build, and will not have the same maybe negative consequences of construction impacts that the other two alternatives have,” he said.
The exact amenities that will be built on the cap haven’t been decided yet. Renderings in an OTIS Vision Report released Tuesday suggest a lawn and “arts park” between 12th and 13th streets, and passive green space with a cafe on the half-covered block between 11th and 12th.
Between 10th and 11th there could be a field and play space with a pavilion and a shade structure, per the rendering.
“The community has been very clear: we want green open space,” Chin said. Financial sustainability is also a priority, he added. “It could be a combination of open space and even commercial use spaces that help pay for the maintenance of the cap.”
The project also calls for slimming Vine Street from three lanes to two on the westbound side from 9th to 12th and eastbound between 8th and Broad. Parking would be removed on the westbound side.
Other proposed changes include curb bumpouts, a separated bike lane on the eastbound side of Vine from Broad to 8th, a bus boarding island at 10th and eastbound Vine, a signal at 9th street, and wheelchair ramps at intersections.
Why is the stitch needed?
Chinatown dates back to the second half of the 19th century. The city first widened Vine Street in the 1950s, demolishing significant portions of the neighborhood and displacing residents and businesses.
The construction of the expressway in the late 1980s and early 1990s caused more displacement and went on to create other problems, including traffic crashes and congestion, air and noise pollution, and threats to pedestrians, according to the OTIS report.
“I remember living on the south side of Vine Street Expressway and having to walk across the expressway to get to my second grade class at Holy Redeemer school,” Chin said. “Never in my lifetime did I think that we would be standing here talking about something as wild as a cap to cover the expressway.”
Several studies since 2005 have proposed a cap, but a feasible plan was never developed, in part because of a lack of funding from the federal government or other sources.
Passage of the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, in 2021 “changed everything,” the report says.
The law includes the Reconnecting Communities Pilot program, which is specifically meant to fix problems created by highway construction that cut off communities from economic opportunity.
What happens next?
In September, the city applied for funding from Reconnecting Communities, specifically from a section called the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program.
The $3.2 billion NAE program targets economically disadvantaged areas like Chinatown to support equity, safety, affordable transportation, and mitigation of environmental impacts.
The federal Department of Transportation could award Philadelphia an NAE grant covering 100% of the project costs or a Reconnecting Communities grant covering 60%, in which case the city would have to get the rest of the money from its budget, the state, or other partners, Puchalsky said.
If the grant application is denied the city can reapply next year.
The federal government should notify the city about funding in the next few months, Puchalsky said. Next spring or summer OTIS will start community engagement work to design the park features that will cover the cap.
The Chinatown Stitch work may coincide with the 76ers’ project to build a new arena a few blocks away, on the site of the Fashion District just south of Chinatown.
The arena plan has not yet received city permits and faces intense opposition in the neighborhood, where residents and business owners fear major disruptions related to the arena could threaten Chinatown’s future.
Puchalsky said the Stitch was underway well before the arena project was announced and is not tied to it in any way. But Chin, who opposes the arena, said the Chinatown Stitch’s model of deep community engagement presents an alternative to the 76ers’ approach.
“The narrative of this Vine Street cap does help in the fight against the arena, because this is a project for the community, by the community. We wrote the story of how this cap should happen,” he said. “Whereas the arena, it’s like outside developers coming in to say, ‘This is what we want to do, and here’s how we’re helping the community.’”
