PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — After gathering community input, the city has selected its design choice for a two-and-a-half-block cap over the Vine Street Expressway in Chinatown.
The city had three final designs for the project, dubbed the “Chinatown Stitch,” a cap over I-676 that would unite a community that was divided by the expressway decades ago.
“This highway, since it was constructed, constitutes a scar in our Chinatown neighborhood,” said Mike Carroll, deputy managing director for the city’s Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Sustainability (OTIS). “It represents a chapter in our nation and in our city’s history that we want to rectify.”
Two of the final designs proposed capping the highway with parks and public buildings for three full blocks between 10th and 13th streets. A three-block cap, however, would create a tunnel, by the state’s definition, and would require additional ventilation and emergency access.
A two-and-a-half-block cap would avoid the additional expense and complications, said Christopher Puchalsky, OTIS director of policy and strategic initiatives. “It minimizes construction impacts and it minimizes cost,” Puchalsky said at a news conference Tuesday. “It’s something that we think we can actually build.”
John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, favors a shorter construction timeline. “We want something that this current generation can experience, and we want this community to be reconnected now,” Chin said.
Chin said he never thought he’d be talking about “something as wild as a cap” to the highway. “The psyche of our community is that we’re always the dumping ground,” Chin said. “But hey, this narrative that might change is that the U.S. federal government has funds available to help communities like Chinatown.”
The Chinatown Stitch Vision Report, Dec. 2023
Carroll said the city will be applying for grants under the federal Reconnecting Communities program to fund the project, which now moves to the engineering and environmental stages. He says the city hopes to hear within several months whether federal funds are available.
The first phase of construction between 10th Street and just west of 11th Street would cost an estimated $160 million, Puchalsky said. In the most optimistic timeline, Carroll said, construction would begin in 2027 and last three to four years.
Chin, in an interview, contrasted the Chinatown Stitch concept to the new 76ers arena proposed to go up on Market Street between 10th and 11th streets.
“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.’”