Opinion: Councilmember Squilla should rethink his stance on Washington Ave.

The way forward for Washington Avenue has sparked fierce debate about security and gentrification amongst neighborhood members within the space. This op-ed represents one perspective of the continuing debate. For one more, see right here.

As a lifelong resident of South Philadelphia, a few of my earliest reminiscences of Washington Avenue is of an extended line of cargo trains rumbling down the road, bringing important supplies and provides to the manufacturing, warehousing, and retail companies that present jobs, items, and companies to our working-class metropolis.

Sadly, for the previous couple of years our neighborhood has been underneath siege from unplanned, reckless gentrification. Lengthy-term residents and homeowners of small companies are being pushed out by large builders and prosperous people who want to remodel our neighborhood to swimsuit their very own costly tastes. The hurt to long-term residents was ignored, resulting in the founding of  the North of Washington Avenue Coalition (NOWAC).

NOWAC initially welcomed the long-overdue plans to repave Washington Avenue.

Nonetheless, we have been blindsided when the Workplace of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (OTIS) offered us with a plan to place Washington Avenue on a “street eating regimen” that radically narrowed this key industrial hall. A bunch of long-term residents and small enterprise homeowners instantly shaped Save Washington Avenue Coalition (SWAC) to oppose this dangerously misguided plan.

Washington Avenue is a important evacuation and emergency route for residents of South and Southwest Philadelphia. As the one five-lane avenue in South Philadelphia, it connects residents, companies, and emergency responders to 2 main interstates and the Walt Whitman Bridge.

On quite a few events, Washington Avenue has been the one technique of escape for 1000’s of residents who reside close to the Philadelphia Vitality Options Refinery, now shut down and rebranded into the Bellwether District, positioned on a floodplain the place the danger of flooding will increase yearly.