February 24, 2003

Scenic America Designates Philadelphia's Schuylkill Marshes A "Last Chance Landscape"

(Philadelphia)-Scenic America has named the Schuylkill Marshes in Philadelphia one of America's 10 "Last Chance Landscapes." By granting itself a zoning variance, the City of Philadelphia will be able to lease public land near the Philadelphia International Airport for the construction of eight, 90-foot-high, double-sided billboards in an environmentally sensitive area.

 "It's appalling when a city that purports to be so dedicated to increasing tourism abuses its own billboard-control laws," said Mary Tracy, executive director of The Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight (SCRUB), which nominated the Schuylkill Marshes. "These signs would only degrade this one stretch of beauty on the gateway trip from the airport to downtown Philadelphia."

 Each Last Chance Landscape is a place with distinctive community character, chosen by Scenic America because it faces imminent or irrevocable harm. Each also possesses a potential solution, a "last chance" for people to step forward and preserve the scenic beauty before time has run out. 

Two recreational trails planned for the area would be compromised by the billboards, according to Mark McGuigan of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council's Greenspace Alliance. "One of the trails would be an extension of the Schuylkill River Heritage Trail from Bartram's Garden, through Eastwick, to historic Fort Mifflin, and over to the Tinicum National Environmental Center. The other would be part of the East Coast Greenway Trail. We need to get all these interesting landscapes connected up, not blight them," said McGuigan.

 "I look at how this issue will impact real estate values and the efforts that the city is making to improve the area," said Greg Melidosian, one of the nearby Eastwick community residents who testified at the zoning hearing. 'The erection of the billboards is adverse to the efforts that have been made. If you drive along here now at 4:30 in the afternoon, with the sun setting, the site line going into Center City is really quite gorgeous What do we want people to see when they look out their windows?"

 SCRUB would like the City to cancel its plan for leasing taxpayers' land to an outdoor-advertising company. "The open sky, lush wetlands, and unobstructed view of downtown should be saved as a unique landscape that enhances tourism and also makes Philadelphia a beautiful place to come home to, rather than turned into a commonplace forest of billboards. This is indeed a last chance," said Tracy.

Among the other winners of the Last Chance Landscape Award are the Blue Ridge Parkway Viewshed in Roanoke County, Va., and the State Highway 99 Corridor in San Joaquin Valley, Calif.