Designs for the Chinatown Stitch highway cap project are advancing despite the federal government’s recent cancellation of most of its funding.
The project would install a lush park on a new cap over the Vine Street Expressway between 10th and 12th streets, according to project renderings. It would include trees and landscaping, a lawn with a covered plaza, a playground, a small stream, a “moon gate” and garden inspired by Chinese traditions, a food kiosk and restrooms, and other features.
The park “will add a tremendous amount of green space that Chinatown never imagined that it could have,” and play a key role in ensuring the neighborhood’s future, said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation, which has helped develop the project.
“There’s an opportunity for Vine Street to become the main street of Philadelphia’s Chinatown, and it could really spur private business development in Chinatown North,” he said, referring to the underdeveloped, former industrial area north of Vine. “If it can do that, I think Chinatown has very strong prospects for being here for a very long time.”
The project would cost an estimated $207 million, according to the city’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS). The agency presented the design at an Art Commission meeting Wednesday morning.
The commission gave preliminary approval to the design, which will be revised after a round of community engagement this fall.
“Remarkable” funding, then a reversal
The cap and park are meant to help “stitch” Chinatown back together and partly reverse the neighborhood’s evisceration by the widening of Vine Street in the 1950s and the construction of the expressway in the 1980s and ‘90s.
For decades, Chinatown community leaders have aspired to cap the highway, and two recent federal grants totaling $162 million finally allowed the project to proceed, said Chris Puchalsky, OTIS’ director of policy and strategic initiatives.
They included a $159 million grant last year from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Neighborhoods and Communities Grant program. The city has already spent about $4 million on planning and engineering work from a previous grant in 2022, Puchalsky said.
But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump last month effectively ended the Reconnecting Neighborhoods program and clawed back $2.4 billion in grants nationwide. OTIS still has access to about $8 million that had already been obligated, or legally promised, for the Stitch project, but the remaining $151 million was canceled.
Having access to some portion of the funds means the city can continue the planning process, Puchalsky told the Art Commission.
“We have enough of a runway to keep this project moving. We do not have construction funding, and we don’t have final design funding at this point. We’re looking for it,” he said. “It’s not unusual for a project to be at this phase and not have construction funding. It was actually kind of remarkable that we had put all the funding together.”
“What we do know is that there’s a lot of political support for this project. We’ve spoken to all of our federal elected officials. They’re all very supportive,” he said.
Green space amid urban density
The design provided this week shows the park extending over Vine Street expressway between 10th and 11th streets and part of the highway between 11th and 12th, leaving an open section of road next to 12th.
OTIS’s overall plan also calls for capping the expressway between 12th and 13th, but the agency has not offered a detailed design for that portion, describing it as a future phase.
On one end of the project area, there would be a small piece of landscaped highway cap on the east side of 10th Street to help block sounds and smells from the expressway, said Allison Harvey, an architect with OJB, which is working on the design for OTIS.
On the west side of 10th, an existing plaza would be replaced by a stage or plaza covered by a shade structure, facing a lawn area with seating on its sides. The north side of the lawn would have an area where local vendors could set up shop. Statues currently on the site would be relocated within the park.
Paths would lead to the food kiosk, restrooms and a fenced playground in the middle of the block. Closer to 11th, there would be a gingko grove and “flexible terraces” that could be used for table games and small sports activities.
Across 11th, the western section of the park would be a calmer garden space, with a rounded moon gate entryway, Harvey said. It would have garden terraces, a lawn, a small winding stream, and a park office building. The site could eventually be connected with an expanded Rail Park, north of Vine, that the Center City District would like to extend over abandoned elevated tracks.
“There’s only about 2% of land cover in Chinatown that’s actual green space, so the park serves as an amazing counter-note to the very dense urban environment,” Harvey said. “On top of that, there’s a great opportunity to think of the park as being a way to celebrate Chinese garden traditions, and to also think about the role of Philadelphia as the city of gardens.”
Vine Street work begins next week
After construction, the park segments would continue to be divided by short stretches of 10th and 11th streets that cross Vine. OTIS is considering raising the level of the road in those areas and texturing the pavement for a traffic-calming effect, Pulchasky said.
There will also need to be “significant reconstruction” of the retaining walls of the Vine Street Expressway so they can support the weight of the cap, he said.
PennDOT is separately preparing to install a “road diet” on Vine Street between 8th and Broad streets, with fewer auto lanes, a new separated bike lane on the eastbound side, curb bumpouts to shorten pedestrian crossings, new signals and other features. Work on that $8.5 million project is scheduled to start next week.
OTIS conducted a round of public engagement on the Stitch design earlier this year, and will do another this fall to take input on potential tweaks. The project team expects to complete the preliminary engineering design, setting the project’s scope and schedule, early next year before moving into the final design phase.
The city’s timeline calls for construction to begin in the spring of 2027 and conclude in the fall of 2029, but officials say that could change depending on whether they can find a new source of funding for the work.
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