Philly refinery site could be a big business hub, but traffic is a problem

I’m standing deep in South Philadelphia, at what could someday be the intersection of 34th and Hartranft Streets, staring out at a vast, dun-colored plain that resembles the fictional planet Tatooine and trying to imagine what it would look like with buildings, trees and a grade-separated bike lane.

Only four years ago, this spot was the heart of the East Coast’s biggest oil refinery, a hellscape of flaming steel stacks, snaking pipelines and bulbous storage tanks. Now, virtually every piece of that sprawling industrial complex has been disassembled and carted away, leaving a two-mile swathe of scrubland along the Schuylkill River, from Moore Street to Penrose Avenue. Were it not for the distant views of Center City’s skyscrapers and the Platt Bridge’s zigzagging steel truss, I’d be hard pressed to identify my location.

For more than 150 years, the refinery was an ever-present, yet little known, feature of Philadelphia’s geography, a dismal inferno that you might glimpse on the drive to the airport and never think about again. Founded in 1869 near the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, the refinery eventually gobbled up 1,300 acres of South Philadelphia wetlands, an area roughly half the size of Center City. By the time an explosion and fire forced its then-owner, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, to declare bankruptcy in 2019, the massive site had been thoroughly walled off by I-95 and I-76. Only a few hundred refinery workers ever had reason to go there.

Now this damaged landscape is about to become a living part of Philadelphia once again, with all the complexity that comes when cities reuse polluted brownfield sites.

This fall, Hilco Redevelopment Partners, which bought the bankrupt refinery in 2020, will start construction on two gargantuan warehouses near 26th and West Passyunk Avenue, an already heavily trafficked intersection that feeds into I-76. Those one-story structures, which will together enclose more than a million square feet of storage space, are the first step in a development that could reorient Philadelphia’s economy, making it a major distribution point for the Northeast region and helping to lift thousands of low-income residents out of poverty.

Hilco’s final build-out of what it calls the Bellwether District could easily include a dozen more warehouses — vast closets for all the online stuff we order — along with labs for life science companies and production plants for specialized manufacturing. Over the next two decades, Hilco expects to create a mirror image of Philadelphia Navy Yard, where 15,000 people now work for private companies.

But right now, it’s not clear how everyone will get to the Bellwether District.

‘Nonexistent’ transit service

Because the refinery developed apart from the rest of the city, only three major intersections lead into the enormous site. Transit service is almost nonexistent. Although there was once a pedestrian bridge over I-76 at Morris Street, next to Universal Audenried Charter School in Grays Ferry, the stairs were removed long ago. Forget about biking.

This should be the moment when the city, Hilco, SEPTA and PennDOT come up with a comprehensive transportation plan to manage truck traffic and insure that workers are able to access the site without driving. Instead, the Bellwether District is already shaping up to be a repeat of the auto-dependent Navy Yard, where transit and greener forms of transportation have been an afterthought.

Compared to the Bellwether District, the Navy Yard is relatively well integrated into the city grid. It sits at the southern end of Broad Street, a mile south of the sports complex and the NRG subway station. Yet, despite a free shuttle service, 93% of its workers still commute by car. In its plan for the Bellwether District, Hilco optimistically assumes 80% of its future workforce — estimated to reach 19,000 by 2043 — will choose to drive. That’s on top of the 2,500 tractor-trailers that are expected to arrive every day when the site is fully occupied.

The lack of transportation planning is particularly disappointing given how much we’ve learned since the Navy Yard opened as an office park 20 years ago. At the time, the city was desperate to retain middle-class jobs and hadn’t yet made climate goals a priority. As a second-generation redevelopment project, the Bellwether District should do better.

Environmental sense

It has taken a while for some people to accept the idea that a benzene-spewing fossil fuel relic really can be transformed into a cleaner, green industrial site. After the fire, some environmentalists argued that the site was too polluted to be reused and advocated for a less intensive use, such as a wind farm. Ironically, the Trump administration had pushed the former owners to keep operating the refinery, despite the damaging health consequences for nearby neighborhoods.

So, in many ways, Philadelphia lucked out when Hilco bought the refinery and decided to turn it into a logistics hub, similar to the one it operates at Sparrows Point, a former steel mill in Baltimore County, Md. Merely by closing the refinery, Hilco estimates that it has reduced Philadelphia carbon emissions by 16%.

Putting a giant warehouse district on this brownfield site — rather than in a residential neighborhood like Bustleton or a rural farming community in South Jersey — also makes environmental sense. The Bellwether District is just a short hop from the city’s airport, marine terminal and I-95, which puts it within a day’s drive of a third of America’s population. Meanwhile, the project promises to create thousands of entry-level jobs for residents in the surrounding neighborhoods, giving them a chance to earn over $15 an hour, plus benefits.

That is, assuming they can find an affordable way to get to work.

Proximity to jobs

Matt Wysong, the planner coordinating the city’s oversight process, acknowledged that the transportation issues are still being worked out, even as Hilco starts grading the earth into flat-topped mesas that will support the new warehouses.

“We would have liked to see a detailed master plan, a comprehensive look at the entire area,” Wysong told me. Neighborhood leaders, who have been negotiating a community benefits agreement, voice the same concern. “I think we’ll get there,” Wysong said.

It’s not just a matter of enabling workers to get to the site without driving. Wysong says the city sees the Bellwether project as an opportunity to fill in a huge gap along the city’s long Schuylkill waterfront and link up two dynamic job centers: the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which abuts the Bellwether District at its southeast corner, and Pennovation Works at the northern end.

At the city’s urging, Hilco has agreed to create a network of streets inside the site, featuring generous sidewalks, trees and grade-separated bike paths. The company plans to extend 34th Street, making it the Bellwether District’s main street and creating a direct connection with the West Philadelphia universities, which have become the center of the city’s fast-growing life sciences industry. Hoping to piggyback off their success, Hilco has set aside the part closest to Pennovation for labs.

One of the best connections is already in the works. The Schuylkill River Development Corp., which had been gradually building a recreation path along both sides of the river, has now made the Bellwether District its top priority, Joseph R. Syrnick, its president, told me. The group plans to extend the existing trail on the west bank, which currently ends at Bartram’s Garden, to 61st and West Passyunk, thus enabling West Philadelphia residents to commute directly to jobs at the Bellwether District — especially as more people begin to use electric bikes and scooters.

Congestion concerns

Along with making sure workers can easily get to the Bellwether District, Wysong said the city also wants to open up the waterfront areas for public recreation. But that won’t be easy.

When Hilco bought the site, it inherited a deed restriction that forbids public use of the waterfront. While the company is working with the city to void the requirement, the environmental advocacy group Clean Air Council remains deeply concerned about toxic materials in the soil. The council has filed challenges to Bellwether’s environmental permits, seeking stricter air and soil monitoring and controls for water runoff, staffer Russell Zerbo said.

Meanwhile, it’s still not clear how Hilco will manage all the truck traffic that will soon descend on the site. Although officials say they want the Bellwether District to have a campuslike feel, Hilco has asked PennDot for permission to widen three already wide road intersections: 28th and Passyunk, 26th and Hartranft, and 26th and Penrose (Route 291). Some fear that those projects could vastly inflate the size of the intersections, eliminating the existing sidewalks and bike lanes, especially on West Passyunk.

Given the reduction in carbon emissions from closing the refinery, what a shame it would be if increased congestion at those intersections added to local air pollution.

Two decades after the Navy Yard opened, Philadelphia is well past the point where it should be treating a new employment center like a self-contained suburban office park. If we want a healthier, more sustainable city, we need to make sure the Bellwether District becomes a fully connected part of the city, a safe place everyone can access.