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Cornell team wins Ed Bacon competition

Meet the Cornell team

Six Cornell University students have won the 4th Ed Bacon Student Design Competition with a proposal to turn the Grays Ferry Crescent brownfield site into a neighborhood with homes, green jobs, and classrooms that is tied both to nearby communities and the Schuylkill River.

Soil contaminated by the area's industrial past would be cleaned and re-used on site. A learning center would rise on stilts above the floodplain and teach people about brownfield remediation and the effects of soil contamination on communities. The Crescent's past would also be honored with an Industrial Heritage Museum.

High-rise office buildings and residences would take advantage of river views. Some buildings have green roofs. Others have blue ones — they collect water and feed it to cisterns, so that it can be used in the buildings and for irrigation.

The paved surfaces connecting buildings would be permeable. And the new neighborhood would be connected to the Schuylkill River Trail by a green swath that would serve both as a public promenade and a natural storm-water filtration system.

The students' plan calls for the next generation of jobs in the Crescent to be much greener: They propose building a waste management research and development facility.

The contest was open to teams from any North American University. The 23 entries were judged by Elinor Bacon, President, E.R. Bacon Development, LLC; Anthony Bracali, Friday Architects/Planners, Inc.; Gerard H. Sweeney, President and CEO, Brandywine Realty Trust; and Joseph Syrnick, President and CEO, Schuylkill River Development Corporation, Acting Chairman, Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

Why did the judges pick the Cornell entry? “They thought it was a really sensible approach to what could go on this site, and a really good urban design,” said Greg Heller, Bacon Foundation president. The submission is also very visually appealing. But those things are true of other entries as well, he said. “I was really impressed with the quality of entries. I felt it escalated significantly this year — it's at a whole new level,” Heller said. That meant a tough time for the judges — especially when it came to deciding first, second and third place.

What put the Cornell team over the top was the inter-disciplinary approach the team took, Heller said. Not only was there strong planning and urban design aspects to the proposal, but team members from other disciplines, including real estate, provided information about project feasibility.

Fully implementing the plan would cost more than $820 million, the Cornell team estimates. They will share a $2,000 prize. A team from Notre Dame took second place and won $1,500; students from McGill University in Montreal took third and $1,000. Teams from Florida State, The University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Toronto/Ryerson University each received $500.

This year, the Ed Bacon Foundation partnered with the Center for Architecture on the student competition. A joint committee, which included principals of architecture firms and development companies, talked about “hot” areas of the city where the students might focus their skills.

“This one made the most sense,” Heller said of the Grays Ferry Crescent. “It is for sale right now. It's been a fenced-in industrial site for, like 100 years. And it's been separating Grays Ferry from the river as long as anybody can remember.”

Everyone is sad to see DuPont and its jobs going, he said. “But since that's a given, this is an opportunity to connect a major neighborhood to its riverfront in a very real way.”

Heller was intrigued with the suggestion because not a lot of people are talking about the possibilities for the Crescent yet, he said. He hopes the ideas all the teams generated will jump-start discussion around the city. The winning designs will be put on display, he said. And once someone buys the property, Heller said he'll make sure he or she is aware of the ideas generated by the contest. But he doesn't think he'll have to work too hard at that. Property owners in areas looked at by past student competitions have contacted him, he said.

It's all about long-term impact, he said. “It's very much in keeping with the competition’s namesake, Ed Bacon, who did think long term. I'm hoping that if we keep this up, in a number of years, the visions from the students will start to impact the dialogue as we rethink important civic spaces.”