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Chapter 9: Future Camden: Reinventing the City, Engaging the Region
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Chapter Future Camden: Reinventing the City, Engaging the Region Camden is the best visual aid in America of what went wrong. If you could turn it around, it would be the best visual aid of what went right. —Msgr. Michael Doyle, Once Camden’s recovery legislation had been secured, there was suddenly no lack of willing partners to direct the city’s future. Investors and bankers who had for a generation avoided the city became once again very much a presence. Foundations perked up and considered how they might make a difference. Activists sharpened their strategies and girded for new battles. Planners, critics, and the press weighed in. A solid plan, directed at central needs and built out of a growing consensus across geographic as well as ideological interests, could well have provided a blueprint for Camden ’s future. Policy seldom emerges in such a fashion, however, and this was no exception. Politically charged as it was, the recovery legislation failed to secure consensus. Its very success as a stimulus bill directed at attracting new investment set off the first wave of controversy as local residents fought the specter of gentrification. Its initial failure to embrace the requirement that Camden’s problems be addressed in a regional context prompted still more criticism. Because the bill contained so many elements that could be seized by different constituencies, the effort to set its direction became highly contested. In the process serious questions emerged not just about Camden’s future, but about the state of contemporary urban policy. As the first major urban revitalization initiative of the twenty-first century , Camden’s recovery effort took place in a different social and policy context from the one that framed the urban renewal programs of the s and s. Battles to stem the outward flow of population and capital had already been lost. Older industrial cities remained greatly diminished actors Future Camden in their larger metropolitan areas. Their suburbs held economic, environmental , and political advantages well beyond those acquired a generation earlier. Under the circumstances, cities could scarcely expect to compete with their suburbs on their terms. They had to build on their own existing assets, of location, of exercising naturally centralized functions for entertainment and services, and of providing specialized functions such as higher education and skilled medical care. At its core, the recovery legislation did just that, helping enhance the city’s position as an important regional destination . Building on waterfront successes in breaking down suburban reluctance to enter the city, these new expenditures could be expected to increase the daily inward flow to Camden and thus provide a spur to business investment . Encouraged by the direction cast by recovery legislation, the Greater Camden Partnership, revived and reconstituted from earlier iterations in the s and s, presented a vision statement in April that spelled out $ million in new investment in the downtown area adjacent to the waterfront and suggested many projects to come.1 Describing downtown as ‘‘the economic engine of Camden’s revitalization,’’ it identified a series of overlapping districts—for education, health sciences, high-tech, recreational activity—that could together enliven the downtown if properly planned with shopping, restaurants, and other amenities. Such a mixed-use strategy, the report claimed, ‘‘can be the catalyst for making Downtown a place to linger after visits to the government, employment, education, healthcare or recreation districts. After hours and weekends it can and should be the gathering place for casual visitations providing pedestrian connections to and from the nearby campuses, tourist attractions and residential neighborhoods.’’2 Other new investment possibilities reinforced the sense that Camden, finally taking full advantage of its location directly across the Delaware from Philadelphia, would revitalize at its core. Passage of the bill alone had been enough to secure financing for Carl Dranoff’s conversion of the old RCA Nipper Building—renamed the Victor—to market-rate apartments.3 The state’s commitment to the aquarium’s expansion prompted him to say he would also build one thousand new houses and condominiums on the waterfront over the ensuing decade. A month later, as he began to show the Victor apartments, he was encouraged enough by the flood of applications to announce that he would soon begin the conversion of a companion building and that he would consider converting the high-rise board of education facility, also a former RCA building, should it become available. ‘‘I’ve [44.197.113.64] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:36 GMT) Chapter...