On chilly days like today, we find ourselves dreaming about hanging out on the Schuylkill River Trail on a sunny summer day. This signature public space has been growing steadily in and around Center City, with the Grays Ferry Crescent section opening in 2011, and the Locust to South boardwalk opening in 2014. With the trail terminating at the South Street Bridge, we’ve been waiting for a few years for the completion of the next segment, from South to Christian Street. Yesterday, our wait came to an end.

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The Roberts Center
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These doors were finally unlocked on Wednesday
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Walking over the tracks
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Looking north, while walking down the stairs
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Looking north from the bottom of the stairs
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Little plaza at the river
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Looking south along the new trail
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End of the line, at Christian Street
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Looking north from Christian Street

As you can see, the new section of the trail is open to the public, but it’s not exactly finished. All of the plantings will need a few months and some warmer weather to take. So for now, the Schuylkill Banks people are asking people to stick to the paved path when they visit this section of the trail. Even though the new trees are bare and the grass has yet to grow in, you can still clearly see the potential of this space, which happens to be the largest “green” space in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood.

This section of the trail has remained unfinished for a reason; it was quite challenging to do the necessary work to transform it into usable green space. Like most parts of the trail in this area, the CSX tracks cut off the waterfront from the rest of the city. Unlike other parts of the trail, access from grade is very complicated, likely coming all the way from Locust Street and across the South Street boardwalk. That might have something to do with the fact that the opening was delayed by about a year.

With work now mostly finished on this section, Schuylkill Banks can move on to the next task, connecting the main trail to the Grays Ferry Crescent. We believe this will entail another boardwalk project, as the Veolia plant and the railroad tracks take up all the space along the river for several hundred feet. So it’s safe to assume that it’ll be at least a few years before this happens. When it does, it will connect Center City to Forgotten Bottom via the trail, which will make that neighborhood considerably less forgettable than it is today.