PlanPhilly

Lardner’s Point Park, a new public space along the Delaware River just below the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, opened in May bringing a softer green edge to the waterfront.

The park, advanced by the Delaware River City Corporation, is a welcome new riverfront amenity, but it’s also a significant ecological restoration project (funded in part as remediation after a 2004 oil spill) where marsh and wetlands replace a once-rubble strewn shoreline.

Design-wise Lardner’s Point Park is like the Race Street Pier’s less swanky Tacony cousin – another new public space built from a pier, just south of a bridge. But it happens that Lardner’s Point has much more room to breathe, spreading its landscaped features out onto the park’s 4.5 acres.

Along with lots of new plantings, the new park updated the old fishing pier, and added a patio near the water’s edge. The trail running through Lardner’s Point Park, along the utility right of way, abruptly ends, but the hope is that it will someday be part of the Delaware River’s waterfront trail network and the East Coast Greenway. And that’s a good thing because pedestrian access to the park via Levick Street remains a bit daunting.

Standing quietly in the background is the historic, but still functioning Lardner’s Point Water Pumping Station.

I stopped by Lardner’s Point Park on a sunny afternoon recently and saw clusters of fishermen, folks exercising, and crews adding more plantings. Here’s what it looked like when I visited: [Click to view slideshow]