John George and Natalie Kostelni Philadelphia Business Journal
May 2, 2019
A renewed effort to liven up the area around Talen Energy Stadium in Chester is underway.
The Riverfront Alliance of Delaware County, working with the Philadelphia Union soccer club that calls the stadium home, sent out a request for proposals to about two dozen qualified consultants asking them to prepare a master plan for more than 100 acres of the Delaware River’s Chester waterfront.
Tom Shoemaker, president of the Riverfront Alliance and market president for TD Bank, said it received proposals from 10. Shoemaker said those proposals are now being reviewed, and a smaller group of finalists will be invited back to make more formal proposals.
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“These are national firms that have developed the areas around stadiums in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn and Wilmington,” he said. “We’re very excited. This time is right for something like this, for creating a 365-day-a-year destination along the waterfront. It can be done. It’s been done all over the country. The assets we have are as good or better than most of the other places where a project like this has been done.… By the end of the summer we hope to have our proposals in hand from the finalists.”
About half of the 100 acres to be developed are owned or controlled by Keystone Sports and Entertainment, the parent company for the Philadelphia Union, which has spent the past few years acquiring about a mile of waterfront property around its stadium.
“No other sports team in the Philadelphia area has that,” said Tim McDermott, the Philadelphia Union’s chief business officer. “It gives us the opportunity to do something really unique to transform Chester.”
McDermott said the Union’s vision is create a sports and entertainment complex around the soccer stadium that could include a multi-sports facility with indoor and outdoor fields, an amphitheater, a rock climbing wall and possibly a venue for esports. That, he said, could lead to new commercial and residential development in the area.
The goal of the Union and the Riverfront Alliance is to make the area, which includes the 18,500-seat soccer stadium and 400,000-square-foot Wharf office building recently acquired by Keystone Sports, more than just a place to watch a soccer match or go to work.
Talen Energy Stadium, previously known as PPL Park when its opened in June 2010, cost $122 million to build. Part of the stadium’s development was covered by public funds with $87 million allocated by the state, county, city of Chester, and the Delaware River Port Authority to support what was envisioned as a major economic revitalization effort for Chester.
In addition to the soccer stadium, the original plans also called for 180 townhouses, 225 apartments, 42,000 square feet of retail space, a 200,000-square-foot convention center, 435,000 square feet of new office space and structured parking for 1,350 vehicles. With the exception of the soccer stadium, none of the other components of the plan ever materialized as a result of the prolonged recession and economic downturn that began in late 2007.
