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South Street Headhouse District’s executive director Michael Harris, and Queen Village Neighbors Association’s president Jeff Hornstein are very optimistic about the future of Bainbridge Green in part because of Jonathan Rubin. Rubin, as chair of the Friends of Bainbridge Green, is leading the charge to turn Bainbridge Street, between South Third and Fifth streets, into something much more than it is now.
“For 11 years, I lived and worked looking at the space in all of its good times and bad times. From raucous Saturday nights to Sunday mornings when it’s beautiful and quiet,” Rubin said. “I’ve walked up and down it 1,000 times.”
The slightly peculiar space has been an iconic strip of Queen Village mere steps from South Street, Fabric Row and East Passyunk Avenue. And the general consensus is that it could be so much more.
“There’s a lot to the space – it’s not just a little strip of land,” Rubin argued, “people don’t even know it’s there.”
He mentioned that if someone uses Google Maps to look at the space, he or she wouldn’t guess that Bainbridge Green is already technically a green space.
“It’s represented as brown or white, as concrete, and not as a park, and we want to turn it green,” he said.
Rubin, with the support of SSHD, QVNA and a dozen area businesses, is kicking off the space’s fundraising and awareness-raising efforts with “Dining & Dancing Under the Stars: A Fundaiser and Kickoff Event for Bainbridge Green” on Tuesday night. There will be a plated sit-down dinner, a beer and food truck festival and loads of support from area businesses. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is creating a garden space for the night, too.
“Jonathan is the visionary here. [He] is an awesome guy and I was very, very thrilled when he agreed to join the board of QVNA,” Hornstein said. “He’s built a very good relationship with Mike Harris, and we have a fair amount of political juice here which allows us to get the attention of people that fund these kinds of things.”
The resident of the 300 block of Queen Street is referring to a Community Design Collaborative grant that they were able to secure for some initial renderings.
“They did a really nice study for us and gave us a conceptual design of what Bainbridge Green might be,” Harris said.
Next it’s working with Philadelphia-born and internationally renowned OLIN landscape architects. OLIN “will take that design further, to the next phase of the design, and [execute] studies necessary as well as look at the issues of traffic and parking,” Harris added.
And there it is: parking and traffic. Will the dreaded “P” word halt and thwart Rubin’s visions? It seems as though everyone leading this charge is fully committed to not threatening parking so as to accommodate the local businesses that thrive along the Green.
“The issue’s going to be finding a design that balances the needs of the residential and businesses and still create a beautiful public amenity,” Harris said, adding “the key to us is finding that balance of parking and improvement to an area that doesn’t necessarily harm the surrounding businesses.”
Once OLIN turns in some plans, they’ll take them to the community and start building dialogues.
“The process we’re in is to work with OLIN to develop a number of concepts and schematic plans that can be presented to the civic associations and the residents and the businesses to get their feedback,” Harris said. “It’s a collaborative process where people will have the opportunity to weigh in on what ideas are being kicked around.”
“We all know that we’d like to make it the Rittenhouse Square of Queen Village, but we have lots of stakeholders under our tent, and that includes businesses who need the parking,” Rubin said. “We think we can balance parking with the park. We believe we can make the park bigger and wider and make it a place for people to gather to have great programming.”
“Most of our public spaces are very small,” Hornstein said of QV’s existent green spots. “Mario Lanza [Park, Second and Catharine streets], Weccacoe [405-25 Queen St.], they’re very small. [Bainbridge Green] will be a nice place to stroll with some benches and shade – it’s got a lot of potential,” he said and notes that Rubin has created “a large collective buy-in for this vision.”
Many nearby businesses have signed on to support next week’s fundraiser: Whole Foods, 929 South St.; Ela, 627 S. Third St.; OX Coffee, 616 S. Third St.; Southwark, 701 S. Fourth St.; Istanbul Lounge, 216 South St.; Good King Tavern, 614 S. Seventh St.; Bridget Foy’s, 200 South St.; Bainbridge Street Barrel House, 625-627 S. Sixth St.; and Kennet, 848 S. Second St., among them.
“It’s really cool to see the community be so eager to help – everyone realizes that this could be something very special. This is a legacy for the future so everyone’s really helping,” Rubin said. “We want this to be a destination and right now it’s a parking lot that people just drive through. It’s about re-imagining Bainbridge Green because it needs to be re-imagined.”
Harris said they’ve already taken a few small steps towards creating interest; they’ve refinished benches, destroyed a wall that was an eyesore and painted all the utility boxes. “We’re doing these little steps to indicate to people that we’re underway with improving the space and to generate interest – bigger things are on the horizon,” Harris said.
Rubin didn’t really want to talk timelines, as the process is in its earliest stages.
“We’re being very practical and pragmatic about keeping this coalition together,” he said. “We’re going to have to get grants and state money – we’re talking about a significant amount of money. It’s a huge space. To walk from South Third and Bainbridge to South Fifth and Passyunk, it’s a five-minute walk. It’s a long, long space.”
“In an ideal world, we would build in three or four years,” Rubin conceded when prodded. “Our immediate goal right now is to raise awareness and raise money, and we’re doing both of those things with this event.”
Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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