But Maggie Foster, who lives a block away from the site, worries the added traffic will make the neighborhood more dangerous for her 1-year-old daughter. The two often play at Finnegan Recreation Center, located just east of the planned garage site, Foster said.
“It’s going to bring a lot of extra cars and pollution right next to the place where we are all the time,” she said.
Maggie Foster lives a block away from where the new garage is being built, and worries it would make the neighborhood more dangerous for her young daughter as she grows up. (Sophia Schmidt/WHYY)
Foster also pointed to the legacy of industrial pollution around the Grays Ferry neighborhood, including the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery that closed after a fire and series of explosions in 2019.
“Surely they could work something out where it’s not directly across from people’s homes and a playground and a neighborhood that’s already been through so much,” she said.
Hawkins worries the garage will make it harder for fire trucks and ambulances to leave a nearby station during an emergency. She also sees it as part of a troubling trend of new development in the neighborhood.
“We love the fact that there’ll be doctors moving in and nurses, because it’s closer to the job — but that increases the home values,” she said. “The residents … that are from here, they’re not going to be able to afford a half-a-million-dollar house. And so you’re literally pushing them out with no recourse.”
Alt said CHOP has held over 20 community meetings about the garage and taken steps to address community requests, including providing five-year grant funding for Grays Ferry nonprofits, making a financial contribution to the Finnegan Recreation Center, holding health workshops and exploring expanded pediatric clinical services in Grays Ferry. He said CHOP modified its original design for the garage by adding a planned community health space to the ground floor and is exploring using electric or natural gas-powered shuttles to reduce planet-warming emissions.
“Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia remains committed to engaging with the residents of Grays Ferry to understand and address their feedback,” Alt wrote. “We take all concerns from residents incredibly seriously as we look to support CHOP’s growing patient and staff needs.”
As police loaded the three activists into the back of a van outside of the construction site Thursday, the protesters who remained on the sidewalk promised to return.