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![\"Maggie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/chop-garage-protest-ss-020526-1024x768.jpg\")
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)\n<\/p>\nBut 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.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to bring a lot of extra cars and pollution right next to the place where we are all the time,\u201d she said.
\nMaggie 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)\n<\/p>\n
Foster also pointed to the legacy of industrial pollution<\/a> around the Grays Ferry neighborhood, including the Philadelphia Energy Solutions<\/a> refinery that closed after a fire and series of explosions in 2019.\u00a0<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \u201cSurely they could work something out where it\u2019s not directly across from people\u2019s homes and a playground and a neighborhood that\u2019s already been through so much,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n 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.\n<\/p>\n \u201cWe love the fact that there\u2019ll be doctors moving in and nurses, because it\u2019s closer to the job \u2014 but that increases the home values,\u201d she said. \u201cThe residents \u2026 that are from here, they\u2019re not going to be able to afford a half-a-million-dollar house. And so you\u2019re literally pushing them out with no recourse.\u201d\n<\/p>\n 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\u202ffor Grays Ferry nonprofits, making a financial contribution\u202fto 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.\n<\/p>\n \u201cChildren\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia remains committed to engaging with the residents of Grays Ferry to understand and address their feedback,\u201d Alt wrote. \u201cWe take all concerns from residents incredibly seriously as we look to support CHOP\u2019s growing patient and staff needs.\u201d\n<\/p>\n 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.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Maggie Foster, who lives a block away from the site, worries the added traffic will make the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[36313,69,71,70,2312],"class_list":{"0":"post-106533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-chop","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-planphilly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}