Gaining ideas on the Kimmel and losing an icon

Feb. 2, 2008
Chris Satullo
Inquirer Columnist

Two columns for the price of one today, folks, with updates on two Philadelphia icons, one in its first decade, the other going strong in his sixth.

First, the newbie, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

Last Saturday, I wrote about the efforts of the Kimmel's new leaders to warm up the center's vast public spaces, known as Commonwealth Plaza. The plaza hasn't come close to fulfilling the billing it got before the Kimmel opened in 2001 as "Center City's sixth public square."

The plaza is a mostly barren space that many find hard to navigate, harder to love, and easy to avoid.

The center's new CEO, Anne Ewers, asked PennPraxis, the university design lab that created the city's new riverfront vision, to join with Great Expectations, the civic-engagement effort I help lead, in convening a public dialogue about the plaza. PennPraxis has assembled a team of Penn and University of the Arts design students to convert the public's ideas into design proposals.

Five forums were held in the last 10 days; about 200 people took part. Last Saturday, I also invited readers to e-mail me their ideas. People did, in volume, everything from tart one-liners to 14-point plans. You can read their comments online at http://go.philly.com/kimmel_feedback.

It's easy to summarize the gist for you, because Kimmel constituents found several points of overwhelming consensus:

Add color. And greenery. "Town squares have trees!" as one writer put it. Put a water feature in the plaza.

One writer expressed crisply a common theme: "Provide nooks." The vast space - fans call it "awe-inspiring," critics a "barn" - desperately needs areas of human scale on its ground level. The yearning for small settings of comfortable chairs that invite conversation was universal.

People agreed that a "town square" needs more going on. "Think Jane Jacobs!" wrote one woman, alluding to the great apostle of funky urban bustle. What uses? One forum group summarized its wishes in a few simple imperatives: "Food! Caffeine! Wi-fi!"

The dialogue showed that the Kimmel remains alien to chunks of the regional community. Many people don't know how varied its offerings are. That's in part because the center's exterior doesn't coax the stranger inside; hints of what lies beyond the stark plaza, inside the impressive Verizon Hall or the versatile Perelman Theater, never reach the street.

Here's how one group summed up a common thread: "Wake up: The plaza is your third arts venue." The small stage in the plaza should, citizens said, be filled in daytime with performances by school groups and community troupes. It's a temple of music, people said; why is it silent most of the day?

Thursday, we held forums for Kimmel staff - and I was heartened by how open to suggestions and change they were. Ewers and company face steep challenges, but they're taking a brave first step.

If you have ideas for improving the Kimmel, send them to my e-mail address below. A public forum to present the students' ideas will be held in March.

On to Icon No. 2.

My friend Tom Ferrick Jr. will publish his final column in The Inquirer tomorrow. Tom's not the type to make a big fuss over such an occasion. (That Irish Catholic training - don't get too big for your britches - runs deep.)

So let me make a small fuss on his behalf.

What God had in mind when he assembled Thomas Ferrick Jr. was a newspaper columnist. He's a class act in a checked shirt, with a booming laugh, a stiletto wit and a huge heart. His fierce sense of justice is untainted by self-righteousness.

Some journalists are roving smackdown artists, always on the make for a more glamorous perch. Not Tom. He's a one-city guy. Over four decades, he has conducted a magnificent lover's quarrel with Philadelphia.

Like most of his breed, Tom lives to hound the rascals and stand up for the little guys. He does it with memorable humor and uncommon elbow grease. Few in the pundit's trade work as hard - unearthing the hidden document, asking the uncomfortable questions, poring over the database until it yields insight.

For a columnist, Tom had a strange goal: He wanted his city to stop giving him so much material - so many scandals, scoundrels and fools, so much tragic failure. He worked to make Philadelphia a harder place to write a column, but a better place to raise a family.

As Tom ends his Inquirer career, it's amid hope that such a miracle might be a-borning.

That optimism is in no small part thanks to him.

Me, I'm standing and applauding. I hope you are, too.