Philadelphia’s Chinatown to be reconnected by building a park over a highway

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Decades after Philadelphia’s Chinatown was bisected by a sunken expressway, city officials and federal lawmakers said Monday that they secured a grant to reconnect the community by building a park over the six lanes of traffic.

The $159 million grant to build a three-block-long park over the Vine Street Expressway will come from the infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021.

“We’re finally on the path of reconnecting Chinatown,” U.S. Sen. Bob Casey said at a news conference in the neighborhood.

The grant is part of a yearslong effort to help repair the damage done to Chinatown by the six-lane expressway that opened in 1991 despite protests by neighborhood residents.

The money for the Chinatown Stitch comes as Chinatown’s boosters are engaged in their latest fight against a major development project, this time a proposal to build a new arena for the Philadelphia 76ers a block away.

John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp., called the Chinatown Stitch “transformative unlike any that Chinatown has experienced.” He said he was “awestruck” by the grant’s approval.

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