Post-Refinery Futures

Partners

Clean Air Council
Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, Drexel University

Philadelphia’s PES refinery was the largest on the east coast and one of the oldest in the world, operating continuously from the 1860’s until its catastrophic explosion in 2019.[1] The refinery’s closure leaves a complicated legacy and an opportunity to reposition Philadelphia’s industrial engine for the twenty-first century. The site’s new corporate owner, Hilco, proposes a mix of industrial and commercial redevelopment, anchored by a major multi-modal logistics center. While an improvement on the refinery, their plans fall short of community and civic aspirations for remediation, renewable energy generation, job creation, and public space: the kind of bold vision that would redress 150 years of environmental injustice.

In January 2020, OLIN began partnering with community and environmental advocates working to articulate such a bold vision. The priorities that emerged from this early work align closely with core Green New Deal values of jobs, justice, and decarbonization. For the Superstudio, we have chosen not to advance design or planning proposals that must move at the speed of community partnership and engagement, but rather to deepen our understanding through research of five topics central to discussions of post-refinery futures: economic development, air quality, soil and water remediation, access to nature, and memory. We have also situated the Philadelphia refinery within a national context of similar sites, the cities and neighborhoods that surround them, and the tangled web of energy infrastructure and markets that drive their past, present and future. If we accept that the transition away from a fossil fuel economy has already begun, then Philadelphia may well be the first of many such sites: a case study and exemplar of lands that hold great potential and hope, but also raw and complicated legacies.

[1] Abernathy, B. and Thiel, A. (2019). Close Call and an Uncertain Future: An assessment of the past, present, and next steps for Philadelphia's largest refinery.