Another $4B in PA taxpayer funds for local, private projects

"The $4 billion latest edition of Pennsylvania's capital budget appropriations bill contains fat cash grants to a string of Philadelphia developers and suburban institutions.

Developer Bart Blatstein's Tower Investments would pick up at least $95 million, for projects including a hotel and parking development at the Piazza at Schmidt's, a hotel and parking facility at 2d and Poplar Sts., and the purchase and redevelopment of the former state office building at Broad and Spring Garden, a project that's been held up for more than a year as Blatstein searched for financing. The state will borrow to help Bart buy the building, and taxpayers will pay it back over the years.

Other taxpayer-subsidized plans in the bill, from Gov. Rendell and our state legislators:

$25 million for developer Dennis Malomian's Village at Valley Forge shopping center, replacing the former Valley Forge golf course
$20 million for developer Albert M. Greenfield's Valhalla Brandywine Project, a private country club and resort in Wallace Township, Chester County.
$25 million for an unnamed developer to build "hotel and/or condominium" units near the Philadelphia Museum of Art
$25 million for another unnamed developer's "mixed-use development on North Broad Street"

$45 million for unnamed facilities the Keystone Industrial Port Complex in Falls Township
$11 million for NorfolkSouthern railroad to build a Navy Yard terminal and a trash-shipping station
$2 million for Spanish windmill-builder Gamesa to build more railroad track at its Langhorne plant

$100 million for a new library at Temple
$62 million for Lincoln University, the historically-black state school near Oxford in Chester County, to renovate Vail, Lincoln, Cresson and Azikiwe-Nkumrah Halls. That's more than legislators put aside for Penn State building projects, in this round.
$30 million for a new Life Sciences Building at Penn
$29 million for the University of Pennsyvlania's planned animal-health diagnostic laboratory at New Bolton Center near Kennett Square. (Plus $33 million for a similar lab at Penn State.)
$20 million for Immaculata Univesrity's new science building
$13 million for Delaware Valley College's new science building
$12 million for LaSalle University's busienss school
$10 million for a new business school at Holy Family University
$10 million for a research facility at Drexel
$3 million for the Lutheran Theological Seminary's Krauth Memorial Library

$10 million for a new Bucks County Welcome Center, by PennDOT

More than $200 million for improvements at Septa's Conshohocken, Croydon, Glenside, Jenkintown, Levittown, Paoli, 69th Street and Villanova stations, and to buy new buses and other equipment

$100 million to redevelop Norristown State Hospital's site
$10 million for a development on Norristown's Fornance Street
$10 milion to redevelop the former Montgomery Hospital in Norristown
$5 million for redevelopment of Norristown's former Sared Heart Hospital

$5 million for Ambler's Main Street project
$5 million for the Nicetown Community Development Corp.'s "revitalization project"

$25 million for Lankenau Hospital expansion
$6.6 million for Holy Redeemer Hospital projects in Montgomery County
$4.8 million for expansion at Aria Health Frankford Campus' emergency room
$3 million for Abington Memorial Hospital projects

More than $100 million for unnmamed developers to build housing, commercial projects and charter schools at more than 10 separate sites in South Philadelphia
$20 million for unnamed "economic development projects" in Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties

$10 million for new buildings at the financially imperiled, state-subsidized Aker Philadlephia Shipyard
$45 million for other, unspecified "facilities" at the former Philadelphia Navy Yard site
$14 million to expand and renovate the National Constitution Center
$20 million for the proposed American Revolution Center
$10 million for the African American Museum
$10 million for The Plaza at Enterprise Heights
$7 million for a supermarket in Brewerytown
$10 million for a medical office buiding at Broad and Olney

$6.6 million for a hangar and terminal at New Garden Flying Field in southern Chester County
$3 million for improvements at what's now being called the Pitcairn-Willow Grove Air Field
$3.6 million for geothermal heating at state-owned Pennsbury Manor, Pennsylvania founder William Penn's Colonial mansion in Bucks County, now surrounded by trash dumps."