December 04, 2024
Provided Image/The Rail Park
A section of the Rail Park at 13th and Noble streets was damaged by a fire Saturday night. Leaders are seeking to raise up to $10,000 for repairs.
The section of the city's Rail Park damaged by a fire set during the weekend will reopen "within the week," and a fundraising campaign has been started to pay for the repairs.
Officials seek up to $10,000 in donations. Benches and decking at 13th and Noble streets were set on fire Saturday evening. That part of the park is closed, but the rest remains open.
While Rebecca Cordes Chan, executive director of Friends of the Rail Park believes the fire was deliberately set, there's no police investigation.
"We're basically taking the stance of: We just need to fix this as quickly as possible and figure out how do we prevent this from happening in the future," Chan said.
The Rail Park is built on an elevated section of the former Philadelphia and Reading Railway. The first phase of the park was completed in 2018, stretching from 11th and Callowhill streets to Broad and Noble streets, and it saw 15,000 visitors in 2023. There are plans to eventually extend the park to be accessible from Brewerytown to Northern Liberties.
All the decking burnt by Saturday's fire needs to be replaced along with some metal brackets that also were damaged. It's not immediately known how much of the underlying structural support is in need of repairs, but the friends group expects much of it will need to be redone as well. A temporary fix will be installed by next week, but Chan wasn't not sure how long the larger repairs will take.
The Rail Park's repair fundraiser started on Giving Tuesday and raised $3,800, which is $800 more than their single-day goal of $3,000. Chan hopes to raise $10,000 by the end of the year.
"For better or worse, this is part of managing public spaces," Chan said. "You have unexpected things that happen like this and you just have to figure out how to remedy it as soon as possible and then just keep going"
Chan said this incident won't impact larger construction plans for the park.
