The DVRPC is scheduling a meeting of its technical committee to go over data from PennDOT and the city before bringing the funding proposal back up for discussion at its next meeting.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cDVRPC will continue to convene our partners, including the City of Philadelphia and the suburban counties, on next steps for funding the Chinatown Stitch,\u201d said Executive Director Ariella Maron in a statement.\n<\/p>\n
Chin said there is still strong moral and political support from the city for the project.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody sees the vision as a very impactful, powerful change to this area,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody that\u2019s been involved with the design and planning of this project feels very confident that, eventually, this gets built. The question is really the schedule and the timeline.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
Lauren Lowe, a solidarity movement organizer with nonprofit Asian Americans United, said her father was involved in protests against the Vine Street Expressway.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what ZIP code I live in, [Chinatown] has been home for a long time,\u201d she said. \u201cI kind of grew up with that specter of the Vine Street Expressway fight, and it was one of the first things that I learned about in terms of Chinatown\u2019s history of resistance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
That fight loomed so large in Lowe\u2019s memory of Chinatown history that she said she didn\u2019t think she would see the neighborhood reunited in her lifetime.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cTo feel like there\u2019s a proposal that\u2019s actually coming from within the community \u2026 and to heal that openness, that chasm that separates Chinatown North and Callowhill from Chinatown\u2019s core, that felt really positive,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was equally disappointing when the funding was revoked.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Even without construction funding secured, the work to reconnect Chinatown continues. Puchalsky said that the project\u2019s environmental documentation \u2014\u00a0which, according to PennDOT\u2019s environmental policy<\/a>, needs to be approved before the final design stage can begin \u2014\u00a0is ready and should be submitted this spring.\n<\/p>\n As for new funding, Congressman Brendan Boyle, D-Philadelphia, introduced federal legislation<\/a> in December that, if passed, would reverse part of the \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act,\u201d restoring the money for the Stitch project and other similar projects around the country.\n<\/p>\n