The Centre City Development Corp., the city’s downtown redevelopment agency, is soliciting bids to remove $2.2 million worth of contaminated soil from city-owned property at 7th Avenue and Market Street. So if you see construction equipment there in the coming months, that’s why.
The property was the site of the proposed $409-million, 41-story hotel and condominium that CCDC killed in September 2008 after concluding that its former president, Nancy Graham, had a conflict-of-interest with the project’s developer.
Derek Danziger, a CCDC spokesman, said his agency has a $1.5 million state grant to conduct the work, which will require workers to remove about 9,000 tons of soil polluted with petroleum residue from gasoline stations that used to be in the area.
Danziger said the agency’s grant will expire in May if the work doesn’t advance. Once work is complete, Danziger said the site would be returned to its current state: a parking lot.
“There are no development plans at this time,” he said.