The fence at the north edge of Penn Treaty Park was supposed to come down in mid-September. It is still up in late October, and the reason is a single root from a London Plane tree near the water. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation now expects the project to finish in mid-November. That puts the new date about two months after the original one, for a stretch of trail roughly the length of a city lot. The trail could have stayed on schedule if crews had cut the root. They redesigned the boardwalk instead.
A Short Link With a Long Back Story
In 2020, DRWC finished the section of the Delaware River Trail that runs from Rivers Casino to Penn Treaty Park. That section stopped at a 100-foot gap between the park and the old PECO Delaware Generating Station, which has since been redeveloped as The Battery. The City's 2025 plan drawings show the Battery's own trail ending at a fence and wall on the property line. That is the barrier anyone walking north along the river has been turning back at.
A HUD grant is paying to close the gap. The design package filed with the City put the total project budget at $1,001,500, with $832,429 of that set aside for construction. DRWC and its designer, NV5, started in summer 2024 with surveys, ground-penetrating radar and geotechnical work. Design and permitting wrapped up in fall 2025. The job went out to bid at the start of 2026, and Mayfield Site Contractors won it.
The tree was part of the plan from the beginning. The 2025 design drawings mark the London Plane by the trail alignment at 30 inches on one sheet and 36 inches on another. In May 2026, before any construction, DRWC, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and Mayfield used selective air spading at each planned pile location. The technique blows away soil with compressed air so the roots underneath can be seen. They wanted to confirm the boardwalk's helical piles could go in without disturbing the tree's structural root system.
Even with that work done in advance, the root still turned up.
How the Date Moved
DRWC has posted a construction update about once a month. Together they show the schedule shifting as crews worked around the tree.
- June 2026. Construction was set to begin the week of June 15. DRWC estimated about three months of work and a finish by mid-September.
- August 2026. The end-of-summer update pushed the target to late September. That month, crews installed and inspected the helical piles and caps that hold up the boardwalk.
- Early September 2026. Crews found a large structural root from the heritage London Plane close to where the boardwalk was going. Work stopped.
- October 2026. Work started again. Crews were scheduled to pour concrete for the boardwalk supports in the first two weeks of October and install the boardwalk in mid-October. Completion is now expected in mid-November.
DRWC's fall update is specific about what the pause was for:
"Construction was temporarily paused while the boardwalk was redesigned to protect the tree root."
The update says that once the section is finished, it will improve the trail connection "while helping preserve the area's existing natural features." Mid-November is still a forecast, and this project has already gone past two earlier ones.
Penn Treaty Park has been through this kind of trade-off before. In 2014, Hidden City Philadelphia covered how new recreation plans affected the park's old-growth sycamores, which it reported were planted around the park's 1893 dedication. The London Plane on the trail alignment is a different tree. It also isn't the Treaty Elm of the park's founding story. The tension between new uses and old trees is the same one, though.
What Opens When the Fence Comes Down
The finished connection is small, and it was designed to keep what already works at that corner of the park. According to the design package DRWC submitted to the City, it includes:
- The boardwalk. A 15-foot-wide elevated concrete-plank boardwalk covers most of the roughly 100-foot gap.
- Crossings. Textured pavement marks where people cross the trail, and rumble strips warn riders as they approach intersections.
- Planting. New low plantings go in along the edges.
- The fishing spot. The existing gathering and fishing area by the water stays, along with its furniture.
The City's floodplain notice for the project describes a larger, 290-foot work area. That covers paving, grading, landscaping, signs and pavement markings, and repairs to a retaining wall, in addition to the boardwalk. So when the fence comes down, the changes will reach past the boardwalk.
Where the Trail Goes From There
At the north end, the boardwalk meets the trail segment built on The Battery's property. The old power station is now a 500,000-square-foot campus of apartments, offices and event space with an outdoor area on the waterfront, according to NTCIC, which helped finance the redevelopment. For years the riverfront path behind that building has been cut off from the park next door by a fence. In mid-November, a walk along the river from the park can keep going onto it.
After that, the route still runs out. DRWC's long-term plan has this segment continuing north to NorthBank and Graffiti Pier. But DRWC's own Graffiti Pier page lists that project as "Planning and Concept," with no completion date, and says the land purchase from Conrail is still being negotiated. The extension to Allegheny Avenue is also still something DRWC is pursuing, and no construction date has been posted. Farther north, the Port Richmond Trail and the K&T Trail exist as separate pieces of what Riverfront North describes as a planned 11-mile continuous Delaware River Trail. A continuous ride from Fishtown to those trails is still a plan.
Going south is a different story. The Delaware River Trail already runs 3.3 miles from Pier 70 to Penn Treaty Park. About two miles of that is a curb-separated, two-way bike path with its own sidewalk for walkers and runners, and the trail is part of both the Circuit and the East Coast Greenway. The new boardwalk adds one more stretch of riverfront to the top of that route, past the park and onto the Battery's path. For anyone who starts a run or ride at Penn Treaty Park, the waterfront route gets a little longer at the north end, and the turnaround point moves to the far side of an old power station.
Until Mid-November
The signed detour through the park stays in place until the boardwalk opens. DRWC has asked pedestrians and cyclists to follow it while construction continues.
The rest of the park is open in the meantime. The Friends of Penn Treaty Park calendar lists a Soccer Shots session on Saturday, October 31, and a Love Your Park service day on November 14. If DRWC's latest estimate holds, that service day will land in the same weeks the fence is scheduled to come down.
DRWC posts each construction update on its Penn Treaty to the Battery project page. That page is where a confirmed opening date will appear first.
Michael Prince has lived in Fishtown for more than 15 years and keeps track of changes along its riverfront, including small ones like a single fence coming down at Penn Treaty Park. If you're planning to sell and want your listing to show the neighborhood as it looks right now, List with Michael.
