In the shadow of a Camden waste treatment plant, a park opens

CAMDEN - Jeff Nash, a Camden County freeholder since 1991, has seen his share of ribbon-cuttings along the Camden Waterfront. 

He ticked off some of them Tuesday in South Camden: A trash-to-steam plant. A wastewater treatment facility. A prison. All of which faced fierce opposition from Camden residents. All of which were controversial and unwelcome additions to the city.

"Those were the ribbon-cuttings we were used to," Nash said. 

Instead, on a gray afternoon bookended by the gray-brown towers of the county Municipal Utilities Authority plant and the brown-gray buildings of the South Jersey Port Corporation, Nash was touting a bit of green: The final piece of Phoenix Park was officially opened Tuesday, offering public access to the water for the first time in decades.

Monsignor Michael Doyle, pastor at nearby Sacred Heart Parish and a longtime advocate for the Waterfront South neighborhood, offered a blessing for the park, part of his longtime vision to give residents a way to enjoy the water they'd been so long denied.

Calling the Delaware River "a stream of goodness and creativity," Doyle joked that MUA Executive Director Andrew Kricun was "the real blessing" for his work to see the vision for Phoenix Park fully realized.

Surveying the massive buildings surrounding the park, Doyle noted; "It was an unbelievable idea to build a park here. It certainly didn't look like a park!"

It took faith, he said, a faith kept alive through Kricun's work to make the MUA a better neighbor.

"We are not in a great time for creative care of the Earth right now," Doyle said. "But we are doing that here, right now."

The 6-acre park features panoramic views of the river, with the Philadelphia skyline in the northern distance and the Walt Whitman Bridge to the south. Picnic tables, benches, trails and a winding wildflower patch now replace what was once an impervious surface of concrete left over from a long-abandoned factory. 

The park's benefit to Waterfront South is more than aesthetic, Kricun said. The greenery will help with stormwater drainage and mitigate some flooding that has long plagued the neighborhood. Funding came from county open space grants, and low- or no-interest loans from the state Department of Environmental Protection and New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust. 

Phoenix Park's name is derived not only from the mythical creature that arose from the ashes — a metaphor many hope to apply to Camden — but also pays homage to Doyle's native Ireland, whose Phoenix Park in Dublin is the largest enclosed public park in Europe.

"Now Monsignor has a little piece of Ireland in his own backyard," Nash said.

Phaedra Trethan: @CP_Phaedra; 856-486-2417; ptrethan@gannettnj.com