Twenty-one years later, the 1,200-acre Navy Yard is booming.
At the base of Pier 6, a thousand workers are assembling 50,000-ton tankers at a state-of-the-art $400 million, Norwegian-owned commercial shipyard. Thousands more work in swank new office and laboratory buildings a quarter-mile to the west that house T-cell cancer therapy researchers, investment advisors and a large chunk of drug giant GlaxoSmithKline’s North American operations. There’s a brand new 4.5-acre park designed by renowned landscape architect James Corner (of New York City High Line fame), with a running track, ping pong tables and hammocks among the benches and Adirondack chairs; a trendy Marc Vetri restaurant in one of the base’s former gatehouses; and, across a canal, the teeming 340,000-square foot Tastykake bakery, an iconic Philadelphia institution transplanted to in 2010 from its 88-year old North Philadelphia factory.
