Walk north along the Delaware River Trail past the William Penn statue and the open lawn at Penn Treaty Park and the path does something odd. It just stops. A fence appears where the pavement should continue, and anyone who wants to keep walking toward the water has to backtrack out to Beach Street and pick their way along the sidewalk instead. This has been true for years, long enough that most Fishtown residents who use the trail regularly have simply built the detour into their route without ever quite knowing when, or whether, it was going to change.
It's changing now. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation has been building the missing piece between Penn Treaty Park and The Battery since mid-June, and the closure signage posted at the park's entrance still marks the segment as shut for construction through September. That timing matters, because it means the fence that has defined this stretch of the trail for years is either coming down within days or has already come down as this goes to print.
A Landmark Everyone Knows, Blocked by a Fence Nobody Explains
Penn Treaty Park and The Battery sit close enough to each other that most people assume they're already connected. The park anchors the northern end of the Delaware River Trail, a 3.3-mile stretch that runs down through South Philadelphia to Pier 70, and it's where the trail's northern terminus has lived for years. The Battery, the mixed-use complex built inside the old Delaware Generating Station, sits just to the north along the same riverbank. Since architect John T. Windrim's power plant went up in 1923 and eventually shut down in 2008, the site has been rebuilt by Lubert-Adler into a 500,000-square-foot campus, with the original Boiler House converted into 239 loft and rooftop apartments plus 49,000 square feet of ground-floor office space, and the Switchgear Building turned into 45 studio and one-bedroom units alongside 25,000 square feet of event space now operated by Cescaphe.
When the Battery finished its first phase, the developer built its own riverside trail segment along the property, a stretch long enough to link south toward Rivers Casino and Penn's Landing. But the short stretch actually joining that segment to Penn Treaty Park stayed fenced off, part of a portion of trail that had been in the works for a while without getting built. For anyone on foot or a bike, the fix has been the same for years: cut over to Beach Street, walk past the park's parking area, and pick the trail back up wherever it resumed.
What the Waterfront Corporation Is Actually Building
The project closing that gap has been in motion longer than the visible construction suggests. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation and its design firm, NV5, started with surveys, ground-penetrating radar, and geotechnical work back in the summer of 2024, then spent the following year running the design past city agencies, neighborhood groups, and the Friends of Penn Treaty Park before permitting wrapped in the fall of 2025. The contract went out to bid at the start of 2026, and Mayfield Site Contractors won the job.
Ground actually broke in mid-June. The waterfront corporation's own construction updates describe helical piles already driven into place to support what will be an elevated boardwalk rather than a simple paved extension, which tells you something about the ground this segment crosses. It's not a straightforward strip of asphalt tacked onto an existing path. It's built to span whatever soft or tidal ground sits between the park and the Battery's property line, the same kind of terrain that's kept a lot of Philadelphia's central Delaware waterfront underdeveloped for a century.
Where That Three-Month Window Sits Right Now
The waterfront corporation estimated three months for the build when work began the week of June 15, and posted a follow-up construction update in mid-August as the project moved into its final stretch. Run that math forward from a mid-June start and the estimate lands somewhere around mid-September, which is exactly where the calendar sits today. The Friends of Penn Treaty Park's own posted notice still lists the closure as running through September, not past it.
That's a narrow enough window that anyone planning a run or a bike ride along the river this month should check current signage at the park before assuming the old detour is still necessary, or that the new segment is already open. Construction estimates shift. But for a gap that's sat unresolved since before the Battery's first residents moved in, being down to a matter of days rather than years is itself the news.
What Changes Once the Boardwalk Opens
Once this segment reopens, the physical experience of using the waterfront here shifts more than the trail map suggests. Right now, someone walking from Penn Treaty Park toward the Battery has to leave the water's edge entirely, cross a parking lot, and rejoin a path that feels disconnected from where they started. With the boardwalk finished, that same walk becomes continuous: past the park's open lawn and William Penn statue, along the river frontage the Battery already built out with its own trail segment, past the Boiler House and the Switchgear Building where Cescaphe now hosts events, and on toward Rivers Casino and Penn's Landing without a single detour onto a public street.
For residents who already treat this stretch as part of a daily loop, that's not a cosmetic upgrade. It's the difference between a route that works most of the way and one that works the whole way, which changes how far people are willing to go on a weekday evening run or a Saturday ride with the kids in tow.
Part of a Longer Stitch-Together
This one segment is small compared to what the waterfront corporation has in motion up and down the river. The Washington Avenue Connector, further south, is on track for substantial completion by the end of August 2026, closing another gap in the trail network between 4th Street and Columbus Boulevard. The South Street Pedestrian Bridge is set for a single overnight installation this summer, with a public opening expected in 2027. And the full 11.5-acre Penn's Landing Park, the project capping I-95 to reconnect Center City with the river, isn't expected to open completely until 2029 or 2030.
Fishtown's piece of that larger build-out is smaller in scale but more immediate in effect, because it's the segment residents actually use on a normal Tuesday. The trail is being extended north toward Allegheny Avenue and south toward Oregon Avenue as separate, longer-term phases. The stretch just north of the Battery, toward the Northbank development, was still tied up in 2023 reporting to a decision an adjacent construction yard owner hadn't made yet, and there's no indication that piece has moved as fast as the segment reopening this month. But the Penn Treaty to Battery connection is the one closing now, and it's the one that turns two landmarks Fishtown residents already know into a single, uninterrupted stretch of riverfront.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these small shifts in how a neighborhood actually functions, that's the whole point of paying attention to a project like this. A fence coming down doesn't show up on a listing sheet. It shows up the next time you're out for a run and realize you didn't have to think about the detour at all.
If you want more of this kind of granular, on-the-ground read on what's actually changing in Fishtown, from waterfront construction to what's opening on Frankford Avenue, The Stawasz Group tracks it block by block. Reach out if you'd like to talk about any of it, whether you're already living here or just keeping an eye on the neighborhood from a distance.
