December 7: Camden waterfront | Sleep and car crashes | Lowest bidders vs best value?

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Liberty Property Trust is moving ahead on its $1 billion redevelopment plan for the Camden waterfront. Curbed has the rundown on the first project, the new headquarters for American Water Works, and what it’s taken to get the plan off the ground.

The less sleep drivers get the more likely a crash becomes. NPR reports on a AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety report that “suggests that drivers who sleep only five or six hours in a 24-hour period are twice as likely to crash as drivers who get seven hours of sleep or more.” The report is based on data from the NHTSA’s National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey. 

How much does it matter for city projects to be committed to lowest qualified bidders? A lot if we’re serious about ethics, writes Jay McCalla, former managing director under Mayors Rendell and Street, in an Inquirer op-ed. He argues that a bill introduced by Councilman Bobby Henon on behalf of the Kenney administration to change the standard to “best value” opens the door for contracts to be up for debate, and therefore undue political influence.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg talked with Mayor Jim Kenney, former mayor Michael Nutter, and the Reinvestment Fund’s Ira Goldstein about the prospects of a Ben Carson-led Department of Housing and Urban Development under a President Trump. “As brilliant as folks have said that Dr. Carson is from a neurosurgery standpoint, creating fair housing, promoting economic development and having people living in prospering communities is a little different than operating on somebody’s brain,” Nutter said.

At 2300 Bainbridge, a 23-unit prefab condo building rises as pods are snapped into place. Curbed has a look at the building designed by LabHaus.