We’ll get it back to the Eagles in a moment, but this story is so ridiculous that I have to share it.

If you’ve been to Penn’s Landing in the last however-many years, you’re familiar with that huge arch that sits on the waterfront, where they set up the ice skating rink in the winter and the festival area in the summer. It’s literally just a concrete structure with a banner that says “Welcome to Penn’s Landing.”

It’s been there for almost two decades, originally built as the anchor for a failed tramway that would have connected Philadelphia to Camden. Simon Property Group was supposed to build an entertainment center on the waterfront, but jumped ship, leaving the useless arch just sitting there by itself.

That’s bad enough in itself, but read this from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

…after the tower was built — at what is said to have been a cost of about $16 million — Simon pulled out of the plan, leaving each side of the Delaware River with its own useless vertical slab.

The DRWC, a city-affiliated nonprofit that manages development along central Philadelphia’s Delaware River waterfront, began fielding bids from contractors to demolish the tower in September.

A.P. Construction was selected for the job with a $700,000 bid, Crowe said. Work is expected to take two months with coronavirus-related safety protocols in place, she said.

$700,000? Two months? Really?

We need eight weeks and seven-hundred thousand dollars to knock down a concrete arch that was never used? Talk about a huge waste.

The good thing is that they’re at least going to create something with this space, a park that will cover a portion of I-95 and connect front street to the river. You’ll see a walking and biking trail with the plan looking like this:

(via Delaware River Waterfront)

But yeah, $700,000? Holy shit. They should have just left the dumb concrete thing up and built around it. Turn it into a goofy monument or whatever. Save the money.