The Skyline's Limited

This column originaly appeared on Sunday, Dec. 30, 2007

There is no easy way to put this.

If there was an easy way to put this, you can be certain that I would take it. We in the news businesses – with the possible exception of Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer and some of the folks who work at E! Entertainment’s crack Britney Spears Division -- are very comfortable, shall we say, with taking the easy way when it comes to life.

Believe me, I don’t like the hard way. I avoid the hard way like the folks at the E! Entertainment's crack Britney Spears Division avoid discussions on Salman Rushdie’s latest novel. If the hard way was walking down the street and I spotted it coming in the opposite direction, I would cross over and pretend to do some window shopping at Fairman’s Skate Shop.

So believe me when I say it is not easy to admit that the skyline that greets me when I return to Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from traveling out west makes me want to yawn.

There, I said it. The sight of Chester County’s border along about mile marker 300 is boring with a capital “Is that it?” It’s unidentifiable. It’s non-descript. It’s a vacuum in the skyline sense. My sister once drove to Chester County from her home in Cincinnati and didn’t even know she had passed the so-called “most beautiful place on earth” until she hit the New Jersey Turnpike.

You cross into Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Berks County and you might as well be left in a time/space warp in which you continually return to the same Berks County landscape that you just left, only with fewer animal food processing plants.

Travelers the world over get awe-striking views of the cities they enter that stick with them for years. New York City’s skyline upon boating in on the Staten Island Ferry is one. Driving around the bend in the Schuylkill Expressway near the Philadelphia Zoo when that city’s Boathouse Row comes into view at night is another. Even coming into my hometown of Cincinnati from the south, where the skyline emerges above the stately Ohio River, always left me with a bit of a tickle on the back of my neck.

Coming into Chester County from the west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike leaves me thinking, “What should I cook for dinner?”

This calls for action. This calls for change.

We need to create some better skyline, some identifiable landscape, that will stand up and be noticed. We need to create a skyline that speaks to the Chester County-ness out there, something that will leave travelers passing by open-mouthed and drooling and leave residents coming home from the west with a warm feeling in their souls like they just rescued the neighbor’s puppy.

What that scene should be is not up to me. No, I’ve fulfilled my role in this situation. I’ve identified the problem, and now I’m leaving it up to others to deliver the solution. It could be politicians, it could be business leaders, it could be -- dare we say -- Lani Frank. I don’t care. As I said before, I’m about the easy way.

And when they come up with a new skyline for the entrance way to Chester County from the west, I’ll be here, waiting.

As for the eastern skyline, we’ve got the Gateway Shopping Center and that’ll do.