There's no doubt that Philadelphia is a city that's filled-to-overflowing with urban planning obsessives--those especially dedicated folks who care deeply about the ways in which a city works best, and about how the infrastructure of urban spaces can best be reconfigured to suit the needs and wants of city dwellers. And yet in Philadelphia, at least, there is certainly no one working in the field who is quite like Josh Nims.

A thirty-something transplant from the Deep South, Nims has a law degree, a 25-year-old skateboarding habit, and a serious commitment to cleaning and greening the banks of the tidal Schuylkill River, a goal he accomplishes daily in his role as the head of the maintenance crew for the Schuylkill River Development Corporation (SRDC).

As the founder of Franklin's Paine, Nims is also one of the most pivotal figures in the city's skateboarding community. Currently, he's at the tail-end of a decade-long process to develop the architecturally stunning Paine's Park, a $4 million mixed-use public space that will be built next to the Art Museum, and which is being designed for skateboarders and pedestrians alike.

Flying Kite recently met up with Nims at Slainte Pub & Grill in West Philadelphia, where we discussed a number of the SRDC's development projects. He also filled us in on the latest news about Paine's Park, which is much closer to becoming a reality than most local skaters seem to think.

Flying Kite: Can you explain what the Schuylkill River Development Corporation does? Also, how did you first get involved with them, and what do you do for them?
Josh Nims: The SRDC is a nonprofit community development corporation, and our work is focused on redeveloping the lower Schuylkill River. I got involved with the SRDC in 2004, when I started trying to sell a skate park project to Louise Turan, who was the executive director at the time. She let me hang out at the office, and I showed her plans of [the skate park] I was working on, and asked for her advice - that sort of thing. I was in between jobs at that point, and based on my skateboarding advocacy work, they asked me if I would develop a volunteer program, to start up the on-trail programming and the maintenance component of Schuylkill Banks. So I did it. And after about eight months, I got hired to be the operations manager for SRDC. So now, I manage [individual giving], and I manage all of the on-trail programming. It's been really intense, and we have a really small, five-person shop. I took on a huge chunk of work when I got the job, but it has been so much fun.

FK: Are there any particularly important projects you're working on right now?
JN: We just completed almost a mile of trail down near Grays Ferry. The Grays Ferry Crescent, as we call it. It's a piece of land that wraps around the old DuPont research lab. It passes underneath the existing Grays Ferry Bridge, and its terminus is at the corner of Schuylkill Avenue and Wharton Street. In the meantime, while we were building it, Penn bought the DuPont property. So now, a very friendly organization has moved into the land that's surrounded by our new trail. It'll be open to the public in the spring, and then we'll start doing outdoor movie nights.

FK: I heard a rumor that Penn was trying to change the public's perception of Grays Ferry, to make it seem as if it's a part University City.
JN: Well, it's not just a perception. University City has extended itself across the river and into Grays Ferry, and it's awesome! It's a great thing. I think there's momentum towards Grays Ferry right now. And there's momentum towards the growth of Center City, towards Grays Ferry. Center City is growing and people want to live there, and so the residential growth is going to continue in that direction, inevitably. Philly's a place that's growing. People want to live here, and when they get here, they want to stay here. I came here in 1997 to go to law school, and I never left. I just fell in love with the city. I came from the rural South; I grew up in South Carolina.

FK: What was it about the city that kept you here? In 1997, the city was a much different place.
JN: It was, but I went to Temple because I wanted to go to an oasis in the middle of what I thought was a really intense, ghetto situation. To be honest, I was a dumb, 22-year-old kid. I didn't know what was going on. I just knew that I was brought up as a really intense liberal in the Deep South. But I never had the opportunity to act on any of that. And I thought that going to Philadelphia would be like putting my money where my mouth was. You know, if you really believe that people are treated unfairly and deserve a better chance, and that's why you're so bummed on the South, then you should go to the big city and see what it's all about. And so I did. And I never left. And that's why I'm so excited about Grays Ferry, and about expanding this trail to a community that's never had access to the riverfront before, and is largely living in poverty. It's actually emotionally powerful to me. This is why I came to Philadelphia: to do something good for poor people who are treated badly.

FK: What's going on with Paine's Park? Do you have a groundbreaking date in mind?
JN: I can put it this way: We could be breaking ground by the end of the summer, and we actually have commitments in place to back that up financially - the last of the money is coming through two rounds of city recreation capital dollars. We're only a couple of months away now. In the meantime, we've been told to get to work, and that there's nothing politically that should be standing in the way of us getting that chunk of money.

FK: Can you tell me why you think this park is so important?
JN: Well, when we started this, 10 years ago, there were certain ideas in design about public space, and public plazas, and about how to intermingle skateboarding into them, but still keep them as mixed-use facilities. That was sort of the magic thing that we thought we'd stumbled upon. And it's still a magic thing. The only thing that's different is that in the subsequent ten years, cities all over the world figured it out right along with us, and they found the money, so they built theirs. So there are now a hundred skate plazas like ours around the world. St. Cloud Skate Plaza  (in Minnesota) is one. So what makes (Paine's Park) different, now that everybody else has a multi-use plaza too? Well, for one, everybody else built theirs in the same old lousy tennis court site at the back of the playground.

FK: So most of the other parks aren't in a good location?
JN: Right. And they're not plazas, because they're not in a public space, because they're not in the middle of the public! And we've got this cool opportunity, not only to do it right, but also to have a site that matters. To have a site that's next to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and that's across the river from 30th Street Station, and that's connected to our most-used bicycle and pedestrian node. So that's what makes it special. That's why it's a $4 million project.

FK: And where you're putting (Paine's Park) is a really big deal.
JN: It's a humungous deal, and we know it. And that's why it took this long. City government doesn't necessarily work with an outset plan to slow you down, but they have processes that lead to another process, that lead to another process. And if you can navigate through those processes and survive the time and bureaucracy, that's how you get what you want. You get what you want through patience. And now we feel like we're at the end of this great journey with our project. It's going to get in the ground. It's going to be awesome. People are going to come from all over the world to skate it.

FK: You have a really unusual range of interests: skateboarding, the law, city planning, urban redevelopment, architecture. Do you feel like it's helped you professionally that you're a skateboarding lawyer, so to speak, as opposed to just a liberal guy with a law degree who's also into urban planning?
JN: You know, I went to law school because black people are treated like crap, and they deserve better, and (I thought) maybe I could help. And as a skateboarder, I've experienced that (prejudice) myself, because I've also been treated like crap, and I'd like to do something about that while I'm here. I'll never forget the level of flat-out rudeness I experienced with police officers as a teenager, purely because I was riding a skateboard. No matter how I presented myself, I lost, because I was on a skateboard. And I thought that was the most fucked up thing ever, and I never let it go.

DAN ELDRIDGE is Flying Kite's Development News Editor; he recently wrote about R5 Productions and BlackGold Biofuels for the site. Visit him online at daneldridge.wordpress.com; send feedback here.