Philly Portal To Move From LOVE Park Due To Continued Vandalism
One of Philadelphia’s newest features — the portal — is set to find a new home after manufacturers found it unsafe to stay in Center City.
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It’s been a little over five months since the Portal made its debut in Philadelphia. Originally set up in LOVE park, the portal connected the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection to other countries, offering in-real-time pleasantries to people across the world.
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Cities included in the portal’s livestream were: Dublin, Ireland, Vilnius, Lithuania, and Lublin, Poland.
Since its inception, the portal has been damaged numerous times. The portal has been offline since early January after it was damaged, and then a month later, it was attacked by copper wire thieves.
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Joe Callahan, director of the Portals Organization, believes that the most recent damage to the portal, could have been caught on camera.
“So the engineers have assessed it, and it appears someone took a rock and smashed the protective cover on the screen,” Callahan told sources. “The other end of the portal at the time of the damage was Vilnius, Lithuania. So somebody in Lithuania could have been a witness to it, and it was daylight in Lithuania at the time because you can see by the picture it was bright out,” Callahan said.
As organizers try to flesh the who, and the why, the next “W” to tackle is “where” will the portal live now?
“Logistically, to move it again for the Christmas village, to move it back, it’s very expensive to disassemble it and move it and bring it back and forth, so we made the decision we want it stationary for a year as a piece of art,” Callahan explained.
“There are three potential locations. Those three locations are within the city—public property with one and the other two are private areas with public access within the city… I’d rather not because right now they’re wanting to liaison themselves for keeping the portal on their property, and it’ll be in that location for a year,” Callahan added.
As this move could be looked at as a city initiatives that require taxpayer dollars, Callahan is insuring that taxpayers will not see an increase due to the relocation of the portal.
“The portal is gonna arrive in any of these three locations at no cost to the taxpayers and to the institutions that are considering it,” Callahan assured.
“All we do is keep pushing love and positive energy back into the universe, and good will prevail eventually,” Callahan said.
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Information from this article was sourced from FOX29 Philadelphia