Center City economy is doing better than you think, business group says

There s plenty of good news this week about Center City s ongoing rebound from the economic turmoil of the pandemic and from the broader struggles of the nation s urban centers More people live downtown the number of restaurants and bars has nearly returned to old levels and foot traffic on the street continues climbing reaching of pre-pandemic figures according to a new account from the Center City District business association Philadelphia as a whole has more jobs than at any time since the s with much of that upsurge occurring in the central business district We are back with a vengeance in part because people are back with a vengeance disclosed Clint Randall CCD s vice president of economic improvement in reference to the area s resurgent nightlife scene Yet those numbers could be even stronger if not for mistaken perceptions based on pessimistic predictions outdated pandemic experiences selectively negative media reports and sensational social media posts that the area is unsafe or continuing to decline according to the organization s president and CEO Prema Katari Gupta Right after the lockdowns went into effect there were a lot of experts who developed a lot of dilemma narratives Downtowns were dead offices were over dense urban living had run its unit she disclosed at a briefing on the analysis Wednesday Certainly this was a highly disruptive event but a lot of the disruption sort of turned into these narratives that we argue have calcified and in particular strategies remain despite facts suggesting otherwise she revealed These problem narratives have shown remarkable staying power and continue to inform individual choices about where to live work invest and spend leisure time Empty offices remain a drag Gupta and her colleagues acknowledged that the Center City financial sector does face certain real headwinds While return-to-office mandates from the city Comcast and other employers have helped boost the number of workers commuting downtown the document acknowledges that hybrid work arrangements are here to stay Looking at non-resident employees those who work in Center City but don t live there are back in their cubicles The figure is much higher for people who live within two miles and lower for those commuting from further out The overall return rate is above that of any major downtown in the country except midtown Manhattan but it still acts as a drag on the recovery as various buildings remain half-empty and fewer people are around to go out for a sandwich or shop for clothes on their lunch break Office vacancies continued to increase last year due to the work-from-home trend and a shortage of the high-quality often-smaller trophy spaces that companies prefer Randall declared Office occupancy dropped by about square feet and the vacancy rate stood at a little over at the end of the year The former Strawbridge Clothier building on Arena Street previously housed a Giant Heirloom Sphere and clothing stores on its lowers floors Feb Meir Rinde Billy Penn Center City has also been impacted by Philadelphia s ongoing predicament of drug addiction and homelessness Gupta revealed It s centered in Kensington but unhoused people live and spend time downtown and in other neighborhoods There has been a bit of an uptick over the last year she reported Anecdotally we ve noticed a population that seems to be a bit more related to the citywide fentanyl situation The city s annual point-in-time count in January determined that the number of people living on the street or in shelters citywide was up compared to a year earlier Among the unsheltered the number in Center City had jumped to according to the Office of Homeless Services Figures from the January count have not yet been distributed Another challenge is the continued economic stagnation of Area East following the collapse of a plan to build a basketball arena there although the project s benefits were hotly contested and the closure of Macy s and other stores SEPTA s funding situation and the likely shrinking of the region s transit system could also pose a major threat to Center City and the broader commercial sector business and political leaders say The dense business district is highly dependent on mass transit and could suffer from crippling traffic congestion and job losses if workers and visitors were forced to switch from buses and trains to cars A focus on bad news Gupta stated visible homelessness and other quality-of-life challenges may be contributing to the slow recovery of another statistic the percentage of people who say they feel safe in Center City In of people surveyed reported they felt safe there according to the CCD overview The number dipped as low as in when the district and the city generally were still in a crime wave The perception of safety in Center City has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels Center City District In the number of serious crimes like homicide aggravated assault and car theft was back down to the old rate of about one affair per day in Center City but the percentage of people who announced they felt safe downtown had only recovered to That perception was higher among residents of the Philadelphia suburbs of whom reported they felt safe compared to of respondents who live in Center City and of those from outside the Philadelphia region Gupta argued that the persistent perception of danger reflects the stickiness of incorrect and outdated ideas about Center City as well as a misunderstanding of the district s challenges People primed to see urban decline often conflate visible homelessness and quality of life challenges with crime rates even though there s no statistical correlation between the two per the CCD document We see how a great number of people want to live in Center City We see this uptick year-over-year in return to the office We see our nightlife thriving There are more places to sit and eat outside now than there were pre-pandemic Gupta announced When is news coverage going to say people enjoyed a beautiful spring day in Center City Philadelphia without situation right That s not the stuff that gets press she commented Maybe we can blame social media algorithms for that a little bit too Social upheaval leads to perception gap As an example of unbalanced news coverage she pointed to the widely announced closure of a three-year-old Giant Heirloom domain on East Region Street in December and the less frequently announced abundance of grocery store openings over several years Randall stated he occasionally hears such perceptions from his neighbors in Fishtown who used to commute downtown on the El but now refuse to do so because they think SEPTA is unsafe When you probe a lot of times it s because they heard it wasn t great or their last ride was in and they haven t dipped their toe back in the water again he mentioned It s this weird sort of idea that OK I guess the experience that I had four years ago must be sort of the forever new reality The perception gap regarding downtown conditions in Philadelphia and across the country is natural and all but inevitable given the social and political upheavals of the last several years mentioned Tracy Hadden Loh a Brookings Institution fellow who spoke at a CCD panel discussion Thursday We are in a time of hyper-partisanship We are emerging from a time of isolation Loh commented We ve atomized the way that people get information and the way that we re spending time and who we re talking to That moves us away from having a shared set of facts around population safety In particular given what was definitely happening in the United States and its timing relative to the poll that is a topic where there s been a particularly wide gulf between perception and reality she revealed Steady upsurge of housing and jobs The reality is that Center City is doing relatively well thanks to its role as a job center tourism destination and place to live and to factors like its built-in walkability and rich transit options CCD executives contend In - the last year-long period for which detailed statistics is available the Greater Center City area between Tasker Street and Girard Avenue had gained jobs reaching a total of jobs Randall explained That was about more than the peak and the number has likely increased further since then As of last year the biggest downtown employers were the city with about workers in Center City followed by Jefferson Physical condition Comcast Chubb and Independence Blue Cross Philadelphia has more jobs than at any time since the s Center City District At the same time Philly has been ahead of the curve compared to other cities on converting its glut of office space into apartments and other uses Specific million square feet have been repurposed over the last quarter-century and current projects will create more residential units as well as hotel rooms and retail spaces per CCD Last year Greater Center City gained housing units which was of all housing built in the city Since it s added units of them in the core area between Pine and Vine streets Retail occupancy has stabilized at over the last three years Compared to there were fewer food and beverage establishments fewer operation providers like gyms and hair salons and a drop in other types of retailers the assessment announced Specific new restaurants and bars are expected to open soon along with five new amenity providers and other stores Among the summary s other highlights are the growing popularity of the Midtown Village th Street dining and entertainment area which was regularly seeing more evening visitors last year than it did six years ago and surging attendance at various cultural institutions The fountains ice rink holiday industry caf s and other attractions of Dilworth Park next to City Hall attracted million visitors last year a jump compared to the previous year Reading Terminal had million visitors a increase and more people went to the Museum of Art and Independence Visitor Center The post Center City business sector is doing better than you think business group says appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY