Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Three large stand-alone parking garages have been proposed in Philadelphia this year, unusual projects in a city where parking operators have long complained that high taxation makes it difficult to run a business. The latest is a 372-unit garage near Fishtown and Northern Liberties at 53-67 E. Laurel St. near the Fillmore concert hall and the Rivers Casino. The developers see it as a strong bet for an area of the city that has seen a surge of apartment construction, which, due to Philadelphia’s parking laws, requires developers to build spaces to serve only a fraction of the units. “There’s been about 2,500 units that have come online within a 5- to 10-minute walk” of the planned garage, said Aris Kufasimes, director of operations with developer Bridge One Management. “When you’re building those on 7-1 [apartments to parking spaces] ratios, that leaves a massive hole. Where is everybody going to put their vehicles?” Despite central Philadelphia’s walkability and high levels of transit access, two other developers have made similar calculations this year. In the spring, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) revealed plans for a 1,005-space parking garage in Grays Ferry along with a shuttle service to spirit employees to the main campus a mile away. In August, University Place Associates unveiled plans for a 495-unit garage. About a fourth of it will be reserved for the use of the city’s new forensic lab, but the rest will be open to the public. All three projects have baffled environmentalists and urbanists, who thought Philadelphia was moving away from car-centric patterns of late 20th-century development. It’s also surprised parking operators in the city, who say national construction cost trends and high local taxation make it difficult to turn a profit. Legacy parking companies in Philadelphia like E-Z Park and Parkway Corp. have been selling garages and surface lots for redevelopment as anything other than parking. They say the city has lost 10,000 publicly available spaces in the last 15 years, bringing the total to about 40,000 in Center City. “I don’t think I’ll ever build another stand-alone parking facility,” said Robert Zuritsky, president of Parkway Corp. and board chair of the National Parking Association. “It doesn’t make any sense.” Zuritsky and other parking companies have long noted that operators in Philadelphia, who often have unionized workforces, get hit with parking, wage, property, and the Use and Occupancy Tax. When combined with the soaring cost of building new spaces across the nation, it’s difficult to turn a profit in Philadelphia. Zuritsky says it costs $60-$70 a space to build an aboveground lot in today’s environment and $100,000 to $150,000 below ground. “It’s like building a house for a car,” he said. Depending on hyperlocal peculiarities, Zuritsky says that taxation in Center City can eat up to 60% of the money they bring in and that to profit from new construction, an operator would have to charge $3,000 per space a month. “I wish people luck, the ones that are moving in,” said Harvey Spear, president of E-Z Park. “Between taxes, insurance, and labor, it comes to, like, 70-some percent of what we take in. We have more equipment now that does away with a lot of labor; we’re trying to compensate with that.” Urbanist and environmental advocates, meanwhile, have condemned the new garage projects, arguing that they will add to carbon emissions, air pollution, and traffic congestion. “A massive parking garage less than half a mile from the El [in Fishtown] is the wrong direction for any city that claims to take climate action seriously,” said Ashlei Tracy, deputy executive director with the Pennsylvania Bipartisan Climate Initiative. “SEPTA is already working to get more people out of cars and onto transit, but projects like this one and the one from CHOP only make that harder.” Here are the parking projects in the pipeline. Fishtown: 372 spaces The garage, with architecture by Philadelphia-based Designblendz, doesn’t just contain parking. It includes close to 14,000 square feet of commercial space on the first floor, which the developer hopes to rent to a restaurant — or two — on the edges of one of Philadelphia’s hottest culinary scenes. Another over 16,000-square-foot restaurant space is planned for the top floor, with views of the skyline and river. Both the top and bottom floors also could be used as event spaces. Kufasimes says that this aspect of the project could partly offset the kinds of costs that parking veterans warn of. “Our due diligence team went through those numbers and vetted them pretty thoroughly: The returns are what they needed to be,” Kufasimes said. “It’s got a multifunction of income streams, so we think that that really will help play a larger role.” Kufasimes also said a parking garage made sense in an area that’s seen more development than almost any other corner of Philadelphia. When investors purchased the land at 53-67 E. Laurel St. and approached his company for ideas, they met with other stakeholders in the neighborhood and determined parking would be appreciated. “It wasn’t necessarily all about the profit,” Kufasimes said. “A lot of people this day and age, that is their number-one goal. If this is a slightly lower return in the long run but can be better accepted by the community as a whole, we think that actually raises the value of the asset.” At an October meeting of the Fishtown Neighbors Association, that argument appeared to pay off. Unlike most community meetings where a large new development is proposed, there were no adamant opponents of the project. The project also includes a 20,000-square-foot outdoor space, a green roof, and a to-be-decided public art component. All of that helped, too. “It’s nice seeing a parking garage, of all things, be as pedestrian-friendly and thoughtful as this,” one speaker said during the Zoom meeting. University City: 495 spaces The garage at 17 N. 41st St. is part of a larger complex of developments in a corner of West Philadelphia’s University City. Dubbed University Place 5.0, it largely exists because of a major expansion of the municipal bureaucracy west of the Schuylkill. For years the city has sought a new location for its criminal forensics laboratory. The debate became heated in City Hall, with numerous Council members making the case for locations within their districts. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier pushed for its location in University City Place 3.0, a newly built, state-of-the-art life sciences building that was coming online just as its intended industry was slowing down in the face of higher interest rates. To get the crime lab, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration said the police department would need ample parking. That’s where the new garage comes in. In June, Gauthier passed a zoning overlay that cleared away the regulatory hurdles to the project. Six weeks later, the developers revealed University City Place 5.0, which has 29 parking spaces on the ground floor reserved for official use by forensics vehicles and 100 spaces reserved for city employees. Designed by Philadelphia-based ISA Architects, the garage is also meant to serve University Place Associate’s other large developments in the area. Akin to the Fishtown garage, they have also sought to make the development pedestrian friendly, with a dog park, green space, and public art. The local community group, West Powelton Saunders Park RCO, also embraced the proposal. “The community met regarding this project back in August, and … they were all in support of this project,” Pamela Andrews, president of the West Powelton Saunders Park RCO, said at the city’s September Civic Design Review meeting. “We have a tremendous problem with parking, and the community members felt this was a much needed and welcome addition.” Grays Ferry: 1,005 parking spaces CHOP’s thousand-car parking garage by far has been the most controversial of the proposals. But it also makes the most economic sense for the owner. Unlike the other garages — or those owned by Parkway and E-Z Park — it will be owned by a nonprofit and exempted from many of the taxes that make it so expensive to own parking in Philadelphia. The hospital purchased the property at 3000 Grays Ferry Ave., next to the Donald Finnegan Playground, for almost $25 million last year. The seven-story development, which, plans show, would have far fewer amenities than its University City and Fishtown counterparts, is meant to serve CHOP’s new research facilities in Fitler Square and the new patient tower set to open in 2028. “We recently secured permits and have begun construction on the new parking garage at 3000 Grays Ferry Ave.,” a CHOP spokesperson said. “The full construction is expected to go through the fall of 2026. CHOP continues to engage with the community by providing support, timely updates and addressing feedback during construction.” At the time of its unveiling, CHOP argued that the massive garage was needed as SEPTA threatened to become unreliable due to a political funding crisis in Harrisburg. But detractors appeared almost immediately to denounce the hospital for worsening air quality in a lower-income neighborhood that is already a hot spot for asthma. The project’s design was derided at the city’s advisory Civic Design Review panel and has attracted protest rallies, unlike its counterparts in University City or Fishtown.
