Center City District is trying to change long-held narratives about Philly’s downtown

Five years after the pandemic began, Center City is still grappling with misconceptions about safety, demand for office space, and whether people want to live downtown.

These narratives have had “remarkable staying power” despite data to the contrary and are influencing where people live, work, and spend their time and money, said Prema Katari Gupta, president and CEO of Center City District, downtown Philadelphia‘s business improvement district.

“It‘s up to us, with data and with events and with programming and with fun stuff like Open Streets, to change the narrative,” Gupta said. Open Streets is a program that temporarily closes certain streets to vehicles.

» READ MORE: Center City’s retail occupancy stays steady, and Philadelphians say which stores they want downtown

On Thursday, Center City District released its annual report about the health of downtown Philadelphia and the surrounding area and leaned into the organization‘s new vision statement: “Center City is Philadelphia’s heart of commerce, culture, and connection, generating opportunity and prosperity for the entire city and region.”

One in eight Philadelphians, or about 207,000 people, live in greater Center City, which the business improvement district defines as Girard Avenue to Tasker Street and between the Schuylkill and the Delaware River.

» READ MORE: Home building reached a record in 2024 for greater Center City

This year, Center City District‘s report started with a caveat: “This report went to print on April 17, 2025, amid DOGE cuts to federal capacity, uncertainty around tariffs and immigration, and the announcement of SEPTA’s looming funding crisis.”

Here are some takeaways from the report.

As of March, pedestrian traffic in core Center City — defined as Vine to Pine Streets and river to river — had reached 90% of what it was in 2019.

That‘s more than 400,000 people downtown on an average day, “which we think is meaningful and exciting,” said Clint Randall, Center City District‘s vice president of economic development.

Philadelphia ranked seventh among major downtowns for the rate at which it has recovered foot traffic.

But recovery has been uneven and depends on how close people are to downtown. For example, suburban visitors who live five to 25 miles away are returning at a slower pace than visitors who live within five miles of Center City.

In 2024, Philadelphia as a whole had more jobs than at any point in the last 45 years. The city had more than 791,000 jobs last year.

Roughly two in five jobs in Philadelphia — about 300,000 positions — were in greater Center City in 2022, the most recent year for which data are available for the smaller geography. Slightly more than half of these jobs do not require a bachelor‘s degree.

Greater Center City is where most Philadelphia residents who are employed in the metropolitan area work. Of the 644,000 jobs Philadelphians hold in the metro area, 148,000 — almost one in four — are in greater Center City.

Workers have continued to come back to downtown offices.

Within the West Market Street office district, an average of 52% of the workers who were in offices in 2019 were back in 2023. At the end of 2024, that rate was 63%.

By the end of last year, the number of workers who don‘t live downtown and were back in offices was 74% of 2019 levels. That‘s a higher return-to-office rate for nonresidents than in other peer office districts, including Lower Manhattan.

Since the pandemic, more Philadelphians commute to work by private car.

About 28% of Philadelphia workers as a whole travel to their jobs without one. A much higher share of workers in Center City — almost 50% — have a car-less commute, traveling by walking, biking, or riding public transit.

Businesses have been leaving older office buildings for new and improved spaces.

The best and newest buildings with the most perks, called “trophy” office buildings, represent 20% of the office supply but 43% of new leases. Trophy office buildings were more occupied at the end of 2024 than they were at the beginning.

All the other, lower tiers of office buildings were less occupied at the end of last year. A quarter of the office space in the tier below the trophy designation — Class A — is vacant, a “concerning” amount, Center City District said in its report.

There’s too much Center City office space that companies don‘t want and “arguably not enough of the kind of high-quality space” that companies do want, Randall said.

Almost half of Center City’s vacant office space is contained in 11 buildings, most of which are west of Broad Street. They include 1700 Market St., Three Parkway at 1601 Cherry St., and Five Penn Center at 1601 Market St.

Plans are underway to convert some former Center City office spaces, such as Three Parkway and the Public Ledger Building, into more than 1,000 new homes.

Compared to 2019, more people biked, walked, and drove into core Center City on an average weekday in 2023.

Bike trips were up 67% from 2019. Both walking and driving trips were up 24%. And rideshare trips doubled to about 16,000 on an average weekday.

Over the same time period, public transit trips dropped.

In both 2019 and 2023, trips by private car were the most popular way people traveled to Center City.

Center City District said in its report that “overreliance” on this mode of transportation “will add to congestion, pollution, and ultimately degrade the public environment and quality of life.”

“As Greater Center City’s population continues to rise,” the report said, “investment in multimodal transportation infrastructure is necessary to ensure economic vitality and the efficient movement of people through the city.”

SEPTA’s pandemic low of 343,000 daily riders in 2021 has grown to 586,000 daily riders. But the transit agency’s latest budget calls for major service cuts if it doesn‘t get more money from the state.

Since 2022, Center City has added 54 nightlife destinations, including restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters, and music venues.

Gains in nighttime visitors and international tourists drove growth in occupancy and income for Center City hotels, which brought in almost $700 million in revenue in 2024.

But so far this year, international travel to the city has dropped as anti-American sentiment abroad as grown.