Children’s Hospital plans a 1,005-car parking garage for Grays Ferry
Concerns were raised about traffic. However, CHOP does not need zoning variances to move forward.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wants to build a block-long, 1,005-unit parking garage in South Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood.
The project at 3000 Grays Ferry Ave. would allow CHOP workers to more easily drive to work. Although it is not within walking distance to the hospital complex, the children’s hospital will run a shuttle service from the garage.
“This parking structure will be used for employee parking so our patient families can park as close to the hospital as possible,” Kaitlyn Tivenan, a CHOP spokesperson, said in a statement. “This structure will expand capacity for staff parking, which is especially important given continued public transportation challenges.”
The almost 350,000-square-foot parking garage would be built next to Donald Finnegan Playground. Rowhouses otherwise line the blocks around the project, and a shopping center with a Fresh Grocer stands on the other side of Grays Ferry Avenue.
The property has flexible zoning, which gives neighborhood groups little leverage to bargain with the hospital.
But CHOP has been meeting with the local Registered Community Organizations (RCOs) because the project is large enough that it must be considered by the city’s Civic Design Review committee which provides advisory feedback on large projects in Philadelphia. Developers must meet with community groups before presenting their proposal to the committee on May 6.
“There are all kinds of reactions in the community when you are building something big like this,” said Charles Reeves Jr. of the Tasker-Morris Neighbors Association. “The community was mostly concerned with traffic and how it would affect the neighborhood.”
Reeves said that CHOP offered Grays Ferry’s four community groups funds for the next three years — grants that people in the neighborhood could apply for, workforce development opportunities, and maintenance for the neighboring park.
“Our real concern was the neighbors who live right there” in the blocks immediately neighboring the project, Reeves said. They promised to “keep the park clean and make sure all the trash gets picked up.”
3000 Grays Ferry Ave. is currently vacant. In 2024, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported that CHOP paid almost $25 million for the 3.4-acre site.
Plans submitted to the City of Philadelphia show that each floor of the seven-story building would span 50,000 square feet. It will serve CHOP’s expanding footprint a mile away with new research facilities near the Fitler Square neighborhood, and a new patient tower with 200 beds on the main campus slated for a 2028 opening.
The garage would replace the existing employee parking lot on Warfield Street.
“Construction is scheduled to start in the late summer of 2025,” Tivenan said, “with an anticipated opening in the fall of 2026.”
The urbanist group 5th Square condemned CHOP’s plans, noting that Grays Ferry is already hemmed in by highways, and that as a result, air quality in the neighborhood is poor due to auto emissions.
The huge garage, the group argued, will only make things worse. It will encourage more driving, which the group notes is particularly hazardous to child pedestrians.
“I’m just shocked that they would do this,” said Natasha Tabachnikoff, who co-chairs 5th Square’s housing committee. “It’s not being a good neighbor to outsource their parking garage to an area with already extremely high particulate matter. This has really horrible health impacts for their target clientele of children.”
CHOP did not respond directly to 5th Square’s concerns about the project.
“We have met and listened to the concerns of the community, and we are incorporating recommendations into the design where possible,” CHOP’s Tivenan said.
The urbanist group similarly critiqued the University of Pennsylvania’s plans for a 858-car parking garage farther west on Grays Ferry Avenue, which was announced in 2023.