Experts and residents criticize CHOP’s off-campus garage proposal in Grays Ferry

The 1,005-unit parking garage that Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is proposing in Grays Ferry was roundly criticized by city planners, design experts, and local residents Tuesday at the Civic Design Review committee.

“It’s just hard to cotton that this extremely wealthy, extremely well-positioned institution has decided that 1,000 cars should go off campus … and contribute to all the negative impacts of traffic to that neighborhood,” said Dan Garofalo, vice chair of the CDR committee.

All the public testimony and written responses opposed the project at 3000 Grays Ferry Ave. The advisory committee exercised the only concrete power it has, which is asking CHOP to consider the feedback and return for a second review.

CHOP acquired the site in 2024 for almost $25 million. Garofalo estimated it would cost up to $100 million to build. In April, CHOP declined to share its construction cost estimate with The Inquirer. Workers would take a shuttle to and from the 350,000-square-foot parking garage, which is about a mile from the main campus.

The project requires no zoning variances or any other hurdles that would offer community groups and other critics leverage to push back against the project.

That did not stop them from criticizing it, especially in light of a 2023 Planning Commission report that showed existing University City parking capacity isn’t even three-quarters utilized.

“You are acting as if SEPTA doesn’t exist,” said Will Tung, an organizer with 5th Square, an urbanist advocacy group. “This 1,000-unit parking garage looks like something that would be built in King of Prussia, a suburban location where there’s absolutely no transit.”

CHOP plans to add street trees and a plaza area on Grays Ferry Avenue as a buffer to the garage, although Garofalo said the attempt to create public space in the shadow of the garage was like “a parody of an attractive place, like a Monty Python routine about a plaza.”

CHOP responded to the barrage of criticism by noting the institution’s robust transit benefits program and its investment in bike infrastructure. Although 22% of their workers commute via transit, the majority drive.

“Our employees draw from a five-county region, they draw from South Jersey, they come from places where public transportation just isn’t accessible,” said Peter M. Grollman, CHOP’s senior vice president of external affairs.

Grollman said he would meet with 5th Square on Friday. CHOP has met with neighborhood groups in the Grays Ferry area and signed a community benefit agreement with them that includes funds for the organizations and for the neighboring park.

The community groups CHOP has been meeting with did not attend the CDR meeting, but a neighbor whose house will be in the garage’s shadow did.

“This is a very unattractive building, and it’s unfortunate that we’re facing such an ugly wall on Titan Street,” said Melissa Freeman, who lives across the street from the garage site.

She specifically criticized the huge blank wall that will face her home and dismissed the idea that it could be made less offensive by a mural.

Freeman also noted that neighbors will have their own street parking disrupted both by construction and the curb cuts that will serve the garage when it’s completed.