Hundreds of new apartments are coming to West Philly, a century after its last building boom

One hundred years ago, West Philadelphia reached its peak population, with almost 400,000 people residing in rowhouses, twins, and — unusual for non-Center City neighborhoods — a lot of apartment buildings.

West Philadelphia saw explosive growth in mid- to high-rise housing during the early 20th century, developments with such names as Royal Palm Court and the Towers. The developer, Clarence Siegel, created a whole neighborhood, Garden Court. Located between Cedar Avenue and Spruce Street, to the west of 46th Street, his creation included a mix of Tudor-style twins, a few grand free-standing homes, and two towering multifamily complexes on Pine Street.

In the century since Siegel’s high rises on Pine opened, West Philadelphia has gone through a lot of changes. For decades, new construction was rare outside the University of Pennsylvania’s immediate purview, and most neighborhoods hemorrhaged residents as first white residents left the city, followed in later decades by increasing numbers of Black families. Even Garden Court, which didn’t see much vacancy, kept losing population through the 2010 Census.

That could soon change. In the next few years, 838 new multifamily units are expected to become available to rent, thanks to four major projects clustered around the northern edge of Siegel’s historic development.

“It’s a beautiful, developing neighborhood with great people from all over the world,” said Kfir Binnfeld, a developer who has been operating in West Philadelphia for 20 years. “It’s near the hospital, the universities, the schools. There was always big demand … even during COVID we had very positive demand.”

Eight years ago, Binnfeld renovated the historic Croydon Hall Apartments at 241 S. 49th St., renovating 127 units. His two latest projects are at 4900 Spruce (150 new units nearly finished) and 4746-48 Spruce (170 units, still in the planning process). An additional 220 units are being built next door at 4701 Pine St., as Siegel’s old Garden Court Plaza is expanded. Just to the north, at 220 S. 47th St., construction is being completed at the historic West Philadelphia High School, which will host 298 units when completed (although rooms began opening pre-pandemic).

Community groups are excited by the possibility of new neighbors — and more customers for local businesses. Retail in the area has been dominated by discount stores, beauty shops, and takeout Chinese eateries and, with the exception of Pizza Plus at 4814 Spruce St., not much has opened on Spruce or 48th in recent years.

“Ours is a neighborhood that is largely built out, without a lot of missing teeth, but our population is still down from 1990,” Jonas Maciūnas said at an early August public meeting about the 170-unit tower planned for 4746 Spruce St. Maciūnas is the head of zoning for the Garden Court Neighborhood Association.

“It’s no wonder our retail continues to struggle,” he said. “So bringing those walking wallets and the commercial space back into this corner is really important for us.”

Binnfeld says the neighborhood needs a grocery store. He’d love to see a Fresh Grocer or an Heirloom, the smaller supermarkets that the Giant Co. has been opening in urban areas, including in Philadelphia. His almost completed building at 49th and Spruce Streets may host a local coffee shop, he says.

But neighbors have plenty of critiques of the new development, too. Concern with the lack of affordable or family-sized units in the projects is a frequent refrain.

“I’m not opposed to new construction [and] we really need more homes,” said Tiffany Evans, as she relaxed in the shade of Lea Elementary on 4700 Locust St. “Is it going to be too much for the average person to be able to afford? No one is thinking about the average person.”

Neither of Binnfeld’s projects includes below-market rate units, although he paid $3.2 million into the city’s Housing Trust Fund, which finances subsidized homes throughout the city, to access the Mixed Income Housing zoning bonus that allows for larger buildings. The other two developments did not make use of the zoning bonus, neither paying into the trust fund nor building new affordable units on site.

Lack of housing affordable to low-income or even working-class families is a problem throughout the city, especially in the turbulent years of the pandemic. But in Garden Court and other neighborhoods in the vicinity of Drexel University and University of Pennsylvania, housing market activity has been especially dramatic.

In 2018, just across the street from Garden Court apartments, the Admiral and Dorset Court buildings — both dating from the pre-Depression multifamily boom — saw 70 tenants evicted to make way for a building sale. (Both are still empty today.) In the larger area covered by University City District’s boundaries, the business improvement district found that median home sale prices have increased by 13.7% in the last year, to $507,320, while median rent increased 9.2% in the last year to $1,764.

“Affordable housing is a very important thing, and I think this is the job of government and not of private entities,” said Binnfeld, which is why he decided to pay into the trust fund instead of including affordable units in his buildings. “The City of Philadelphia and PHA is supposed to be providing and taking care of that.”

The first apartment boom in West Philadelphia occurred long before public housing or subsidies for affordability.

“Garden Court was the last in this neighborhood, and then the Depression hit and that put an end to it,” said Mary McGettigan, a longtime neighborhood resident who leads a community group called West Philly Plan and Preserve. “Some people like to live in rowhouses, or twins, and some people like to live in apartments. To me, they’ve always been a part of West Philly.”

The diversity of unit sizes — from standalone homes to one-bedroom apartments — ensured a degree of income mixing, as did the fact that many of the homes came with live-in servant quarters. “Garden Court offers apartments with living room, dining room, kitchens, one and two master bedrooms with baths, maid’s room and bath,” a 1928 ad promises.

Today, household sizes are very different. Live-in maids have gone the way of horse-drawn carriages, while family sizes plummeted in the intervening century. But McGettigan says that despite smaller household sizes, these new developments and their small units are too narrowly targeted on one segment of the market.

“If I were to compare those [older] waves of apartment house building with the current ones, I would say that they were distinguished by their variety, by their targeting a varied type of household, even their income levels,” McGettigan said. “There is nothing for families [in the new buildings], nothing to encourage long-term rentals.”

The overwhelming majority of the units in Binnfeld’s two buildings on Spruce Street would be one-bedroom units. The other two projects are also dominated by a mix of one- and two-bedroom units.

Young professionals and graduate students have long buoyed the rental market in this corner of West Philadelphia, just beyond the undergraduate party belt. Families have flocked to the nearby Victorian twins and townhouses, especially after the University of Pennsylvania invested in the public elementary school at Penn Alexander.

But in earlier multifamily redevelopment nearby, such as the 127-unit Croydon Hall Apartments, Binnfeld said he had saw no appetite for larger, family-size apartments.

“At Croydon Hall, we built three-bedroom units, but there was no demand for them so we converted them to large two-bedroom apartments,” Binnfeld said.

There is a question of just how much demand for smaller multifamily housing units there will be in University City, especially at locations farther from the core big institutions. University City District counts nearly 3,000 multifamily units that are expected to be built within its borders in the next four years. That’s on top of 5,700 that have been built since 2002.

“If you flood the market with apartments, do you blunt your pricing [power]?” Maciūnas wondered.

Garden Court and much of the rest of University City would also be included within the inclusionary zoning overlay that Councilmember Jamie Gauthier helped create last year. This would require that all projects with 10 or more units provide 20% of the units at below-market prices. Developers like Binnfeld predict that the legislation will push development into other parts of West Philadelphia, like the neighborhoods below Baltimore Avenue that are not covered by the overlay, or stymie it all together.

Gauthier says that she feels confident building will continue and that she can work with developers to help them include affordable housing in their projects and still turn a profit.

“I would challenge anyone, especially now that West Philadelphia is becoming more of a life science hub, to say there’s not going to be a market here,” she said. “The market can accommodate both market rate units and affordable housing, so people in our communities can continue to live [here].”

The new apartment boom in this corner of West Philadelphia may be over almost as soon as it begins, as interest rates rise, building material costs soar, and the market digests this huge influx of new units. But even if no more buildings are constructed or rehabilitated, an additional 800 units will change the face of the neighborhood.

Quamira Wright, who lives in an early-20th-century apartment building on Locust Street, sees the development of this corner of the city as a microcosm of what’s happening elsewhere. Change can be good or bad, he says, based on his experience in North Philadelphia, where his family is selling his childhood home.

“Gentrification has been going on for years, but I think it’s pretty cool,” Wright said. “New buildings in the neighborhood, new opportunities, make it a little better. It brings the neighborhood up. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m for it.”