In South Philly, Gopuff neighbors seek relief on safety, sanitation, and quality-of-life issues

Warehouse-based retail is in trouble.

Since the pandemic eased, Amazon has stopped or delayed new warehouses. West Chester-based QVC this month cut 400 jobs. Walmart is cutting warehouse staff in Bethlehem and South Jersey. Misfits Market, founded in Philadelphia, is shutting its flagship Delanco warehouse and laying off more than 400 workers after a merger.

Philly-based Gopuff saw the slowdown coming. To cut its losses last year, the “Wawa on wheels,” which delivers food, beer, and household items on demand, began laying off staff and pulling out of smaller markets such as Wichita, Kan. Last week, Gopuff cut another 100 of its 10,000 remaining workers, mostly information and engineering staff, according to Bloomberg.

At the same time, Gopuff, eager to boost its profitability after years of raising large sums from investors, has doubled down on its busiest cities, including Philadelphia, adding more neighborhood centers where drivers pick up orders for delivery and return for more. Some sit in busy commercial neighborhoods, such as stretches of Callowhill Street and Delaware Avenue.

But near the center of South Philly, neighbors say they have had trouble coping with a car-based business in the increasingly residential neighborhood where Gopuff opened at a former grocery store site at 13th Street and Washington Avenue in late 2021.

“Gopuff’s high-efficiency model has led them to treat our neighborhood as their playground,” disregarding “safety, sanitation, and quality of life,” said Suzanne M. Tavani, president of the Passyunk Square Civic Association, who lives three blocks away.

Association members began raising traffic, parking, and trash concerns in 2022. They asked Gopuff to act against cars blocking the sidewalk on 13th Street, drivers speeding down residential streets to make their deliveries, as well as drivers and other visitors “smoking weed and [urinating] on the walls,” including an outside wall of the neighboring Buddhist temple, recalled Leah Reisman, who lives in the neighborhood.

In June, Reisman said, her car was hit by a Gopuff driver “taking an illegal left turn” into the company’s lot from westbound Washington Avenue. She said some of the drivers talked rudely to residents who complained, and some were “littering at all times of the day and night” while waiting for jobs.

At first, their concerns were routed to a Philly-based company representative, who “seemed sympathetic,” but was replaced by a rep in Washington, D.C., Reisman added. ”We were in text message contact with the company. But nothing really changed, over many months.”

Frustrated, “we went to Councilman [Mark] Squilla,” said Adriana Akintobe, a civic association member and Democratic committeeperson who lives across the street. “He came himself to our second meeting [in August, via Zoom] with the company and said this needs to be fixed or it won’t be an appropriate site.” The councilmember, who is among the city officials who have praised Gopuff as a hometown success story and growing employer, also responded to constituents in earlier Gopuff-neighbor clashes, including disputes around Gopuff’s early warehouse and stores on North 12th Street, between Noble and Hamilton Streets, in another industrial-turning-residential district. At that location, the company at first lacked even a parking lot. Gopuff closed that site two years ago.

The group was especially concerned about careless driving — illegal turns, speeding, trucks blocking streets, more accidents — which they blamed on a seeming lack of coordination by the company.

A Gopuff official, speaking on condition they not be identified, said the company is committed to South Philly and, early in the winter, took unusual steps to address the Washington Avenue neighbors’ concerns, citing several improvements confirmed by Squilla and neighborhood residents:

To keep trash from spreading, the company built a tall chain-link enclosure for its dumpsters and agreed to empty them daily. To ease driving concerns, it built a short speed bump by the 13th Street exit, below a prominent no-entry sign. And the company agreed to add staff to better direct traffic.

But the neighbors say incidents of careless driving have continued, and they worry about increased risk of car vs. pedestrian accidents as a 1,400-plus apartment complex rises just across Washington Avenue, among other residential development in the area. On a visit to the site, an Inquirer reporter saw a driver swerve through an empty parking space to avoid the bump and exit up 13th Street, passing next to a steeply angled bollard that looked like it had been hit hard by a truck.

“I am frequently seeing illegal turns into that property. I am glad they are so busy and successful, but I am not convinced they can fit all they do onto that site,” said Tavani, the civic association president.

Squilla, who met again with the company without the community group members on Wednesday, says Gopuff has agreed to more improvements. “They are putting a parking blocker on the curbs, so you can’t just go over the 13th Street sidewalk,” he said. “They are fixing that bollard next to the Cambodian temple.” He said he also wants to see the speed bump extended.

“We are making headway,” Squilla insists. “The business seems to understand that Washington Avenue, which was an industrial corridor, is changing. We have to make sure it is pedestrian- and bicyclist-friendly.”

He said previous improvements took too long. “I’ll give them to the end of April to put these sidewalk-parking blocks on the 13th Street side, fix the bollard,” and extend the speed bump, and to be ready to deal with future issues as they arise, not months after. “If instead they get overrun and people back onto Washington Avenue so it’s dangerous for pedestrians, we have to look at the other possibilities — to reduce the work they do there, or move it to a bigger location somewhere else.”

The city might do more, Squilla concluded: “We need traffic enforcement on Washington Avenue. The city has done those red-light cameras up on Roosevelt Boulevard. They seem to make a difference.”