This Philly nonprofit has financed over $18.5 billion in development. Meet the new president.

The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation named Jodie Harris its next president on Thursday, concluding a six-month national search for a leader of the influential organization.

Harris is currently director of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department.

“My hometown is calling me back,” Harris wrote in a farewell note to her federal colleagues. “This was one of the most difficult decisions of my career. The opportunity to do the work I love, in the city I love, is an exciting, yet unexpected, new chapter.”

PIDC is a nonprofit created by Mayor Richardson Dilworth in 1958 as a joint venture between the city government and the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. It is a major player in development circles, controls vast tracts of city land, and helps finance everything from small-business loans to major public-private development projects such as the sports stadiums.

PIDC’s annual operating budget is $10 million to $12 million annually, with a staff of 55 to 60 people. Over the course of its existence, the organization says, it has financed more than $18.5 billion in development — $689 million in 2022 alone — and leveraged more than $45 billion in total investment in the city.

For much of the last decade, John Grady served as the much-lauded president of PIDC and before that he spearheaded the organization’s redevelopment of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. His successor, Anne Bovaird Nevins, had also spent much of her career at PIDC but served as its leader for three years.

Harris’ appointment “reinforces that Philadelphia and organizations like PIDC are attractive to the highly qualified and experienced national talent,” said Grady, who is now northeast regional executive for Wexford Science and Technology.

Unlike recent PIDC chiefs, Harris has not worked at the organization previously and unlike almost all of her predecessors she hasn’t spent decades working in the hothouse of Philadelphia politics and business.

But Harris does have deep roots in the region. She is a Philadelphia native and will be the first Black president of PIDC. She hails from Mount Airy and got her professional start at Meridian Bank, a local business and retail lender before its sale to what was then CoreStates Financial Corp in 1995. She also worked in the nonprofit sector and academia before working at the Treasury Department for 15 years.

PIDC would not disclose what Harris’ salary would be, but in a 2014 Philadelphia magazine profile of John Grady his yearly pay was described as $230,000 — more than the mayor made.

“Having worked at Meridian Bank, she knows the challenges we have in cities like Philadelphia,” said former City Councilmember Derek Green, who has known her since they worked at Meridian in the early to mid-1990s.

Green, who is running for mayor, says he consulted with Harris on his public bank legislation. The law, which Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration has not acted upon, was meant to extend lending by PIDC and other lenders to lower-income neighborhoods.

“She’s well suited for PIDC because she’s got experience national and local in banking, government, nonprofit,” said Green.

As the head of the federal CDFI Fund, Harris has been responsible for disbursing billions in tax credits and grant funding. During the pandemic, the agency distributed more than $3 billion in pandemic recovery grant funding. The CDFI fund also administers a panoply of affordable housing and community development programs.

“It’s an agency that a lot of people outside of the field might not know about,” said Greg Heller, former executive director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. “But they run really important programs that provide access to capital for underserved communities businesses. She’s brought a real focus on equity, and increasing the impact of those programs.”

Heller said it’s somewhat unusual for the head of a federal agency to take a job at a local level.

“It’s really great for Philly that we’re able to attract someone of that stature to take on this job that’s so important for our city,” said Heller, who is now a director of Guidehouse, a management consulting firm.

“Over the past decade, and especially since COVID, PIDC has turned its focus to supporting the growth of small businesses, particularly minority and women owned businesses,” Grady said. “Part of the appeal of Harris coming in is that she will be able to grow that to the next level.”

PIDC has long been a powerful force in local economic development policy, credited with moving more nimbly and capably than city government could on its own.

In the 1950s, it was initially meant to help Philadelphia retain manufacturing interests in the city as many industrial firms were being lured overseas or to the nonunion South. Initially half the organization’s operating budget came from the chamber and the other half from the city. Today, it is “funded largely by the revenue generated from its financing activities and real estate transactions,” according to spokesperson Kevin Lessard.

In its early years PIDC acquired derelict industrial operations and retrofitted them for new use. They also obtained land in little developed corners of the city, like the Far Northeast and Southwest Philadelphia, and opened successful industrial parks in a bid to retain manufacturing firms that were considering greenfield suburban sites.

Starting in the 1970s, PIDC helped stabilize Center City’s flagging fortunes. It purchased the Bellevue Stratford Hotel after Legionnaire’s Disease felled 29 people who were staying there, preserving the historic building during a subsequent decline in market interest. The nonprofit also was instrumental in the financing of the Gallery shopping mall, and it was the vehicle for implementation of Mayor Ed Rendell’s Avenue of the Arts vision, the Center City hotel boom, and the sports district in South Philadelphia.

Arguably, PIDC’s most dramatic project was its orchestration of the reuse of the Navy Yard. When the sprawling military base at the southernmost end of the city was cashiered in 1995, 7,000 jobs were vaporized.

But PIDC acquired the land in 2000 and successfully redeveloped the 1,200-acre property into a site for research, development, industrial, and white collar office complexes. Today major companies such as Urban Outfitters and Rite Aid are headquartered in the Navy Yard, and it has emerged as a major employment hub with 15,000 jobs.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that Anne Bovaird Nevins was leader of PIDC for three years.