As Macy’s closes, the future of the Market East corridor has become a defining issue for Mayor Cherelle Parker

The City of Philadelphia will soon take control of East Market Street, part of the recently approved plan for the 76ers to build a new downtown arena. That means that local leaders will have more control over decisions on street design, lighting, and signage, and that the city will be responsible for maintaining the thoroughfare currently serviced by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

But for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, who championed the arena project, taking responsibility for what happens on East Market Street may be more than just a matter of who pays to fill the potholes there. The fate of the long-struggling commercial corridor is shaping up to be a defining issue of her tenure.

Macy’s announcement that it will soon close its store in the historic Wanamaker Building on the west end of the strip is bound to dramatically remake the area around City Hall. The city is moving forward with a major project to revamp the east end of the street as well. In between, Parker is hoping the 76ers arena will spur development that will transform the bleak blocks between City Hall and Independence Mall into a bustling residential and retail hub.

» READ MORE: Center City Macy’s, located in iconic Wanamaker Building, will close in March

“I think [the administration is] going to be known — we all are — for reimagining the Market East corridor,” said City Councilmember Mark Squilla, whose district includes the corridor and who worked with Parker to secure Council approval for the $1.3 billion arena project. “This is, to me, an opportunity to take these challenges, work hard to put a plan in place, and use the negativity over the last four, five years to bring light to the area so we can encourage private development.”

Jessie Lawrence, the city’s director of planning and development, said the administration is “working with businesses to restore their confidence in opening their doors to Market Street.”

“We envision East Market Street as a 24/7 hospitality corridor with [the 76ers arena] as an anchor for mixed-use development that includes a mix of retail, residential, and hotel, and also family entertainment as well,” he said in a statement.

The coming closure of Macy’s, the last department store on a thoroughfare once full of them, has sharpened the focus on what Parker’s plans for the future of the corridor will be. As part of the community benefits agreement for the arena project, the 76ers will give the city $500,000 for a “comprehensive master planning effort” for the corridor — a step that some critics of the arena proposal felt should have been taken before City Council was asked to approve the project.

» READ MORE: Inside the 76ers arena agreement approved by Philly City Council members

“This is far from the death of Market Street,” said Alba Martinez, the city’s commerce director, at a Thursday evening news conference about the Macy’s announcement. “What this does is reinforce the sense of urgency which the Parker administration will employ while … bring[ing] new life to the center of our city’s economic core.”

Taking on the revitalization of Market East fits with a pattern that has emerged during Parker’s tenure: The mayor often appears to go out of her way to tie her administration to some of the city’s most intractable and visible problems.

She has vowed to make Philly the nation’s “cleanest, greenest” big city, a major undertaking for a place sometimes called “Filthadelphia.” She has made ending the open-air drug market in Kensington — an incredibly complex endeavor — a signature issue.

And now, with the Sixers’ pending arena and changeover in the iconic Wanamaker Building, Parker has guaranteed that she will be remembered for making a major attempt to revitalize a corridor that is lined with monuments to unsuccessful past efforts to do just that: the struggling Fashion District shopping mall, the “Disney hole,” and myriad empty storefronts.

» READ MORE: Mayor Parker had a big first year, from city cleanup to the Sixers arena. But many challenges remain.

Despite focusing her campaign rhetoric on the need to improve city services in disadvantaged areas and to bolster neighborhood commercial corridors elsewhere in Philadelphia, Parker has shown that she is also deeply invested in the future of Center City.

Last year, she required all city employees to return to full-time in-person work after several years in which thousands came into the office only two or three days a week, a controversial policy that at the time was the least flexible return-to-office rule among large U.S. cities. Part of the mayor’s rationale was to increase foot traffic downtown and encourage private employers to require more in-office days, too.

While selling the arena project to the public last fall, Parker often waxed poetic about the glory days of Market Street, recalling the bustling stores she visited while growing up. She recalled the sense of pride that accompanied buying a pair of shoes at the former Strawbridge’s or a set of linens at JCPenney.

Parker said those stores “represented a certain amount of quality” that is available today only at the King of Prussia Mall outside the city.

“I don’t want Philadelphians having to travel anywhere else to get access to quality retail,” she said in September. “We should be able to do it right here in our city and on Market Street like we used to.”

Some critics of the 76ers project contended that an NBA arena ― which, aside from street-level retail the team has promised, is likely to be empty most nights — is the wrong type of development if the goal is to bring more liveliness to the street.

But Lawrence said the arena will serve as an “anchor” for the corridor to become “the ultimate hospitality corridor.” He expects commercial interest in East Market Street to increase even before the arena opens in 2031.

“We really do believe that this is going to attract people that it hasn’t in the past, and we don’t expect the vacancies to last between now all the way up to the arena opening,” Lawrence said. “We expect to curb that problem in advance of the actual arena opening.”

Mo Rushdy, the head of the Building Industry Association and a vocal supporter of the arena project, said the Macy’s closure is further evidence that Market East is a “dying corridor” and that Parker’s support of the arena project showed “forward vision.”

”It needs not a lifeline. It needs a complete makeover,” he said. “That arena is going to accelerate the next and the next project happening in Market East.”

Paul Levy, board chair of the Center City District, said he was encouraged that the arena developers also plan to construct residential buildings on the south side of the street. The city, he said, should embrace a mixed-use vision for the corridor and avoid the mistakes of 20th-century urban renewal plans that created “single use” districts, such as the concentration of office buildings around West Market Street — and the retail hub that once dominated East Market Street.

“What was Market East but a single-use vision of a retail shopping area?” Levy said. “The ideal scenario is that every block has at least residential and retail, and maybe office, because you need very diverse audiences to create vitality at street level.”