A parking mogul’s new Center City apartment tower will have 31 affordable units, public spaces, and bike parking

A new 304-unit apartment building is being proposed just off Market Street in Center City, at 21st and Ludlow Streets. It is replacing a surface parking lot east of the Mütter Museum.

The tower is the work of Parkway Corp., a local parking and real estate company building on many of the surface lots that it owns.

The company is focusing much of its development energy near the western edge of Center City. It is building an office tower for Morgan Lewis at 2222 Market St. and has proposed another, at 20th and Arch Streets, which it hopes to build for an unidentified tenant, long rumored to be international insurance company Chubb Ltd.

“[This part of town] was always a little fringe-y, ... but now it’s becoming much more central,” said Robert Zuritsky, president and CEO of Parkway. “It’s really a no-brainer, so close to 30th Street [Station], Rittenhouse, and the museums on the Parkway.”

The new building would be 31 stories, with two floors of underground parking — 109 for cars and 104 for bikes. The unit mix includes studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments as well as two-story units with substantial outdoor space.

“[These] are two-story houses which have their own backyard,” said Scott Erdy, principal with Erdy McHenry Architecture, in a presentation to Center City Residents’ Association (CCRA). “A young family can really have outdoor space immediately adjacent to their apartment.”

To complete this project, which is designed more densely than the underlying zoning would typically allow, Parkway is getting creative.

In exchange for permission to build, Parkway would provide public space, minimize the building’s carbon footprint, offer public art, build underground parking, and offer 31 units at 60% of area median income. These units would be affordable to those making more than $50,000 for a two-member household (with rent of about $1,423 a month) and more than $63,000 for a four-member household (with rent of $1,834 a month). The affordability provisions would have to remain in place for 50 years.

This “mixed-income housing zoning bonus” was created in its current form in 2018 and allows developers to build taller and denser buildings if they help combat the city’s affordable housing crisis. This can be done by contributing money to the city’s housing trust fund, which can be spent on projects throughout the city, or if they include affordable units in their buildings.

Most developers have decided to pay into the trust fund and avoid including affordable units in their buildings, even though the income limits are priced far above what Philadelphia’s poorest residents can afford.

Last year, City Council tweaked the law to encourage developers to build affordable units on site, in an effort to bring more economic and racial diversity to booming parts of town. Parkway’s project on Ludlow and 21st is one of the first large-scale projects to make use of the new rules.

Parkway is also making use of a zoning bonus that allows more density in exchange for public space, which in this case takes the form of a 5,500-square-foot room on the second floor that would be accessible to all. This area would have a dedicated entrance on the street and offer public art and programming from Mural Arts, a coworking space, publicly available restrooms, and an outdoor terrace.

The neighborhood association broadly supports the project and representatives say they have negotiated a community benefits agreement with Parkway.

But the neighborhood group does have concerns that the public space could become a de facto shelter for people experiencing homelessness.

“We welcome the public spaces, and we’re talking about art exhibits and places for people to come in as a workspace and to have kids events,” said Richard Gross, president of CCRA. “Public space should not be configured as a shelter or drop-in for the homeless population but should be used and available to the community at large.”

CCRA and Parkway are continuing to bargain over the building, as they have on many other projects over the years, with discussions expected to continue over the coming weeks. The project will also be subject to Civic Design Review, which allows a city-appointed panel of experts to offer advice on large developments.

For his part, Zuritsky says this project is a further example of the city’s potential. Although a longtime critic of Philadelphia’s high parking taxes, he’s on a building spree as Parkway finds higher-return uses for its property.

“I’ve been a critic of some of the policies and taxes, but I think Philadelphia has an unbelievable amount of momentum,” Zuritsky said. “We are a city who likes to wring our hands and say, oh, why aren’t we better, this is wrong, what are we gonna do about that? And we do have some challenges. But Philadelphia has to start thinking of itself as a winner”