Another Center City Wawa is closing
The company closed its Center City locations in 2009, then opened a new wave of them as Center City rebounded. Now they are pulling back again.
Another Philadelphia Wawa is closing, this time at 16th and Ranstead Streets in Center City.
A sign in the building’s window announces that it will be shuttered on Sunday, although a Wawa spokesperson said the following day would be the store’s last.
“Our 16th and Ranstead store initially opened in 2020 as a pilot test of a smaller urban store concept, which also included a walk-up window,” said Lori Bruce, a spokesperson with Wawa. “However, due to its limited size, we have determined that we are not able to provide the same kind of in-store experience and full Wawa offer that customers expect.”
Bruce stated that all workers at the 16th Street location “have been offered the opportunity to work at other nearby Wawa stores.” The closest location at 17th and Arch was remodeled earlier this year.
This is the ninth Wawa to close in Philadelphia since 2020.
In 2022 the company blamed several closures in the city on crime and homelessness, although data at that time showed the store at 16th and Ranstead actually had the most incident reports of any Wawa in the city.
Since then the company has said less about the reasons for their closures, although Wawa has generally been focusing on larger-format stores in suburban and exurban locations, where it can sell gasoline.
Recent closures in the city limits have been in Port Richmond and in the Art Museum District, where the company’s lease was not renewed.
The store at 16th and Ranstead was criticized by Inquirer architecture columnist Inga Saffron in 2019, before it opened, because the company dramatically altered the exterior of the historic building designed for Quaker City Federal Savings & Loan in the 1950s.
Saffron criticized the company for destroying the facade of the “mid-century-modern gem … [a] rare survivor of the urban renewal incursions around City Hall.”
The building owner, MM Partners Real Estate Development, said Wawa’s decision was a surprise, but they were not worried about filling the space.
“There’s been a lot of new leasing activity on Chestnut and Walnut over the last couple years,” said David Waxman, founder of MM Partners. “There’s interesting tenants coming into the city who weren’t here before. It seems like food uses are what we are seeing the most openings of, and that would be a logical tenant.”