Mid-rise apartment building is proposed above Chinatown parking lot

A 309-unit apartment building may replace a vast surface parking lot in Chinatown at 12th and Race Streets. The project would offer no retail space, and the first floor would be devoted entirely to parking in an effort to maintain roughly the current 320 spaces.

The land is owned by the Parkway Corp., which is partnering with Linden Lane Capital Partners on the project. Both companies are based in Philadelphia. The proposal was first reported by real estate blog Naked Philly.

“It’ll be a little bit less parking, but basically we’re trying to maintain all the parking that’s there,” said Robert Zuritsky, president and CEO of Parkway, a parking operator and real estate developer.

Zuritsky stressed that the project is in the preliminary concept stages and will be refined after input from local stakeholders is considered.

Parkway will maintain the parking, which will still be available to the public. Currently the lot is heavily used by visitors to the neighboring Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Linden Lane Capital Partners has been in discussions with Parkway about the site since purchasing a parking lot from the company at 13th and Callowhill Streets, which will soon open as the 181-unit Hannah apartment building. Linden Lane will develop and operate the residential portion of the project, which will be seven stories of wood frame over a steel base.

Linden Lane declined a request for comment.

Linden Lane presented the project last week to the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. (PCDC), which reacted positively despite larger concerns about affordability.

“There’s nothing really objectionable about it,” said John Chin, executive director of PCDC, a nonprofit that focuses on neighborhood planning and affordable housing. “It’s good that we’re eliminating these vacant surface lots. That’s a benefit for the community. The challenge is market-rate pressures and what can be affordable in this project.”

PCDC was told that currently, there are no plans for any units below market rate. If any are to be added, a funding source would need to be found to subsidize them, the company said.

“We brought up this issue of neighborhood affordability and gentrification,” said Chin. “We can’t have all market-rate housing coming in. … Otherwise, low-income residents will be pushed out to a place with less amenities.”

The western edge of Chinatown, especially beyond 11th Street, is marked by sprawling surface parking lots and a handful of institutions offering homeless services. Development has been slow to come to this corner of the neighborhood, which is wedged between the hulking Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Vine Street Expressway.

Earlier this year, however, a short-term rental apartment building was announced a couple blocks west of this site. On the other side of the Vine Street Expressway, more multifamily offerings are still being proposed in the Callowhill neighborhood, including a new 149-unit apartment building at 13th and Spring Garden. Both projects would also replace surface parking lots.

Regarding the project at 12th and Race, Zuritsky said: “We’ve been trying to develop it for years, and it hasn’t been ready yet. But there’s a lot of stuff on Callowhill and Spring Garden now. Things are finally happening in parts of the city that have been waiting for it.”

The proposed building would be built around the lone building at 1123 Race St., which houses the Lollipop Massage Spa. Parkway has been trying to buy out the owner, even offering to build another structure in the neighborhood, but has not been successful.