Councilmember Gauthier calls 4601 Market apartment project ‘exclusionary, insulting and tone deaf’

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s campaign to pressure Iron Stone Real Estate Partners into including affordable units in a large West Philadelphia apartment complex appears to have failed.

Iron Stone is planning 1,240 units in six mid-rise towers at 4601 Market St., wrapping around the site of the former Provident Mutual Insurance Co. headquarters. Gauthier has asked the Philadelphia developer to consider some affordable housing and more community engagement over the site’s future.

“Here we are with another example of a working-class Black and brown neighborhood being seen only as a profit center, with no regard to the generations of damage this toxic design will ooze into our community,” Gauthier said at a Civic Design Review committee meeting Tuesday. “Iron Stone’s conduct is shameful.”

Located next to the 46th Street Market-Frankford elevated train station, the site contains the historic Provident Mutual building, which now houses a health clinic and charter school, but there is little else around it besides surface parking lots and lawns.

At an April meeting, the company’s plans to remake this long underused space were greeted with derision from the city’s Civic Design Review (CDR) committee, an advisory-only panel of architects and planners.

Panel members agreed with critiques from Gauthier and local community groups, including her fear that the proposed design was fortresslike and, in her words, “exclusionary, insulting and tone deaf.”

They called for more family-sized units, as opposed to the preponderance of one-bedroom and studio units. They asked for additional retail, more public space, and a less imposing wall-like facade on Market Street. They also sought better recognition of the area’s potential as a transit hub by calling for stronger pedestrian access across the site, an Indego station, and bus shelters.

But CDR’s only power is to compel a developer to attend a second review, which happened Tuesday. Iron Stone made minimal changes to its plans since the April meeting. Gauthier herself has little ability to compel change because the proposal is in accordance with the zoning for 4601 Market.

Tweaks made by Iron Stone included considerations of additional retail at 48th and Market to generate more street life around the project, although developers warned it might be hard to find tenants. They said they also would consider an Indego station.

In a written response, the design team pushed back against the notion that the apartments were too small.

“These unit sizes are within acceptable ranges for an urban site such as this,” Iron Stone’s response to the initial critique reads. “Moreover, this application is for the maximum amount of apartments proposed. It can be expected that the number of units will decrease as units are consolidated during the building permit and construction phases.”

» READ MORE: Inga Saffron: Why the Provident building’s gorgeous transformation is still a missed opportunity

In April, CDR chair Michael Johns, an architect who often works with the Philadelphia Housing Authority, denounced murals attached to the developer’s rendering, which prominently feature an African American woman, which he saw as a sop to the surrounding communities that are overwhelmingly Black. He argued this aesthetic appeal would have little meaning for those who could not afford the apartments there.

At the June meeting, he called the murals, still included in the renderings, an offensive design.

“We’re going to wrap some red, black, and green mural on the wall and these Black folks around here are supposed to be satisfied?” Johns said. “This is crap along Market Street.”

Iron Stone declined to respond to the critiques at the June CDR meeting.

The company, which is known for repurposing antiquated health-care facilities, acquired the historic building and its surrounding land for $10 million in 2019 from the City of Philadelphia. Officials had sunk $52 million into rehabilitating the structure for use as the police headquarters, but after those plans were abandoned, a new use had to be found.

Iron Stone converted the building into a health center for the Philadelphia Health Management Corp, a behavioral health center from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and a KIPP charter school for kindergarten through fourth-graders.

Gauthier said she agrees the site should contain dense housing, given its transit accessibility. But she argues that the developer should provide some affordable housing on-site and more community engagement, after getting the site for such a low cost.

“Frankly, since this used to be city-owned land, it leaves any of us who are part of the city with egg on our faces,” Gauthier said.

There were no supportive voices of the project at the meeting, and many of the critics voiced their frustration at the lack of power wielded by the CDR committee or the larger Planning Commission.

“My real anger and concern here is the Planning Commission has no real teeth to enforce change from developers, like Iron Stone,” said Pam Andrews, chair of the West Powelton RCO, a community group. “With new leadership coming into City Hall next year, hopefully we can make changes.”

When Civic Design Review was created during the zoning reform process of 2011-2012, there were debates over giving the board powers to compel some changes. But the idea, coming at the end of a long period when Philadelphia had seen little development, never went anywhere.

A 2019 study of the CDR committee found that developers ignored its recommendations more often than not. Cities including Boston, Portland, Baltimore, and Seattle offer their design review panels a degree of power.

The Planning Commission and its staff are also largely advisory, with district Council members having the most power to influence development.

The chair of the CDR board concluded the meeting by trying to make the most of those advisory powers.

“If you’ve got the whole CDR committee and community saying the same thing … there’s got to be something worth listening to,” Johns said. “Because there may be another project that they want to do in the city and they need to really consider the ramifications of insulting a community.”