Old City business owners say their congested neighborhood is no place for Greyhound buses

At afternoon pickup, parked cars crowded both sides of South Second Street, narrowing the roadway to the width of a goat path as Amigos Spanish Immersion Preschool students and parents reunited on the sidewalk.

A SEPTA bus tried to slip through, gears groaning.

To school owner Cloe Levin, it would be insane to add a terminal for Greyhound and other interstate buses in the parking garage next door, as Philadelphia officials are considering.

“It’s a big problem for us,” said Levin, who fears for the business she founded in 2018.

Old City business owners were stunned in late April when word leaked that the city was looking to locate a temporary home for long-haul buses on the first floor of the AutoPark garage.

The same sense of shock and awe prevailed when curbside Greyhound operations popped up twice over the past year, first between Sixth and Seventh on Market Street and then in the current location at Spring Garden Street and Delaware Avenue.

It’s not as if the city Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) wanted to set up and supervise facilities for interstate passenger buses, or has any expertise doing it.

But Greyhound abandoned its longtime Filbert Street station last June, another casualty of the implosion of the industry’s business model. Greyhound, Flixbus, Peter Pan and Megabus would need a new base.

The city is conducting a traffic and economic impact study of the Second Street site. Meanwhile, OTIS and the Department of Planning just won a $90,000 grant from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission “to evaluate three pre-identified potential locations for the intercity bus terminal within the 30th Street Station area.”

A consultant will conduct a feasibility analysis and pick a preferred site near the Amtrak station and SEPTA hub and develop preliminary designs.

A bus terminal could be developed “by right” at the AutoPark — which has 13 bus bays on the first floor, originally intended for charter buses — because it has the proper zoning. It is operated by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

But the National Park Service owns the property, and it is bound by law to assess whether the new use would harm Independence National Historical Park.

The garage was built in 1981 but has never been used as a bus terminal, said Andrew MacDougall, public affairs officer for the park. No buses currently pick up or drop off passengers there, he said.

As of now, there is no formal proposal to evaluate.

“We are currently waiting for the PPA to submit information related to studies, assessments, and proposed mitigations on the potential impacts to local traffic, pedestrians, businesses, the park, and residents,” MacDougall said in a statement.

Still, the need for a temporary intercity bus terminal will remain for some time. Prospects for South Second Street are unclear. The city says it’s considering other sites but won’t identify them.

One frequently mentioned possibility: a large parking lot at 12th and Race Streets owned by Rob Zuritsky’s Parkway Corp.

Zuritsky, the firm’s CEO, said he was approached about five years ago by a broker for Greyhound, which was looking ahead to identify a successor for the Filbert Street station, but the interest led nowhere. He said he’s also talked with the city about the dilemma. “We had one or two conversations and then talks went dark,” Zuritsky said.

As for the AutoPark garage, “we have said — and will adhere to — involving the community before any bus station is activated,” OTIS and the city Planning Department said in a joint May 31 statement. The site “still has challenges that need to be overcome” before it is a serious candidate, the agencies said.

The conflict is inherently political, pitting the needs of vibrant small businesses against a humanitarian concern for intercity bus passengers without shelter and comforts at the current curbside station.

A coalition of urbanist groups, environmentalists and advocates for people with disabilities are backing the Old City option, which is close to a Market-Frankford Line stop. City officials said the search for a better temporary station is “a matter of equity” for people who can’t afford other travel options.

The activists believe that a station would create opportunity by bringing in thousands of new potential customers. So far, Old City businesspeople don’t buy it.

“Everyone’s expressed concern,” said Job Itzkowitz, executive director of the Old City District.

Some businesses in Northern Liberties proper have received a boost from waiting bus customers at the nearby Spring Garden outdoor bus station, said Cassidy Martin, executive director of the neighborhood’s business improvement district.

“When it moved here, I’d say there was a probably a more defensive posture,” Martin said, “but I’ve heard from a number of my businesses on [North] Second Street that people with their baggage stopping by has been a positive thing.”

They’ve not noticed an “uptick in nuisance behaviors,” she said. The curbside station is not in the business improvement district’s boundaries, though and residents closer to it have complained about noise and traffic and litter.

Levin, the Amigos preschool owner, said she is not attacking bus customers at all. The school enrolls about 100 children, who are taught in Spanish only by native speakers.

“This is exactly the kind of business the city should want to help keep thriving — women-owned, providing jobs for about 30 Latina teachers,” Levin said.

A number of people have suggested to Dan Martino that Little Susie’s Coffee & Pies at 140 Chestnut St. could capitalize on hungry bus riders, he said.

“I’m not out here licking my chops to get hundreds of people wearing sweatpants and pulling roller bags walking around,” said Martino, whose original Little Susie’s shop is in Port Richmond.

“I might sell a few more coffees, but it’s not worth it — [a bus depot] will tear up the community where my customers who have supported me are,” he said. “This is a neighborhood spot. We’re not like a 7-Eleven.″

Darin Picorella said he’s sure that more bus traffic ― not to mention rideshares and cars dropping off travelers — would further clog the streets and hurt trade at his pub, Rotten Ralph’s, on the northwest corner of Chestnut and South Second Streets.

“Our patrons only get to enjoy a few quick warm months of outdoor dining,” Picorella said, “and a constant parade of additional buses and the odor of diesel fuel and more honking horns in the summer heat isn’t relaxing.”

This story has been updated to clarify the location of the Parkway lot.