No PPA, Luxury Living & Jobs: Philly's New Perfect Neighborhood?

This is CityCast Philly. I'm Trinanehry, and here's what Philly's talking about. What's been going on down at the Navy Yard these days? The Navy Yard is 1,200 acres. It's... All the way down in South Philly below the stadiums. And David, you write that it is the size of present-day Center City, which is kind of like insane to visualize, like basically Center City number two. Are we calling the Navy Yard a new Philadelphia neighborhood or is this something else? I think it's kind of been different things over different in different time periods. So. You know, when the Navy was there, it was kind of like a netherworld zone where, you know, literally you couldn't get in without passing through an armed guard, you know, guarded gate. That's David Morel, writer at large. At the Philadelphia magazine, you have an article in the August issue headline, is this Philly's next hot neighborhood? David, you're saying you had to have some credentials, basically. Right. And that kind of remained the case even after the Navy left in the mid to late 90s. But then, you know, after that, when the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, which is this kind of. public-private partnership between the city and the Chamber of Commerce, they ended up taking over the land. And for the next like 15 or so years, maybe 20 even, it was like an office park, you know, so there was no residential there whatsoever. Now what's kind of interesting and what the story is mostly about is that there is this attempt to build residential housing there. And while that was like always kind of an idea to put some amount of residential in the Navy Yard, with PIDC, like at various points, it was actually forbidden by the Navy for kind of convoluted reasons, but basically because it was an old industrial, you know, industrial site. But this latest version is instead of thinking it just about an office park that might have some housing, the kind of latest development effort is kind of trying to think about it more in terms of like, what if this were a genuine neighborhood. So the answer is kind of changed depending on what time period you're thinking about. Can it be both? Can it be both? this work hub and a residential community. I mean, I think theoretically, why not? Like, there's plenty of neighborhoods in the city that already kind of have that, right? Like, Center City has, I think it's one of the more, you know, residentially populated downtowns in the country, if I'm not mistaken, it's kind of one of the more unique features of Center City. You know, then you have places like Rittenhouse that have some amount of office space as well as residential. So obviously somewhere like South Philly or Fairmount is going to be like a...

a very residential neighborhood. But there are pockets of the city already that do kind of have both going on. And I can't forget to mention commercial, too. So we'll break all this down. But first, let's start with working at the Navy Yard. There's more than 16,000 people that currently work at the Navy Yard. What sort of jobs do they have? What corporations have moved in? Yeah, it's kind of a... shockingly high number, I think. And one of the interesting things about the Navy art is especially like the more that I got to know the place is that it really, it's very eclectic and it's an odd mix of things. I mean, the Navy still is there. The base, the naval base has been closed since the 90s, but they still retain some land. So like they... If I'm not mistaken, they build propellers for nuclear submarines. So there's a foundry there that is for the Navy. There are huge shipbuilding operations that have taken over what was the Navy's shipbuilding infrastructure. So like serious, you know. big, big infrastructure. There's a company called Hanwa, which is a Korean company that is investing billions of dollars in the shipyard. Then there's a local company called Rose Industries that is another shipbuilding shipbuilding company. I think they do big contracting for the Navy, actually. So there's that side of things. Then there's a kind of like white collar workforce. So one of the first tenants to move down. to the Navy Yard was GlaxoSmith Kline. Now they've left, but there were, you know, so there's been some pharma companies. There's a pretty big life sciences contingent. And then there's urban outfitters, which was kind of one of the first. First, big employers also put a bet on the Navy Yard. They moved down there in the mid-2000s. So there's kind of like a- And it's in like those really cool building. Yeah, honestly, an amazing building, a bunch of buildings that are, I want to say they're from the 19th century, again, former ship building. Like before the shipbuilding for the Navy got like super duper, you know, modernized and industrialized. There were like kind of more elegant buildings, you know, that the kind of older ships had been. constructed in so they've taken over a number of those buildings uh most of which are not open to the public obviously since it's an office you know space but there is one building uh the name of which is now escaping me but it's the one building that's open to the public uh they have their cafeteria in there and it's it's like truly incredible. It's one of the coolest buildings I think I've ever been in in Philadelphia. It's like a, you know, feel super industrial, beautiful, gigantic ceilings, still has some like industrial infrastructure there. There's got a nice cafeteria views of the waterfront, tons of plants, you know, so it's kind of feels like an industrial greenhouse almost. Yeah, so it's a cool space.

We've mentioned all of the industries and businesses in the Navy Yard. Are all the jobs in the private sector or are some of these government jobs? Yeah, I think they're mostly in the private sector. So pretty close to the Navy Yard, there's another kind of master plan development that's called the Bellwether District, which is the site of the former refinery that exploded some number of years ago. And that area, that product doesn't have any residential planned, but they're kind of envisioning kind of like a part logistics, part. life sciences facility. So they've just signed their first two tenants, one of which is a pretty, it's like a cancer treatment company of some kind that produces some kind of sophisticated, you know. I don't know, it's like an isotope or something. And apparently Bill Gates invested in that company, which maybe makes you think it's the real deal. And then the other building or the other tenant is like a canned drinks manufacturer, which is kind of strange, but I guess it will employ people and it will kind of fit into the logistics and manufacturing. side of things they have there. So that place is doing well, or at least is getting it, you know, they're spending a lot of money on it. The port of Philadelphia is also kind of in the middle of an expansion plan. The Hanwa, as I mentioned before, the Korean company that has some of the shipbuilding infrastructure at the Navy Yard. They're investing billions of dollars. So there's definitely a fair amount going on in this area. And I think there is also kind of like government. desire to turn this part of South Philly into like a kind of industrial and manufacturing and life sciences and just a bigger employment hub. When you spent time at the Navy Yard, did you feel like you were in Philly? No, not at all, really. And the other funny thing about the Navy Yard is like you feel like you're in five different places. depending on where you're standing. So when you first walk through the gate, you, which is on Broad Street, if you go past the stadiums and continue down broad, you pass through this threshold, and now you're officially in the Navy Yard. And there you see these, there are these big ships that are parked in like a naval basin, you know, former Navy ships that are kind of out of date or decommissioned or, you know, being worked on. I don't know really what they're doing with them, but they're there. So obviously, that's very... kind of unusual to see if you go a little bit further down and then take a left now you kind of are in this office park complex and it's a weird kind of place because it feels like you're in like the downtown of a kind of mid-sized american city there are kind of cool-ish glass buildings but there's like not a whole lot of people around because it's still very car dominant but then there are there are also some incredibly

amazing buildings that were constructed down there by like some of the biggest you know architecture firms in the world like there there was one one building in particular that really stood out to me is by the i think they're danish called bierka ingles um and it's a very cool office building that like looks like a you know one side of it is just a normal square and then like the second side like curves inward and is doing this like weird motion thing uh so it's the type of architecture that you know you see like in new york but not really in philadelphia so like that feels like its own part and then the urban outfitters part feels like you're on a college campus there's like all these like hip hip, you know, 20, 30 something, millennials, whatever, like kind of creative people that are just like hanging around outside their dogs. You know, it feels like a quad almost. So it's very, very dependent on where you are. So some years ago, I actually was down the Navy Yard for this like art installation. And this was like probably one of my first times being like deep within the Navy Yard. And I remember someone like a friend of mine took me to a spot where one of the buildings seemed to be like an old factory. It was still empty. But at the bottom was like. a koi pond. So basically, you don't really get a sense that like we're in Philadelphia. It's almost like this reimagined kind of space. Like you don't see Roe homes. You don't see a lot of murals. You don't see even a lot of people walking around. No, you don't really see a whole lot of people. I mean, I was reporting this mostly in like the... early spring late winter so you know i was kind of not seeing it at its full force i think you'd probably say but yeah i mean The reality is like people drive there for the most part, you know, so they go to their office and then maybe they walk around a little bit at lunch, but, you know, it's not popping with people. The first new buildings that have been built, you know, are still kind of being filled up with tenants. So there's not a ton of people there. I mean, you see deer, like I was walking around seeing deer droppings on the ground, you know, like. Okay, there's wild life. Right, there's wildlife. No row homes. There's a section of the Navy Yard that's not really accessible, but there are some abandoned Roe Homes that naval families lived in back in the day, and that's still there. So strangely, there are actually some Ro homes, but I mean, it's not the dominant part of the landscape. And yeah, I mean, it doesn't feel super walkable. It's quite large. And it also has tons of green space, which, you know, is not really what I come to associate most of Philadelphia with.

Now, as you're describing it, those things that aren't really like quintessential to Philadelphia, do you think that could also be like a good thing? Like I'm wondering if this is maybe like a new approach to maybe how a neighborhood should be designed. I think it like when I kind of came, started looking into the piece that one of the questions I had was like, who is actually going to want to live here. Because I live in South Philly, it's like just fundamentally very different from like what the kind of things that I want in a neighborhood personally. South Philly is super dense and there's not a lot of parking. Right, yeah. And there's ample parking in the Navy. There's a lot of restaurants. And you always see people walking around. You see dogs. That's about as closest to the wildlife that you might. Right. Right. Yeah. And, you know, the occasional rat or, you know, aggressive. Raccoon, maybe. Sparrow or whatever. But. Yeah, so I think like from my perspective, I was trying to figure out like who's actually going to want to live here. But the reality is like I think there can still be appetite to live somewhere that's a little bit different. You know, like not everybody is going to have the same preferences that I might have or that you might have. And I mean, even like the longer I live in Philly, the more the lack of green space, man, I love living here and I've been here for 13 or 14 years. But like when I go to other cities and I see the nice green space that they have, like that. begins to irk me. So, like, I can imagine someone that really likes to be outdoors, like, might love the Navy Yard. And, you know, someone that just likes to be near the water. I mean, so I can imagine there's appeal for it. I think one of the things I was also thinking about in the story is, like, what actually makes this place accessible to the rest of the city? Like, even if, like, is it always going to feel like a separate little island that might have people living there, but, you know, won't be integrated into the city. I think there's still kind of an open question about that because the reality is that like it's still hard to get there right now. You know, the Broad Street line was talked about being extended down there, but that's essentially seems to be completely off the table now. But later this month, Stepda is going to expand Route 45 from Center City to the Navy Yard. And this could be. that connector that kind of brings the Navy Yard more into where the action is. Right. No, and I think that's a big deal. It will be interesting to see, like, how many people end up taking the bus down there just even for like a, you know, a weekend trip or whatever. So, yeah, like that's definitely a big piece of connectivity that I think will help. And it's from doing the story, I also learned that, you know, the, the, The powers that be at the Navy Yard are also trying to think about maybe, you know, getting accepted to add a new bus line perhaps that would, you know, ideally like link the Navy Yard with the airport and maybe the Center, you know, University City Life Sciences District. So, I mean.

The more that happens, the better. Because right now, like, the reality is one bus line is still probably not enough to, like, really link it to the city. But it's better than what was going on when I started the article, for sure. Now, David, is it true that there's no PPA down there? That's what they tell me. I didn't see any PPA down there. That must be nice. You don't have the stress about parking. Right. It's definitely, it's a parking zone for the sporting events too. Like I was down there on opening day for the Phillies and noticed a ton of people parking in front of these office buildings and getting out. wearing Philly's jersey. So I'm probably blowing up their spot by it by mentioning that. Because it's only a 10-minute walk for a 15-minute walk from the stadium. It's actually a good place to park and probably less traffic getting out too. Right.

All right, let's talk about living at the Navy Yard. Talk to me about one of the first residential properties that are down there. It's called Av Normandy. This is an incredible space as you write. Tons of amenities like a podcast studio for content creators, a gym, a golf simulator, rooftop pool. This has, they even have spaces where you can work and have free coffee. Then the apartments, let's talk about the apartments. The apartment could be a one bedroom with like track lighting, a carpeted bedroom, walking closet. Starting price, 2,900 a month. Geez. Top notch, basically. It's luxury apartments for sure. Yes. So this sounds like this is for the work from home professionals. And yet Philly, the main part of Philly, is still the second poorest big city in the country. So what is the bet that they're making here with this particular residential property? So two things to just mention with the residential. So there are actually two buildings that have gone up. One is the Av Normandy, which you just mentioned. The other is called the Ave Constitution. So the Constitution one is slightly cheaper. I don't have the starting price offhand. But I mean, it's still not cheap. Like, to be clear, it's probably. You know, between $2,000 and $2,500 for the cheapest unit there. They're comparable one bedroom unit as well. So still an expensive apartment. But it is, you know, I guess they've tried to do like kind of luxury and then like super more super luxury with other building. The other thing that is at least worth pointing out is that. PIDC, Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation. So it's the public-private partnership that between the city and the Chamber of Commerce that essentially controls the land and gets to pick who develops on it, which selected this developer to build, you know, across a certain number of acres at the Navy Yard. They've essentially mandated that 15% of the units be, I mean, you could kind of put it in quotes, affordable. So, you know, there's, there are. kind of different ways to measure that. And in this case, it's for anyone up to, I think it's 120% of their area median income. So in the story, I basically pointed, said that the cheapest studio at one of the new buildings would be about $12.50 a month. So that's 15% of the units. So I guess there is some effort, you know, or at least some mandate to have, you know, affordability baked into. all of the residential that's going to happen. So that's not, it's not just for the buildings that were built, but also for all of the 4,000 units that are planned down there. But you're right. Like it's, you know, it's a certain type of person that can afford to live in a fancy building like that. So, okay, here's what I'm trying to think. Because.

You know, for residents, for workers, you need places like a grocery store, right, to get groceries. You need places to get lunch. Pick up your prescription. Grab an expensive matcha drink. You maybe even need, you know, a Wawa nearby, or at least, at the very least, a corner store. Are those options available at the Navy Yard yet? No would be the short answer. The slightly longer answer is that there are, there's a very small number of retail commercial places that are currently there. It's essentially, mostly places that have all been established to cater to the workforce there. So there are a couple of, there's like a De Nix sandwich outpost and, you know, it closes after lunch. There's a urban outfitters. cafeteria, which also is only open for lunch, there is one bar called, I believe it's called the gatehouse, which is pretty popular before like pregame, you know, sporting events. You know, it's a totally fine bar. And then there's a one small place where you can get coffee that I didn't actually manage to get to when I was doing the story. But basically, no, all of these things. Many of these things are planned. So the developers have built ground floor retail into these two new buildings that just were constructed. So the hope is that those will fill up with at least one other restaurant. I think there was talk about a nail salon, a deli, which would have like grab and go food. So the developers definitely know that to get people to want to stay down there, like they're going to need to have more retail and places to just like, right, as you said, like get your prescription or something. The reality is like, from what I could gather talking to them, it doesn't sound like a grocery store, for instance, is planned down there. There's just not enough people there yet. And I'm not even sure that when there are 4,000 units filled up, that there will be a grocery store down there. So that kind of gets to this question of like, okay, it might be a neighborhood or like a place where people are living, but like, right, is there really going to be a neighborhood in the sense of everything you can, you need to live there is going to be. in your immediate vicinity, like, you know, there's not going to be a school down there. It doesn't sound like, you know, so from that perspective, it's still going to be sort of, you know, it might retain a certain suburban quality where it's like your immediate surroundings, you know, do not have everything that you might need. Hmm. So then my question then becomes what does it take to make a Philadelphia neighborhood a neighborhood? Like what does it take to make a neighborhood attractive to people? Because I feel like in order to get more retail, you would have to like have a plan or some type of proposal or promise for retailers to be like, hey, you're going to have all this influx of people. But in order to have that influx of people, they got to be able to afford the rent. I see why all the amenities are at these residential places to attract people. And yet, do you think that it's working?

I would say it's probably too early to like really grade it fully since the new buildings really just the second of what the second of then the Normandy building just had its opening like in March. So it's really only been six months. So I think it's a little bit too early to say for sure. But yeah, I mean, to me it's like. definitely a bit of a chicken and egg question. It's like, well, dude, you can't have retail without no one living there because then the retail is going to go out of business. But the people aren't going to want to move anywhere that doesn't have, you know, retail around them. So it's obviously a tricky thing to figure out. One thing that I did think was interesting is, you know, this kind of came up in the course of talking to the developers was the fact that like when when you have a new neighborhood that's kind of just coming into being, you know, you got a bunch of new people moving to a place. The one thing that. the developers or like the people really want to try to bring to that new neighborhood, typically is jobs. And that's the one thing that the Navy Yard has in abundance. So I think that's also a potential draw. And from what I could tell, talking to just a few people, you know, being able to live right near where they work was a kind of draw. So maybe that kind of offsets the lack of. the lack of retail right now and i i think everybody is betting on the fact that like stuff will come in in the future you also write that um according to a study that was done the navy yard added 2.6 billion dollars to the city's economy from 2004 to 2020 so I think that kind of connects to what the point that you just made right here is that there's definitely evidence that the Navy Yard is a hub for jobs, for different industries, things like that. But it seems like what it actually takes to create a livable breathing community is a lot more. And. It's really nuanced here in Philadelphia because I was even thinking about like, you know, you mentioned that you live in South Philly. Which neighborhood in South Philly? Do you want to say that? Yeah. Are you comfortable? Passhunk. Passhunk has such a distinctive like character that is different than Fishtown, right? And what like sorts of like neighborhood? pride that you get from living in Paschunk versus the person that lives in Fishtown, right? Um, Those are like the untangible or like you can't really like put a price tag on that feeling. And so I'm like so curious about this because it seems like the Navy Yard is hot. It's sexy. But it is still very, very much empty. And even with like all these big bets, like what is it going to take to attract Philadelphians? And is this really a place for?

the current Philadelphia or is the Navy Yard community looking for someone else? Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit tough to say. I mean, I think certainly like I did talk to the developers about like who they imagined as their kind of ideal person who's going to live there. You know, they sort of made a couple of different suggestions. First and foremost were people that work down there already just for the kind of convenience factor. Secondly, they sort of were suggesting, you know, people that maybe are, you know, in their mid-30s or so. And like they've lived in the city for a while, but like now they have a kid and they have a dog and they want to be able to spend more time outside, but like still be close to the city. You know, so maybe someone who's like, kind of retired from going out in Fishtown, you know, but now just wants to settle down with their dog or whatever and just chill at their nice pool, which probably is a type of person that exists, you know? And then the kind of third group they talked about was, you know, people like empty nests families coming, you know, who might have lived in the suburbs for a while and like now want to come back into the city, but they're kind of scared of the city because it can be dangerous. And so like those might be certain types of people that will end up living there. And then, yeah, I mean, in terms of like what the. feeling of the place is going to be once it fills out more, it's obviously difficult to predict. I mean, you could imagine that it, you know, it might end up feeling like a type of fish town, maybe, but it could also end up feeling like a sort of more generic, like a nice new development that doesn't have a lot of character, you know. Is this a good time for the Navy Yard to keep expanding? I would, I mean, I would think so. Like, it's... The Inquirer just had a story about like how I think the buildings are only 30% full right now. So again, like it is pretty early. Like I'm if I'm not mistaken, these big, especially like these luxury products, they're not pre-leased all on day one, you know. And, you know, they've also mostly been open during the summer, which is kind of a slower time for leasing. So it seems like the demand is pretty high in the city for these luxury apartments. You know, there's the. big giant building at Broad in Washington that the Post Brothers built. There's one along Spring Garden in kind of Northern Liberties area. And those buildings seem to be doing pretty well. So it seems conceivable that the Navy Yard could fill up. But it takes time. The thing that I think definitely is in its favor is that there is a ton of investment on the job side still taking place in that kind of immediate vicinity. I was thinking of like other things that we have in, I guess, I just want to say more in the continental part of Philadelphia is like protective bike lanes and satellite buildings where residents can get city services from. Are those part of the conversation when developers are looking to expand the Navy Yard? I haven't heard anything about like any type of city facilities down there. Again, I think part of the reality is that there's there are not that many people down there right now. So it doesn't really at this point probably make sense to invest in that kind of infrastructure, especially like if that would be presumably tax funded, you know, dollars that are constructing, you know, a city facility or what have you. But in terms of like the.

the rest of the infrastructure. One of the interesting facts about the Navy Yard is that it's actually, and this also kind of goes to explain why there's no parking authority down there, is that they control their own roads because it was set off from the rest of the city. They, you know, they also have their own utilities. Like they have their own utility grid. It's now connected back into the city grid. But like this was a complicated process because when it was the Navy's land, they just were separate off their own, you know, they had their own grid. So even when the city took over the land, the, you know, it didn't actually take over like the roadways. PIDC ended up building a lot of the roadway infrastructure. So they have a lot more freedom to be creative, you know, when it comes to like the built infrastructure. So I mean, I would say the bike lanes down there are. probably better than average in the city. But if you look at their master plan, they have like even more interesting ideas, like fully protected lanes going down Broad Street with like a nice, you know, kind of landscaped median between them. And then, you know, their plan to have or would like to have bus rapid transit going down the middle, the middle of Broad Street, which would. hopefully continue up even into the city's part of Broad Street. But the point is that they have control to just do what they want. They don't have to ask the streets department. There's no bureaucratic logjam. You have to get through to kind of do this. There also aren't any neighbors that are like trying to prevent bike lanes because no one really lives there yet, which is something that we're, you know, you sort of see like on the spruce and pine street situation. So. It just has these quirks about it because it was separate for a long time that, you know, the city's, you know, tentacles don't fully reach back there to the present day at least. All right, David. Thank you so much for your time here on CityCast, Philly. Thanks for having me.

That's all for today here on CityCast's Philly. If you enjoyed this episode about all of the happenings down at the Navy Yard, share this episode with a friend. Also, rate the show, leave us a review, and hit that subscribe button. Be sure to sign up for our morning newsletter to learn more about what else Philly's talking about. And don't forget, you can support the show and get great perks by becoming a city cast Philly neighbor. at membership.citycast.fm slash Philly. All right, we'll be back tomorrow morning with a lot more news from around the city. Bye.