Philadelphia Moving

The entrance to an underground parking garage has become the latest flashpoint in a fiery battle over the future of the Italian Market.

A crowd of South Philadelphia residents waited hours on Tuesday to testify against the driveway, which would come as part of a six-story apartment building planned for the corner of 9th Street and Washington Avenue at the southeast corner of the historic outdoor food market.

The apartment building proposed by the Midwood Investment and Development company would bring 157 rentals, replacing a vacant lot and Anastasi Seafood, a neighborhood mainstay that is relocating.

As part of the developers’ plan to provide parking, project architects designed an underground garage with an exit onto 9th street, including curb cuts that neighbors say would disrupt the market’s pedestrian-friendly nature and make it hard to close the market to automobile traffic on weekends.

“Breaking up 9th Street with a curb cut [ in] the only open-air market in the entire city forecloses opportunities for the increased vitality of the market,” said Andrew Stober, vice-president of the Passyunk Square Civic Association at Tuesday’s Civic Design Review (CDR) hearing. “It’d be hard to imagine closing the market for only pedestrian traffic on Saturdays if you have a garage entrance here.”

One of the oldest public food markets in the United States, the Italian Market has found itself under increasing pressure as the surrounding neighborhoods gentrify, bringing tax increases, complaints about cleanliness, and other quality of life concerns. Some market business owners want to create a Business Improvement District (BID) to support the market as it strives to meet changing demands from neighbors. BID supporters say the organization could be a way to help businesses remain viable at a time when rising property value could tempt property owners to follow neighborhood trends towards high-end residential development like the Midwood building.

Almost every community member who testified at the CDR hearing spoke about the need to protect the market from disappearing.

Stober cited a petition started Monday night that had already gathered almost 400 signatures denouncing ”driveways in the Italian Market.” He said that the neighborhood feared future developers would demand curb cuts on 9th as well, carving up the streetscape of the Philadelphia fixture.

Stober also argued that it didn’t make any sense from the perspective of drivers trying to reach the garage either.

Most traffic would be coming from the north, but traffic on 9th Street goes only one way: north. Those attempting to access the parking spaces from Washington Avenue would have to drive down to Wharton Street and then cut up through the notoriously congested intersection where a mass of customers is perpetually clustered around rival cheesesteak impresarios Pat’s and Geno’s.

“I’ll do the math for you: it's an extra half mile of driving … We are talking about thousands of additional vehicle miles traveled a year,” said Stober. “We have a mayor and a planning commission who have committed themselves to reducing vehicle use in the city and they are making a policy decision that is driving more vehicle use.”