Proposal From Jefferson Students Envisions Market East As Car-Free, Graduate Residential Hub

Students at one of Market East’s main anchor institutions have come up with an ambitious vision for reviving the beleaguered corridor.

The plan created by 30 undergraduate students at Thomas Jefferson University would turn it into a pedestrian- and transit-oriented linear park beneath hundreds of new graduate student housing units. They say this would draw and unite people from the surrounding neighborhoods and institutions instead of repelling them.

The main goal was to get the city’s creative juices flowing as the Market East Revitalization Committee appointed by Mayor Cherelle Parker contemplates the street’s future.

The students presented their plan to several Market East stakeholders last month. The audience included Councilmember Mark Squilla, who represents the neighborhood, and Brandywine Realty Trust CEO Jerry Sweeney. Both are key members of the revitalization committee.

“This was really intended to be a conversation starter,” said associate professor John Dwyer, an architecture expert who led the undergraduates as they formulated the proposal this past semester.

The process began with the team considering three main possibilities for the neighborhood: an innovation district, a student housing district and an ecological district.

But they came to the conclusion that just one of those focuses couldn’t bring Market East back to its former glory.

“There was not a single perfect one,” said Gianella Rios, a third-year Jefferson student who was part of the team. “It had to be a combination between different aspects.”

The proposal calls for the elimination of private car traffic from the corridor. It would still be open to buses but would be much more pedestrian-friendly, with 250 trees to be planted along it. 

Dwyer said this would likely have a minimal impact on traffic in the surrounding neighborhood, since his students found that most cars already travel through Center City on north-south roads.

The team says this would create a space that would be more welcoming to residents and workers passing from Washington Square West, Chinatown, Jefferson Station and the Reading Terminal Market.

Those connections would be bolstered by much-needed outdoor seating linking the market, one of Philly’s most prominent tourist attractions, to Market Street.

The students also conceived an open-air redevelopment of the Fashion District shopping mall that could help Chinatown’s retail sector extend south of the neighborhood’s current confines.

They also found that 96% of people who spend time on Market East don’t live there, which is a barrier to one of the team’s long-term goals.

“We want a 24-hour neighborhood,” Rios said.

Their solution to that was large-scale residential projects aimed at graduate students from all of Philly’s main universities.

It is a good spot for that, since it sits between University City, Temple University and an array of Center City hospitals with a large student-resident population.

Dwyer saw that part of the plan as particularly promising given that Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment partner David Adelman — whose company is invested in several properties along the corridor — is also CEO of student housing firm Campus Apartments.

“The lack of identity in Market East really comes from nobody taking ownership of it,” Dwyer said.

He believes a graduate student population would be able to endow that sense of identity and move other parts of the plan forward.

It remains to be seen whether the Market East Revitalization Committee will take any cues from the group's proposal. 

In March, Squilla told Bisnow there are plans to solicit broader feedback this summer. At that point, many of the group’s conversations had been focused on what help the city and state governments could provide, said Parkway Corp. CEO Robert Zuritsky, another member of the committee.

“There will be some city incentives, maybe some state incentives to try to spur some investment,” Zuritsky said in March. 

“It ranges from throwing the kitchen sink of every incentive that you have available to you in the state to just doing a 20-year abatement for new construction,” he added.