Hot And Not: Where Are Philly's Next Mixed-Use Poster Children And Where Are Prospects Dimming?

Move over, Fishtown. Restaurateurs and retail experts have revealed which Philadelphia neighborhoods they think will or won’t be the city’s next buzzy destinations.

Fishtown has been a prime contender for top billing since parts of Frankford Avenue were rezoned a decade ago, MPN principal Nadia Bilynsky said during Bisnow’s Philadelphia Entertainment and Retail Summit Thursday.

“We’re now seeing that on other corridors like Spring Garden Street,” she said. “People want to be able to dine, get coffee and go to the grocery store in the neighborhoods they live in.”

Much of the historic industrial corridor was recently rezoned for medium-density mixed-use, Bilynsky said at the event, held at Philadelphia Marriott Old City. Developers have taken note.

Construction of a 329-unit apartment complex at 418 Spring Garden St. wrapped up late last year, Philly YIMBY reported. The outlet has also tracked mixed-use projects at 1000 and 1314-1332 Spring Garden St.

The eastern end of the street is in the 19123 ZIP code, which accounted for a quarter of Philly’s new units in 2024, Center City District reported earlier this year.

Bilynsky highlighted Washington Avenue as another promising corridor. The section east of Broad Street has also been largely rezoned for mixed-use, but even the western end has seen a wave of multifamily development despite a sometimes cumbersome variance approval process.

But Nicholas Elmi, the owner of Laurel, Lark and several other Philly restaurants, doesn’t see much potential in South Philly or similar historic residential neighborhoods like Fairmount.

“The population isn’t growing at all,” he said.

While these neighborhoods are gentrifying, they don’t have the new density that fuels late-night dining.

“Fishtown is getting the third seating,” Elmi said.

“Maybe they’re younger,” he said of that neighborhood's demographics. “Maybe they feel safe.”

Chestnut and Walnut streets remain the core of Center City West’s retail scene, despite high turnover.

“Weeding out these dinosaurs” is a boon for the neighborhood, MSC principal Douglas Green said of the reshuffling.

“Them just sticking around on the street is not good for anybody.”

Chestnut and Walnut are just two blocks apart, but their fortunes have diverged in the wake of the pandemic. While Walnut Street rents have made it back to between 80% and 90% of their peak levels, Chestnut Street rents are sitting at just 50%, Green said.

The latter corridor is “most tethered to the daytime population” that still hasn’t returned in full force more than five years after the pandemic began.

With the exception of Reading Terminal Market, whose CEO, Annie Allman, said receives 5.4 million visitors per year, there was little optimism about Market East, where vacancy rates remain stubbornly higher than the rest of Center City.

“There is no perfect solution,” Green said.

“There needs to be some transformative anchor,” he said. “I actually think the arena could have been that.”

The Philadelphia 76ers received city council approval to build a new arena on 10th and Filbert streets but backed out of the plan after they reached a deal with Comcast to stay in South Philly.

Since then, Mayor Cherelle Parker has appointed Brandywine Realty Trust CEO Jerry Sweeney to lead a public-private partnership focused on revitalizing the corridor, but few other details of the plan have been shared with the public.

“Market East needs to have a smaller scale,” Green said. “It doesn’t feel like a place where you want to walk or sit outside.”

The fact that more than a dozen different stakeholders own keystone properties along the corridor has created another barrier to change, Kimco Senior Vice President Geoffrey Glazer said.

“It’s really challenging from a developer perspective when you have so many owners on the block,” he said.

By contrast, there are just four big owners on Walnut Street in Center City West. This has made it easier for stakeholders to create and execute a cohesive path forward for that district.

“I get really frustrated by absentee landlords,” Allman said of her Market East neighbors. “Perhaps there are some zoning changes that need to happen.”