Public, Private Effort Created Philadelphia’s Arts Avenue
By CHRISTOPHER KEOUGH
Staff Reporter
As L.A. officials and developers look to revive the northern portion of downtown, they might examine how Center City Philadelphia has turned itself around.
Despite a number of arts venues dotting Broad Street just south of City Hall including the nation’s oldest opera house what once had been the city’s cultural center just wasn’t pulling in the crowds.
More than culture was suffering. As the downtown office core moved westward, it left a submarket full of Class-B office space that was up to 40 percent vacant. Restaurants and other retailers opened, and then closed almost as quickly.
“We had this great infrastructure of a city and had the existing structures. We just had to make it better,” said Robert Fina, senior vice president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp.
What emerged was a comprehensive plan developed by Avenue of the Arts Inc., a mostly privately funded organization that saw $638 million poured into the 1.4-mile stretch of South Broad Street.
Craig Schelter, former executive vice president at PIDC, said the development was kept on track by the public involvement of then-Mayor Ed Rendell, which included his knack for showing up at groundbreakings and building openings.
“The key thing was Rendell insisting that every six months he wanted a major announcement,” Schelter said. “Everything we did we did in a very public way to both generate interest and make the public aware of what the potential was.”
Past failures
Through Rendell’s prodding and his relationships at the state capital in Harrisburg, PIDC collected $90 million in state and city grants for the creation of the Avenue of the Arts, which has evolved into a $638 million cultural center in the heart of the country’s fifth-largest city.
And just as L.A.’s Grand Avenue effort will have as its anchors Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels, the Avenue of the Arts has revolved around the recently opened Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts at 260 Broad St.
The $265 million center, built with $100 million in public funds, was the result not only of political resolve but the Philadelphia Orchestra’s long-held need for a new home. (Its old base, the Academy of Music, was designed as an opera house and not suited for orchestral music.)
While it took five years to go from green light to opening night, the center has a longer history.
“Some people say the Kimmel Center has been in planning for 100 years,” said Gabby McNamara, director of public relations for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but the orchestra has been around for 100 years.”
The Kimmel Center is complemented by a handful of other projects in the mile-and-a-quarter stretch. Those include the new Wilma Theater, the University of the Arts, Philadelphia Arts Bank, Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts and the Clef Club, a jazz venue. There also were improvements to the Academy of Music, the orchestra’s former home, and streetscape work.
“On a night when the Kimmel Center, Merriam Theatre and the Wilma (Theatre) have events, you have 10,000 people in the streets,” said Meryl Levitz, president and chief executive of Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., who notes that one key to the project’s success was identifying a proper mix of entertainment that would bring in young and old alike. “It looks like what it’s supposed to be.”
Schelter said the Avenue of the Arts effort coincided with a mini-restaurant boom in the city. And an adaptive reuse ordinance, much like that in downtown L.A., encouraged the conversion of vacant office buildings into residential units. Schelter estimated a net gain of 1,000 units in recent years.
Paul Levy, executive director of Central Philadelphia Development Corp. said vacancy rates in the office buildings along South Broad Street a decade ago hovered at 40 percent. Today, the vacancy rate in the project area is down to 9 percent.
Avenue of the Arts Inc. claimed 1.1 million visitors attended a performance in the area in 1998, the most recent data available, generating $32 million in revenues. New entertainment venues alone added as many as 614 full-time and 661 part-time jobs.
