May 815, 1997

cover story

A Hard Nut

Will Chestnut Street ever share in the downtown boom?

Market Street is alive with shoppers to the east of City Hall, and with briefcase-toting suits to the west. Walnut Street is where well-heeled folks from around the region, even those who try to spend as little time as possible in the city, happilyturn over their BMWs and Range Rovers to valets outside the restaurants where dinner for two can cost more than some people make in a week.

Arch Street has the massive Pennsylvania Convention Center and Chinatown. The Ben Franklin Parkway has the biggest and best-known museums in the Delaware Valley. Broad Street claims the Mummers Parade and the nearly completed Avenue of the Artsproject. South Street has its reputation. Sansom Street has Jewelers’ Row.

Chestnut Street has… what?

Tough one, isn’t it?

Let’s see, there’s Independence Hall, arguably the most important historic landmark in the nation and a must-see for tourists, whether they’re from Cherry Hill or China.

Farther west you find the late Wanamaker’s, currently undergoing a transformation into a Lord & Taylor. West of Broad, the sparkling Shops at Liberty Place dominate the north side of an entire block, and Boyd’s serves fashion-conscious luxury-cardrivers from miles around.

But walk Chestnut from river to river and you’ll notice that these successful attractions are separated by more than just a few city blocks. Unlike the Gallery on Market Street, or Walnut’s Restaurant Row, where businesses survive and often thrive insymbiotic relationships with their neighbors, Chestnut seems to suffer from a multiple personality disorder, not knowing what it wants to be from one block to the next. Between the street’s undeniable lures are stretches of sidewalk unlike any othersin Center City. Young men wear sandwich boards advertising check-cashing stores, and others stand outside electronics dealers and sneaker-and-jeans retailers to shout about today’s sales. Weary homeless men and women plop down on the few availablebenches with a half-dozen or so bulging plastic bags piled around them, their overflowing shopping carts parked nearby. Together they create the atmosphere of a noisy, run-down urban boardwalk, the kind of place people tolerate rather than enjoy.

On Chestnut Street, from the sublime to the ridiculous truly is but a step.

But soon all of that or a significant portion of it will change. In addition to Wanamaker’s imminent rebirth, several other major properties are being eyed by developers for uses that should give even Chestnut Street’s most chaotic blocks theenergy and panache they so obviously lack.

Longtime residents may remember, however, that we’ve been here before. Twenty years ago, the pedestrian-friendly Chestnut Street Transitway the no-car zone between 18th and Sixth was supposed to do the same thing. But like a misunderstood andpetulant child sick of the comparisons to its more pliable, overachieving siblings, Chestnut Street has stubbornly refused to cooperate.

So the question now is, can Chestnut Street grow up and fulfill its potential?

Edmund Bacon at home, with original plans for the Transitway.

Life wasn’t always so difficult for Chestnut Street. Once a prominent and proud strip of William Penn’s “green country towne,” Chestnut was a desirable address for homeowners and merchants alike throughout much of its history. The nation’sfounding fathers thought enough of it to erect the Pennsylvania State House there which later became known as Independence Hall as well as the first city hall.

But like much of the rest of the city, Chestnut began to struggle in the 1930s. Between the Depression and the increasing corruption and inefficiency of the Republican-controlled city government, Philadelphia “was in a very bad way,” saysEdmund Bacon, former head of the City Planning Commission.

Hope came in 1947 in the form of the Better Philadelphia Exhibition, a massive display housed in Gimbel’s department store and viewed by nearly 400,000 people. Maps and models detailed the grand plans for downtown Philadelphia from the then-fledglingPlanning Commission and other reform-minded agencies and organizations. Among the highlights were Independence Mall (at that time dilapidated houses stood just north of Independence Hall) and Penn Center (on what was then a series of train tracksknown collectively as the “Chinese Wall”).

In the middle of all of this was Bacon, a Cornell University graduate who had settled in Philadelphia. After serving as managing director of the Philadelphia Housing Association, he was appointed executive director of the Planning Commission in 1949and handed the task of uniting the various political, commercial and neighborhood factions behind one comprehensive renovation plan.

After numerous compromises, Penn Center and Independence Mall eventually were completed and Society Hill received an extensive makeover.

Bacon left the Planning Commission in 1970, but some of his visions were brought to fruition without him. Among them was the Chestnut Street Transitway, which Bacon had first pitched in 1963 as the “pedestrian spine” of Center City.Inspired by the “elephant trains” found in several cities in France, Bacon proposed closing Chestnut to vehicular traffic and turning it over to light, canopy-covered electric cars that would shuttle workers, shoppers and tourists quicklyand efficiently from river to river.

Needless to say, that’s not quite how it worked out. “The idea was adopted,” notes Bacon, “but it wasn’t really what I had in mind. Nobody really understood [the overall plan for Chestnut], so it got made into something that was not apedestrian walkway and not a street.”

Using $7.6 million in federal funds, city officials built the Transitway in 1976, and closed it to cars and trucks and widened the sidewalks by about 4 feet on each side, just as Bacon had proposed. But instead of electric cars an idea Bacon saysnow was just too radical to catch on the Transitway got SEPTA buses. Lots and lots of SEPTA buses, barreling down the car-less strip in both directions. (The street later was made eastbound-only so that delivery vehicles could park and not impedetraffic flow.)

Bacon says city planners botched the idea in other smaller ways as well. The streetlights lining the sidewalks were given a bunched-up and boxy design that probably seemed trendy at the time, and their bulbs were encased in tinted glass balls thatdampened their effect. Bacon says someone explained to him that since the glass would get dirty anyway, they might as well be dark to begin with.

If the loss of the elephant-train concept had been the only factor in Chestnut Street’s later development, it might not be noticeably different from other major Center City streets today. But quite unexpectedly, other changes conspired against it.

The Gallery, another early Bacon concept, came along in the late 1970s. The intention, of course, was to help the city compete with the established and growing suburban shopping malls. One of the effects, however, was to lure those who were stillshopping in the city away from nearby commercial strips like Chestnut Street. Why settle for two rows of shops per block, when the four-story Gallery offered eight? Why stroll a dimly lit city street in the evening when in the Gallery, the sun neverset?

Why shop on Chestnut Street at all?

At the same time, the numbers of those who walk to work via Chestnuthave been dwindling. Foot traffic in many areas, particularly on Chestnut east of Broad, diminished as Center City’s white-collar businesses settled in the new office towersbuilt in the 1950s (Penn Center) and 1980s on or near Market Street, west of Broad.

Smaller, more routine economic changes have rubbed salt in the wounds. Wanamaker’s closed, then re-opened, then closed again and will remain shuttered until August. Four small movie theaters between Broad and 19th have closed in recent years, and todate, only one has been reused. (The former Sam’s Place at 19th Street is now a 24-hour CVS which, while busy, doesn’t exactly lure people into the area who wouldn’t otherwise be there.)

The result is a chain with many weak links. Certain blocks are reasonably well off; the 1800 block, for example, has seen gradual growth in the 1990s, probably due to the stabilizing influence of Boyd’s, the Belgravia office building and thevenerable Samuel T. Freeman and Co. Auctioneers.

But other stretches show signs of decline. The 1700 block gained Daffy’s, but lost a Herman’s sporting goods store, a Thom McAn shoe store and Sam Goody’s record shop in recent years. Chestnut between Seventh and Broad is a chaotic mix of discountwomen’s and kids’ clothing stores, card stores, dollar stores, inexpensive eateries nearly all shops with local appeal, nothing that would lure tourists, conventioneers or weekend shoppers to roam and spend.

The 1400 block operates at less than half capacity; the properties on the north side remain boarded up from the Meridian One fire, and two of the largest sites the Midtown movie theater and a sneaker and clothing retailer, Philly’s have closed.At night, only the Sameric Theater on the 1900 block generates any significant foot traffic, but only west of Broad and mostly on weekends.

And largely because these problem areas fall within the Transitway, Edmund Bacon’s vision of a “pedestrian spine” soon will become a casualty of the latest movement to save Chestnut Street.

The Victory Building: A neglected treasure of Chestnut Street.

Paul Levy, executive director of the Center City District, has been one of the strongest public-sector supporters of the plan to dig up the Transitway.

“Any street in the city works if it has multiple ways for people to get there,” Levy explains. “If you start cutting off some of those modes… you’re going to cut off some of the streams of traffic.”

Levy and others say Walnut Street supports their argument. Restaurant Row succeeds, they argue, because diners need only walk from the valet station to the front door. The surrounding retail shops have the advantage of metered on-street parking,however hard it might be to come by. And like it or not, folks who don’t live in the surrounding community play a sizeable role in determining a commercial district’s future, but they’re less likely to shop and dine there if forced to walk a few cityblocks.

Compared to Walnut and even Market, “Chestnut Street sticks out like a sore thumb,” says Lenny Zilz, general manager of the Ritz Carlton on 17th Street and a leader of the 5-year-old, 40-member Chestnut Street Business Alliance. Whileparking isn’t an issue for Ritz Carlton guests, Zilz says most probably spend more time on Walnut because Chestnut simply doesn’t offer them anything.

But if cars could drive and park there, and if someone were to open a swanky new restaurant there… could Chestnut give Walnut a run for its money?

Zilz doesn’t hesitate: “Ab-so-lute-ly.”

Thanks to endorsements like this, the decision essentially has been made. The Planning Commission signed the Transitway’s execution order in January, and the city now is looking for federal funds to pull it off.

The Streets Department isn’t crazy about the reintroduction of cars, and originally proposed adding only a bicycle lane, according to engineering manager Bob Wright. But this didn’t suit city officials or the merchants applying pressure to them, sothe plan was sent back to the drawing boards. “Decisions like that,” says Wright, “are made across the street [at City Hall].”

The current plan keeps Chestnut eastbound-only, but scales the sidewalks back about 4 feet on each side and creates four lanes one for parking, one for cars, one for buses and one for bicycles. Turns may be prohibited at some intersections, toprevent cars from clogging the bus lanes as they wait for pedestrians to cross. “Bump-outs” sections of sidewalk that jut into the lane at corners may be added for this purpose as well.

“Our intent is to accommodate the minimal amount of traffic possible,” says Wright, so that commuters don’t think of Chestnut as a crosstown expressway. Handled carefully, he says, the changes will “bring enough traffic to keep thestreet viable, but not enough to clog it up.”

The greatest challenge, says Wright, probably won’t be finding the funding, but rather keeping the street open to shoppers while the work is going on. “The problem is, to do things like this, you’ve got to disrupt things,” he explains.”It’s by no means easy. It’s dirty, it’s noisy, but we can phase it so it’s not so tough [on businesses].” Working two blocks at a time, construction probably could be completed in two seasons, each running roughly mid-March tomid-November.

Wright says most stores, if not all, can expect to survive. “I think you can count the number of businesses we’ve put out of business by doing this kind of work on one hand.”

Several other unrelated projects in various stages of planning are expected to complement the street changes nicely.

Lord & Taylor, between 13th and Juniper, will open in August. A new Westin Hotel will occupy two currently vacant properties, the domed Girard Trust Bank at Broad and Chestnut and the adjacent office building, Two Mellon Plaza (which faces South PennSquare).

Berwind Group, which owns several of the Chestnut Street properties shut down by the One Meridian Plaza fire, reportedly is working on a plan for them as well (a resolution to the years of legal wranglings that followed the fire is expected bysummer). And across the street, the old Midtown cinema will once again have lines out front when the American Music Theater Festival moves in.

“I think the recent approach of a resolution of the Meridian situation has given everyone in the community optimism about Chestnut Street,” says AMTF producing director Marjorie Samoff. “I think everyone is reassured by that.”Samoff says AMTF hopes to open the Harold Prince Center for American Music Theater/CoreStates Institute for Arts Education “sometime in ’98.”

One block away, Holiday Inn Worldwide has targeted the Packard Building at 15th and Chestnut for possible conversion into one of its upscale Crowne Plaza hotels, an estimated $50 million project.

Edmund Bacon says that with these projects in the works, Chestnut Street is “sitting pretty.” But he wishes someone would take another look at the Transitway concept not how it turned out, but how it might have been.

“There is an opportunity here which has not been considered at all,” he says.

Bacon’s vision of quaint, electric-powered trains has expanded in recent years, to include sightseeing boats that launch from marinas on the Schuylkill, near 30th Street Station, and the Delaware, at Penn’s Landing.

Imagine the possibilities for all of Center City, he says, if visitors could drive down I-76 or I-95 to massive parking garages, or step out of their hotels, and ride canopy-covered shuttle cars to one marina, then sail on a boat to the other, withlots of opportunities to stop along the way. A long, looping carnival ride.

He believes the plan could work, if and, he adds, this is a big if a sufficiently strong developer, city agency or elected official gets behind it.

But so far, none has. But Bacon concedes that he’s kept the idea pretty much to himself.

“No one’s asked me,” he shrugs.