Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation at 50

“The CDC has been priced out of the [real estate] market,” retorts Domenic Vitiello, associate professor of city planning and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the 2013 study on Philadelphia, Boston, and New York’s Chinatowns. “For the most part, it’s been a real struggle for them to stay in that game and they now offer a much more diversified set of services. That’s all good, but affordable housing was once very much part of their core reason for being.”

Since the ‘80s, PCDC has managed to squeeze 226 affordable housing units into the residential mix, including projects in partnership with other organizations. Last year, it opened 810 Arch Street, the Francis House of Peace, developed with Project HOME. According to Chin, some 1,000 families from around the region applied for its 94 affordable units. “Now, it’s probably the most diverse apartment building in the city,” he says. “We’ve got the formerly homeless, people from the LGBT community, youth aging out of foster care, seniors, you name it.”

Chinatown’s proximity to Center City may be responsible for its desirability to a crop of affluent urban dwellers — including, as Vitiello points out, native Chinese such as the college students he teaches at Penn and wealthy investors from the mainland looking to park their money — but it’s also a burden.

“Because Chinatown lies within the Center City census tract, it’s no longer eligible for community block grants,” McConnell says. “The federal government requires that money be spent in neighborhoods where more than 50 percent of residents are low-income.” Chinatown proper also suffers from a dearth of vacant parcels, aside from a few parking lots, she adds. “This idea of achieving a more complete vision of building affordable homes and welcoming new investment — there’s a lot of tension over why it isn’t happening but the access to actual developable land is clearly a problem.”

And, so, northward ho!

For almost two decades — starting with the 1997 opening of the award-winning Hing Wah Yuen, a housing development with a mix of market and affordable rate units — PCDC has been a driving force behind efforts to push Chinatown north of the Expressway. “Over the years, we’ve lost about 25% of our land,” Chin says. He doesn’t say it, but the meaning is clear: this is the way to take some of it back.

While most of the incursions of the past came from the east, west, and south — thanks to developments like the Gallery and the Pennsylvania Convention Center — generations of Chinese once lived as far north as Callowhill, where Holy Redeemer became a neighborhood icon. These northerly parcels eventually turned over to light manufacturers — fortune cookie factories and tofu-makers still operate here — but by the year 2000, the PCDC’s efforts to re-zone 44 acres for residential use were finally realized.

Seemingly ever since then, its vision has hinged on one large development at the northwest corner of 10th and Vine: Eastern Tower, a $77 million, 23-story mix of community center, ground floor retail, office space, and apartments. Chin says the latest projected groundbreaking is for this June.

For now, a new-ish pedestrian plaza on 10th Street over the Expressway does a serviceable job of bridging the gap between the old and the emerging Chinatown on either side of the gash. Soon, will come a new master plan and preservation efforts to bring new life to the vacant Chinese Cultural Center (the idea of a museum has been tossed around).

When asked what Chinatown will look like in ten years, Chin immediately answers, perhaps immodestly, a “mini Hong Kong.”

“This moment of businesses catering to a younger and more affluent crowd is attracting a lot of visitors and pedestrians. The product is modern and creative, but still very Chinese, and Asian. We still have a range of price points.

“This is expensive for me,” he continues, indicating the $11 Terakawa ramen bowl he’s just ordered. “I usually get lunch for $6. But this mix is important because the only way people can climb out of poverty is if they earn a living wage. You don’t have as great an opportunity for that at the place that sells lunch for $6.”

That the PCDC remains committed to helping Chinatown’s lower-income residents is evident in initiatives like the Family Support Service Program, which helps those in need take advantage of various social agency offerings. That it’s interested in being “modern and creative” is evident to just about any close observer.

For instance, the PCDC is getting attention nationally, McConnell says, by taking advantage of the EB-5, a special visa that eases the way for foreigners willing to invest in projects that stimulate jobs creation and economic development.

“John and his staff are real pioneers,” McConnell continues. “Other CDCs are looking to see how this works and what they can learn from PCDC’s experience. It’s exciting to see one of our own advance the field.”