April 23, 2010
By Thomas J. Walsh
For PlanPhilly
The loss of industrial jobs and a decline in manufacturing in Philadelphia is certainly nothing new, but most residents of the region would probably trace the start of the downturn to the 1960s and ’70s. In fact, the attrition started in the 1920s, said Acting Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger, at a panel Friday morning at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.
Greenberger, still playing at least three roles as head of the Planning and Zoning Code commissions, said the decline abated during World War II, but resumed not long after.
“That big sea change has resulted in, depending on your point of view, either an opportunity or a problem that we need to solve,” he said. “We need to solve it at a time when we are embarking on the first comprehensive plan for the city in 50 years. For us, the Planning Commission, this industrial study is incredibly important.”
Greenberger was referring to the city’s soon-to-be-released “Industrial Market & Land Use Strategy,” researched and authored by the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. and a team of consultants.
On hand from PIDC to give an outline of the study was John Grady, vice president of real estate, and Prema Gupta, the quasi-public agency’s real estate manager.
“Prema told me not to say ‘post-industrial city’,” Greenberger said. “And she’s right. It’s a ‘post-19th and 20th century industrial city.’ That’s a fair statement. Things continue to be made here, as we broaden our understanding of what industry means.”
“Two-thirds of my R8 train ride to get to Center City is fallow, industrial land” of Civil War era vintage, said Gupta. “But there’s a mismatch between that and what modern users want.”
That’s an understatement, her remarks that followed revealed, underlining just how embedded industry is in what used to be called “The Workshop of the World.” As it happens, many of the long-abandoned buildings (and even some still in use) on all that land are multi-floor structures that pre-dated Ford-style assembly line manufacturing, which came into common use about a century ago.
Also presenting was Scott Page, founder and principal of Interface Studio, a main consultant to PIDC for the study. (PlanPhilly got a preview of the report, due out soon, last week at the American Planning Association conference in New Orleans, where Page was also a panelist. Read his extensive comments from that presentation here.)
“There is a market potential in Philadelphia, but to meet that potential, we need land to support it,” Page said Friday, referring to the city's on-going rezoning process.
The special guest was Greg Nickels, the former mayor of Seattle (2002 through 2010), who had undertaken a similar study during his administration.
“I congratulate you on doing this,” Nickels said. “I’m very pleased that you’re asking the right questions, going through a very similar process that we went through where we asked our Planning Commission, ‘Just what is our future that you see?’ We brought in developers landowners and asked those questions, and at the end of the day we had a strategy that worked for us.”
Commentators at the end of the morning were John Landis, chair of City and Regional Planning at PennDesign; Brian Cohen of Liberty Property Trust (the company that is redeveloping the Navy Yard with PIDC); Ned Rauch-Mannino of the Urban Industry Initiative; Matt Pappajohn, a custom woodworker with a small company in the city’s Frankford section; and Paul Parkhill, a director at the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center in Brooklyn. Moderating the event was Laura Wolf-Powers, assistant professor of city and regional planning at Penn.
“Thinking about how to grow – that’s not something we’re used to doing,” said Steve Wray, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia.
Wray started the morning by stressing the importance of a fresh, innovative approach to business and economic development, and a description of Economy League efforts at “alternative histories of the future” to make for a “world-class Greater Philadelphia.”
The Economy League in recent years has worked with PIDC on a study of Philadelphia’s ports and their potential, and tackled subjects as broad as “green infrastructure,” the “knowledge industry” of our colleges and universities and the city’s state of entrepreneurship.
Contact the reporter at thomaswalsh1@gmail.com
(NOTE: Our apologies for the weak audio with the above videos – the participants did not use microphones, and the Flip camera’s acoustic capability is evidently in proportion to its size. – TJW)
Comments
All three of you seem to use talking points that you haven't really looked into; I know everyone loves to hammer home the two points mentioned (the tax abatement led to tons of new building! and the BPT is destroying our business base!) , but when people have really looked into it, it seems to me that the situations are a lot more complex then people like to acknowledge.
For some good conversation on the New Construction Property Tax Abatement check this out:
http://youngphillypolitics.com/no_tax_abatement_not_responsible_23rds_new_construction_philadelphia
As for the Gross Receipts portion of the BPT, look at this excerpt from youngphillypolitics.com:
"...the average amount paid in the gross receipts tax by businesses taking in less than 100k for 2006 is a whopping $54. The average amount for businesses taking in between 100k and 500k is $435. That doesn’t seem like a ton of money, right? Yet from every news story, editorial, and blast from the Chamber of Commerce, Philly Forward and others came the idea that this tax was the invention of Satan himself. Why so evil? You have to pay it whether or not you earned a profit or not. (Remember this point, please.)
As Stan has pointed out, the devlish GRT actually does some good stuff. While we always hear the tiny, Lucifer-like GRT forces businesses to move outside of the city, it turns out the incorrigible tax already hits businesses outside of the city for any business they do inside of it. So, if Exxon-Mobil, or Coca-Cola does business in the city (which they do), then they actually pay the tax. So, unless you think that eliminating the troll-ish GRT will make Coca-Cola run to set up shop in Philly, then getting rid of it might be sort of dumb. In effect, we are disarming and giving up money for businesses outside of the city. So in response, the Coalition for Essential Services made a proposal that would increase the GRT, then exempt the first 500k for all businesses, effectively making taxes more progressive in the city. "
That's not a lot of money paid by small businesses, and to larges businesses, it's a drop in the bucket. And the CES has a great idea to just exempt small businesses all together, and raise it a little for the gigantic businesses. Here's there page: http://phillyces.org/default.aspx
The high opportunity cost of doing business in Philadelphia is the current problem. Everyone knows this, but short sighted thinking prevails. Just as there was a pent-up demand for new housing stock that the property tax abatement program unlocked, there is a similar pent-up demand for business growth in the city if taxes were similarly reduced (case in point, city line avenue).
did they tal kabout the oppressive business taxes that have led to a regional dichotomy where private sectors jobs grow in the suburbs and shrink in the city? doesn't matter if it's industrial or white collar.
The BPT was mentioned during the final piece of the event. CEO of Pappajohn Woodworking Matt Pappajohn said things need to change. Director of Policy of Urban Industry Initiative Ned Rauch-Mannino recommended removing capital assessments from its calculations. And competitive advantage versus other large cities was also touched upon.
Pappajohn also suggested eliminating City Council but that really doesn't address the tax issue now does it?