In the years since the COVID-19 outbreak, most city reports have exposed lingering gaps between where we were in 2019 and where we are now. While Center City District's latest annual report has a plenty of those, it also reveals areas where the neighborhood has nearly recovered or even exceeded pre-pandemic expectations — particularly when it comes to retail and dining.
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The newly released State of Center City report shows encouraging numbers for the district, a highly trafficked area that includes City Hall, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Ensemble Arts campus. Retail occupancy hit 84.5% in September 2023, a massive rebound from the 54.5% recorded in June 2020 and nearly in line with the 89% occupancy observed in September 2019. Weekend foot traffic is also back and bigger than it was in January 2019, when the average pedestrian volume was 312,000. (In January 2024, it was 330,000.) Perhaps the biggest success story of post-2020, however, is outdoor dining. The number of outdoor seats at Center City restaurants in September 2023 exceeded 4,500, a significant jump from the roughly 3,500 tallied in September 2019, but a slight dip from the 2021 peak.
CCD attributes some of their recent retail success to "click to brick" companies like Glossier and Joybird, which started as exclusive online ventures before opening stores on Walnut Street. Aritzia, a women's clothing brand, and Figs, the medical scrubs store, will soon join them. Small business owners are also part of the picture; two-thirds of Center City's retailers are local or independent.
The embrace of outdoor dining naturally extended out of the height of the pandemic, when indoor dining was restricted or a risk some were unwilling to take. Thanks to the introduction of streeteries, makeshift dining areas that extended into the streets, Center City restaurants counted over 6,000 outdoor seats in June 2021. That number has gradually shrunk with the number of streeteries, a development spurred by a stricter — and, some say, overly complicated — permit process introduced in 2022. But sidewalk cafe seating has continued to grow past its 2019 and even 2021 numbers. The CCD reported a 14% increase between 2022 and 2023.
The CCD, historically a big supporter of streeteries, did not say much on their future at a Monday press briefing. But staffers praised the efforts of Councilmember Rue Landau, who is leading hearings into the permit process for possible reforms.
The report also shows serious crime in Center City is now below 2019 levels and its population continues to grow. But it also notes many categories that haven't quite recovered. Office occupancy and public transit ridership are still struggling to claw back their pre-pandemic numbers, a familiar story for nearly four years now. Perhaps that's why the CCD is planning to take these reports in a new direction, one where 2019 is not the default measuring stick.
"So much of the research that we have put out has been about recovery," Prema Katari Gupta, president and CEO of the CCD, said Monday. "A lot of the data benchmarks us against where we were four years ago, where we've been over the last couple years and how we've evolved through the challenges.
"It might be time to stop talking about recovery. Maybe our cities will never go back, no matter how hard we will them, to where we were in 2019. And it's time to embrace the unanticipated strengths but also the exposed vulnerabilities and really work hard to build a downtown that our region needs and also is the place that it should be."
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