Mayor Cherelle L. Parker unveiled her planning process for the future of Market East earlier this month to a room packed with many of the city’s top developers, lobbyists, and business leaders.
Her news conference followed the announcement that the alliance between the Philadelphia 76ers and Comcast had plans to demolish buildings on the 1000 block of Market Street, without saying what they plan to do with the soon-to-be vacant space.
A Comcast executive’s promise to “turbocharge” development on the beleaguered corridor did not quiet dissent in the packed room from a group of historic preservationists who stood solemnly holding signs reading “No More Holes On Market Street” and “No Plan, No Demo.”
The moment captured a recurring dynamic in modern Philadelphia, a city where over 70% of buildings reportedly date to before 1960 but only 4.4% of them have a degree of protection from demolition by the Historical Commission.
Preservationists have long called for stronger protections against demolition, and neighborhood groups have condemned developers for leaving vacant lots in their midst when projects fail, as Toll Brothers did on Jewelers Row.
Now two bills in City Council would require property owners to get a building permit for a new structure before they move forward with demolition.
“This bill is about putting commonsense guardrails in place,” said Councilmember Jeffery “Jay” Young, who represents much of North Philadelphia and part of Center City.
His bill, which covers his entire district, requires a building permit before a property owner can demolish a structure, with exceptions for dangerous buildings.
“It ensures property owners are prepared to move forward responsibly and that residents aren’t stuck living beside another empty lot with no timeline or plan,” Young said in a statement.
“This isn’t about slowing down development; it’s about preventing speculative demolition that destabilize blocks. This is about preserving communities,” Young said.
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier’s bill would enact similar rules for parts of University City, where higher education institutions are dominant, as part of a larger package of land-use regulations.
Builder and developer advocacy groups say the legislation is a potential new burden on a key economic sector that’s been flagging in recent years.
The Building Industry Association (BIA), the trade association for residential developers, cautioned that new regulations were especially unwelcome in a time of higher interest rates and high construction material prices, especially as Parker makes housing a centerpiece of her agenda.
“I’m not sure why Council would create more barriers for delivering new homes,” said Sarina Rose, president of the BIA and an executive with the Post Brothers development firm. “It’s a really bad time to do that. Unfortunately, some old buildings simply are not good fits for adaptive reuse.”
The BIA and its allies are backing legislation that would make it easier to demolish some older buildings for new construction.
Councilmember Mark Squilla introduced legislation the week before Thanksgiving that would weaken protections for structures nominated to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.
At the same time, Parker promises to pursue legislation in the next year to prompt adaptive reuse or demolition of underused buildings by offering a 20-year property tax abatement.
Demolition policy in other cities
In a city as old as Philadelphia, razing buildings is often a fraught process.
Currently the only safeguards against demolition come with a successful nomination to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, and in the handful of neighborhoods protected by conservation zoning overlays, property owners have to get building permits before demolition (a template for Gauthier and Young’s bills).
But given the city’s economic and demographic doldrums in the second half of the 20th century, municipal government enacted most of the demolitions of unsafe and abandoned buildings, usually in lower-income neighborhoods.
Mayor John F. Street’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, the centerpiece of his administration, spent half its $300 million (in George W. Bush-era dollars) on demolishing thousands of buildings in the early 2000s.
That dynamic changed in the last decade, as low interest rates and a surge of new residents juiced real estate development to levels not seen in the city for generations. The private sector began to regularly outpace city government in demolition permits, as developers cleared the way for new projects.
Preservationists pushed back. Under Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration (2016-24), the movement demanded new policies such as a demolition review requirement. Before an applicable building could be razed, municipal authorities reviewed its historic merits and adaptive potential.
Similar policies of varying strength exist in cities from Santa Monica, Calif., to Chicago. In the latter case, it applies to buildings from before 1940 that were included in a citywide survey of historic places.
During Kenney’s administration, a preservation task force called for a survey and demolition delay as in Chicago, but no elected officials championed the ideas.
Laws like the ones Gauthier and Young are proposing are less common but are used in municipalities like Spokane, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif. Similar regulations exist for properties in Philadelphia’s conservation districts.
In Spokane, the regulations apply to buildings in the downtown core, those along commercial corridors and buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, which is more of an honorary designation that affords protections.
“You have to have that building permit in hand, plus you have to show us that you have the financial backing to build that replacement building,” said Megan Duvall, Spokane’s historic preservation officer. “If you also can’t show us that you have the construction loan in hand, we won’t allow you to demolish that building.”
Why City Council is acting now
The sudden renewal of interest in demolition policy began when St. Joseph’s University sold much of its West Philadelphia campus, acquired through a merger with University of the Sciences in 2022, to a charter school operator founded by student housing mogul Michael Karp.
After the sale, Gauthier proposed placing controls on the sprawling higher education footprint in her district.
As higher education comes under acute financial and demographic pressure, she fears that building sales by struggling universities could result in demolition and resale of newly vacant lots to developers without the wherewithal to complete projects or speculators with no desire to build quickly.
“The safety and quality-of-life in our neighborhoods should not be disrupted by incomplete or uncertain projects,” Gauthier said in a statement. “I believe requiring responsible development practices is a commonsense approach in today’s uncertain development market.”
Young’s bill covering much of North Philadelphia and parts of Center City followed the introduction of Gauthier’s legislation. Neither bill has been passed by City Council.
According to the Philadelphia Planning Commission, from January 2022 through November 2025 approximately 580 demolition permits were issued in Young’s district. The Department of Licenses and Inspections said that with a few tweaks, his proposed bill would be enforceable.
Young says his legislation was inspired by frequent calls from constituents who hate the vacant lots that dot their neighborhoods and are frustrated with promised development that never comes to fruition. Both bills exempt buildings in poor condition that are considered dangerous.
While welcoming this spate of demolition regulation, preservationists would prefer citywide policies, not district by district.
“These bills are important first steps, and this is the moment to build them into a modern, citywide framework consistent with approaches already used in several peer cities,” said RePoint, the preservation advocacy group that protested the mayor’s Market East announcement, in an unsigned statement.
Real estate industry backlash
At the same time, Philadelphia’s development industry is embarking on its own campaign to ease existing preservation rules and to push back against these new bills. Both Gauthier’s and Young’s bills have been critiqued by business groups and by the zoning lawyers who often represent developers.
“This is one-tenth of the city of Philadelphia, just based upon a political subdivision [that] changes every 10 years,” Matthew McClure, a prominent zoning attorney, said in testimony about Young’s bill before the Planning Commission. “It’s the exact opposite of planning.”
Groups including the Building Industry Association are backing a new bill from Squilla that the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia fears will stoke more demolitions.
It would require a new 30- to 60-day window before a building nominated to the local register of historic places could be given protection, which critics believe will incentivize owners to tear down empty buildings quickly.
The mayor’s proposed 20-year property tax abatement proposal for adaptive reuse projects also allows room for demolition if buildings are considered unadaptable, which preservationists fear will bring back the wrecking ball-forward incentives of the city’s earlier abatement policies.
In the last week, groups like the Preservation Alliance have pivoted from thinking about new demolition regulations to playing defense.
“We’re still trying to wrap our heads around it all,” said Paul Steinke, the Preservation Alliance’s executive director. “It’s a lot to take in, and it’s happening after a decade or so of a building boom where we lost a chunk of the historic fabric.”
