A shopping center in the shadow of Willow Grove Park Mall will soon undergo a $105-million “transformation” with new apartments and shops, says the developer behind the project.
Starting this summer, about 130,000 square feet of the Willow Grove Shopping Center will be demolished to build a mixed-used complex with 261 residential units and 35,000 square feet of new retail space, said Mark Brennan, vice president of regional development for Federal Realty Investment Trust.
It will mark the latest stage in a multiphase redevelopment of the outdoor center, which is located across the street from the mall.
A rendering of what Federal Realty Investment Trust plans to build at the Willow Grove Shopping Center.
Across the Philadelphia region, similar mixed-use complexes have increasingly been built around thriving shopping destinations, such as King of Prussia, where thousands of new apartments have risen in recent years.
A spokesperson for PREIT, which owns Willow Grove Park Mall, did not return a request for comment. In a 2022 shareholders’ report, PREIT executives called the complex “one of our leading suburban Philadelphia assets,“ with an occupancy rate of more than 96%.
The Willow Grove Park Mall is pictured in 2019.
Across Moreland Road, Brennan is confident his shopping-center redevelopment will be met with high demand.
Since the pandemic, the Montgomery County community has “really come alive,” due in part to its proximity to the city and to suburban employment centers, said Brennan, who is based in Wynnewood. And people who are moving out of the city or looking to downsize are particularly interested in moving to mixed-use developments, he said.
The center’s proximity to SEPTA’s Willow Grove train station, and major highways, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike, will make it particularly appealing, as will its mix of “highly curated” shops, Brennan said.
Across the street from the mall, the Willow Grove Shopping Center is set to undergo a $105-million transformation with apartments and new retail.
The center’s existing tenants, which include Marshalls and Five Below, will remain open during construction, Brennan said.
He expects the project to be complete sometime in 2028.
“These sort of multifaceted, multiphased development projects do take quite a bit of time and planning,” Brennan said. “We’re really excited to get to the next phase of this transformation.”
Rides on the two trolley lines serving Delaware County promise to be safer but longer with a modern signal system scheduled to go live on Monday, SEPTA said.
The upgraded signals on the D1 and D2 trolley lines will require operators to make more gradual accelerations and decelerations. They will also enforce speed limits and stop signals with automatic braking if needed.
“It will reduce the possibility of operator error,” SEPTA general manager Scott A. Sauer said. “They won’t be able to speed and risk derailment. They won’t be able to violate stop signals or misaligned switches.”
But the computer won’t replace the judgment of the people operating a trolley, Sauer said. Operators will get an alert, and the system provides backup if they cannot correct it in time, he said.
Trips will be up to 15 minutes longer on the D1 route and 10 minutes on the D2 route, depending on where a passenger boards and gets off the trolley.
The trolleys operate between Media and the 69th Street Transportation Center in Upper Darby, and between Sharon Hill and the transit hub. They were formerly called Routes 101 and 102.
SEPTA accounted for the increased Delaware County trolley travel times in the new schedules, which begin Monday.
It took about a decade and $75 million to install the system, called Communications-Based Train Control, on the Delco trolleys, said John Frisoli, SEPTA’s top rail signals engineer. Radios communicate between the control system and the trolleys.
A similar system has operated in the Center City trolley tunnel since 2005. SEPTA has been adding safety features to its rail-signal systems for about 20 years, including the installation of Positive Train Control on Regional Rail, which controls train speed and applies automatic brakes to prevent crashes caused by human error.
When Mayor Cherelle L. Parker stood in the city’s emergency management center last month and announced that her administration was preparing for the worst winter storm Philadelphia had seen in years, she was flanked by the police commissioner, the head of public schools, and a dozen other deputies.
Missing from the news conference of Philadelphia’s top officials was Managing Director Adam K. Thiel, whose job it is to oversee the delivery of city services.
It wasn’t the only time over the last year that Thiel, Philadelphia’s No. 2 public official, was noticeably absent.
Thiel, who is effectively the city’s chief operating officer, was out of office last year for a total of nearly five months, much of which he spent on military leave, according to 2025 payroll register records obtained by The Inquirer. His increasingly low profile in Philadelphia City Hall has generated frustration and fueled questions about his job performance among some lawmakers, especially as the city faced criticism over the recent snow cleanup.
Almost half of Thiel’s $316,200 city salary last year was for paid time off, according to payroll records. He is one of the highest-paid officials in the government and made more than Parker, who last year earned $280,000.
In addition to his top city role, Thiel is a major in the U.S. Army Reserves. He joined the reserves in August 2024, eight months after beginning his job as managing director.
Thiel also holds other positions outside government. In 2024, while he was managing director, he made more than $300,000 working as a consultant, according to financial disclosures. He is an adjunct faculty member at two universities and sits on several nonprofit boards.
Five City Council members told The Inquirer that it has been months since they interacted directly with Thiel.
“The managing director of the city is an extremely important job,” said Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, a Democrat from West Philadelphia. “I do not understand how someone who is absent as much as Thiel is able to carry out this job effectively.”
Managing Director Adam Thiel during graduation ceremonies for the police academy Class #402 of the Philadelphia Police Department and Temple University Police Department at Temple University Performing Arts Center June 17, 2024.
The administration declined requests to interview Thiel and Parker for this article. In a statement, Thiel thanked Parker for her “continued support of our city of Philadelphia employees who also serve the United States of America.”
Sharon Gallagher, a spokesperson for the managing director’s office, said in a statement that Thiel has been employed by the city for nearly 10 years and “earns leave offered by the city the same way as other city employees accrue vacation, sick days, family, medical, military and other leave categories.”
Payroll records show that Thiel logged six weeks of military leave time last year — the maximum amount the city offers employees. Gallagher said he also used 11 weeks of accrued vacation time to cover additional military assignments.
The administration declined to answer questions about Thiel’s military service, including details about his location and unit. His LinkedIn page says he “helps provide emergency management subject matter expertise to combatant commands and partner nations.”
Thiel is also founding partner of one consulting firm and the president of a second, though the specific nature of that work is not known and he has declined to disclose his clients publicly.
In 2024, Thiel said his consulting work took fewer than 10 hours per week. Gallagher said Tuesday that “nothing has changed” since then.
The Parker administration did not publicly announce when Thiel was on leave last year, but officials acknowledged it once asked by reporters last summer. At the time, Deputy Managing Director Michael Carroll filled in on an interim basis.
Thiel, 53, is a nationally recognized expert in emergency management. He held a variety of firefighting, public safety, and disaster preparedness roles across the country before coming to Philadelphia in 2016 to serve as fire commissioner and deputy managing director under former Mayor Jim Kenney.
Thiel said in a statement Tuesday that Williams was “the best choice to lead our city’s unified response to the recent snowstorm operation and is the right leader for future snow and ice events.”
Gauthier said the city’s handling of the storm “needed a higher-level emergency response.” She said while she respects Thiel’s military service, she raised his consulting work as a concern.
“A decision needs to be made what he wants to do. Does he want to serve locally, or does he want to do other things?” Gauthier said. “We need a managing director who will serve full time.”
The administration did not answer questions about whether Thiel was in town through the duration of the city’s 26-day winter emergency response.
Parker’s chief of staff, Tiffany W. Thurman, said in a statement that the city is proud to offer benefits such as military and administrative leave that support employee well-being and professional development.
Thurman said Thiel “is always reachable and fulfills the responsibilities of his position as needed based on the situation.”
“His leadership — as is the case with the leadership team of any large city — is not limited by time designated as leave,” she said.
The purpose of the Philadelphia managing director
The authors of the 1950s-era Philadelphia Home Rule Charter created the position of managing director to serve as a barrier between the mayor’s political appointees and the city’s operational departments.
The idea was that having a bureaucrat at the helm would ensure city service delivery would be apolitical, and the mayor cannot fire the managing director without cause.
In reality, different mayors have granted their managing directors varying levels of power.
In this 2018 file photo, LOVE Park is by (left to right) then-Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell, former City Council President Darrell Clarke, former Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and then-Managing Director Michael DiBerardinis.
For example, former Mayor Michael Nutter dispensed with decades of tradition and assigned robust portfolios to several deputy mayors. While his managing directors were important figures in his administration, they oversaw fewer operating departments than their predecessors.
Kenney, Parker’s immediate predecessor, sought to re-empower the city’s managing director position, while his deputy mayors took on advisory roles. He reassigned almost all departmental oversight to the managing director’s office.
“We’re going to have a managing director that’s actually a managing director,” Kenney said before he took office.
Council members who were in office before Parker’s 2024 swearing-in became used to the managing director being accessible. Several lawmakers said that under Kenney’s administration, they routinely communicated about constituent services matters with ex-Managing Director Tumar Alexander and his predecessor, Brian Abernathy.
That hasn’t been the case with Thiel in the role.
“Since the beginning of this administration, I have gone to Carlton Williams,” said Councilmember Jeffery “Jay” Young Jr., a freshman Democrat who represents parts of North Philadelphia.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is applauded by members of her administration at City Hall Wednesday, Jul. 9, 2025, hours after reaching a tentative contract agreement with District Council 33 leaders overnight, ending the workers’ strike. At left is Carlton Williams, director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives and Chief Deputy Mayor Sinceré Harris is behind the mayor at right.
Several other members said that instead of going to the managing director’s office, they take administrative needs to legislative affairs staff, agency heads, or Thurman.
“Almost everything goes through Tiffany, and she’s able to get things done,” said one Council member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships with the administration.
Parker doesn’t deny that little happens at the top rungs of city government without Thurman’s involvement. The mayor has come to see her chief of staff as the central figure in her administration and calls her the city’s “chief air traffic controller.”
Phil Goldsmith, who served as managing director for two years under former Mayor John F. Street, said Thiel’s minimized public role may be because Parker appears to favor “a very strong mayor’s office.”
“It seems to me that the managing director may have to go through more hoops to get things done than, for example, I had to do,” Goldsmith said. “That’s just a function of what a mayor wants and feels comfortable with.”
Fading out of public view
Thiel’s lack of public appearances over the last year has been unusual for a managing director.
It has been 10 months since he testified before City Council, despite the managing director in previous administrations being a mainstay in hearings to answer lawmakers’ questions about city services ranging from street repaving to emergency preparation.
And in December, when a half-dozen top Parker administration officials spoke during the mayor’s State of the City event, Thiel was not on the roster.
The decrease in visibility marks a departure from his first year in office, when Thiel had a more consistent public presence and was often seen beside the mayor.
Ahead of a snowstorm in January 2024, Thiel stood with Parker during a news conference about preparations. He donned a suit while snowflakes fell, and he reassured the city that the administration was ready for the service disruptions that bad weather can bring.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker (center) with Managing Director, Adam Thiel (right) and at left Carlton Williams, Director of Clean & Green Initiatives, at a news conference with city officials in Northeast Philadelphia on Friday, Jan. 19, 2024 to share the city’s response to the snowstorm.
Through his first year in the position, Thiel also faced scrutiny as the face of some of the mayor’s most controversial initiatives.
He took a leading role in Parker’s efforts to end the open-air drug market in the city’s Kensington neighborhood, and he oversaw the development of the Riverview Wellness Center, a new city-owned recovery house for people with substance use disorder.
Today, much of Kensington initiative is overseen by the public safety director, who reports directly to Parker. A new head of community wellness is leading development at Riverview, and Williams was the face of the storm response.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker finishes a news media briefing with her leadership team at the Tustin Playground at 60th St. and W Columbia Ave. Tuesday, Jul, 1, 2025, on the first day of the strike by District Council 33. At left are Carlton Williams (Phillies cap), Director of Clean and Green Initiative with the Dept. of Streets Sanitation Division; and Managing Director Adam Thiel (at lectern).
But by the time the strike was resolved, Thiel had faded from public view, departing from his city job for one of his stints on military leave. After Parker reached an agreement with the union, she held a news conference with 20 top deputies and thanked each of them by name.
Thiel, absent from the City Hall news conference, was not one of them.
Staff writers Ryan W. Briggs and Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.
The long vacant industrial building at 1807 Huntingdon St. in East Kensington is moving toward redevelopment after seven years of setbacks.
Philadelphia-based Smith & Roller has been eyeing the faded brick structure since 2019 but struggled with funding following the COVID-19 pandemic and the loss of a lender after Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in 2023.
But last week New Jersey-based Ellavoz Impact Capital announced that it was acquiring the building in partnership with Smith & Roller, allowing the developers to move forward with their plans near SEPTA’s Huntingdon stop on the Market-Frankford line.
Developers Tayyib Smith and Jacob Roller see the project as a catalyst for change around the elevated train station, which is haunted by the opioid crisis.
“I’ve always imagined connecting nodes of vitality and then seeing how it almost has a regenerative spring of people looking at a neighborhood differently,” Smith said.
“I can imagine that block having a different feel, a different type of lighting, a different type of walkability, more socio-economic diversity, more eyes on the corridor,” he added.
The developers plan to break ground on the project in about six months.
Smith & Roller’s neighboring development, 1801 Huntingdon, will transform a historic bank building into a banquet hall and commissary kitchen for Black-owned caterer Strother Enterprises, which has been expanding elsewhere in the city recently. That development will need approvalby the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment and is on a longer timeline.
Over the years, the project at 1807 Huntingdon has added more housing and cut back on space for businesses.
The current version of the project includes 109 residential units and 8,600 square feet of commercial space. According to Ellavoz Impact Capital’s news release, the commercial space has been preleased, but the tenant list is not public yet.
A rendering of the redeveloped factory building, as a mixed-use apartment building.
An earlier version of the project, reviewed by the city’s Civic Design Review committee in 2022, would have contained 80 apartments and 38,000 square feet of light industrial space.
That’s partly because the federal program Smith & Roller originally planned to use, New Market Tax Credits, requires that at least a fifth of a mixed-use project be devoted to commercial development.
But the project at 1807 Huntingdon has been in process for so long that this part of Kensington no longer qualifies for the federal incentive, which is meant to spur investment in struggling areas.
The project is still in a Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ), however, which will give state tax breaks to businesses at the 1807 and 1801 Huntingdon projects.
That policy is also meant to incentivize development in lower-income areas, but there are many examples of its application to parts of Philadelphia like the Navy Yard and University City.
“I don’t know many [KOZs] that are in neighborhoods like Kensington,” Smith said, “where there’s somebody trying to use it in the spirit and intent of how the legislation was written.”
The project will include both the redeveloped factory with additional space above it and an adjacent parking lot, which will have multiple stories of housing on top.
It will include a mix of studios, one-bedroom, and a few two-bedroom apartments, along with loft-style units that can be rented out as either short-term rentals or office space.
Sixty percent of the units will be set aside for households earning 80% of area median income, or almost $67,000 for one person.
“We don’t have a direct subsidy, like a Low Income Housing Tax Credit or anything like that,” Roller said. “In some cases, it’s not that different a number than a market rent in the neighborhood.”
Jacob Roller (left) and Tayyib Smith last June outside the historic bank they plan to turn into a base for Black-owned businesses, which is next to the apartment project farther down Huntingdon Street.
Roller said the project is inspired in unit mix and general location by the success of Shift Capital’s mixed-use project at 3400 J St., home to Càphê Roasters. Smith & Roller was a junior partner in that project.
The Huntingdon Street project will be the firm’s largest project by unit count.
“I am extremely impressed by the work of Smith & Roller,” Jeffrey Crum, president of Ellavoz Impact Capital, said in the news release. “They have proven themselves as professional and experienced urban redevelopers who have a unique vision for revitalizing neighborhoods in partnership with local communities.”
The proposal has been presented to the East Kensington Neighbors Association several times over the years, and the community group is supportive of Smith & Roller’s proposal.
The group also sees the development project as a means to bring new life to the block, where the current dilapidated state of the buildings often attracts opioid users from nearby open-air drug markets on Kensington Avenue.
“The block has been challenged for a long time,” said John Theobald, president of the East Kensington Neighbors Association. “It’s really where a lot of the Kensington Avenue activity impacts the neighborhood, so hopefully more people living there and less vacancy will help.”
In December, Katrina Williams watched as the man who killed her brother was sentenced to decades in prison and felt, she said, as if a two-year nightmare was coming to an end.
But weeks later, another shooting took the life of her only son.
Williams’ brother, Lashyd Merritt, 21, was one of five people killed in a mass shooting in Kingsessing in July 2023, when Kimbrady Carriker walked through the Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood with an AR-15 rifle and fired at random passersby.
Then, in January, her 19-year-old son, Russell, was killed by a man who, like the Kingsessing shooter, committed a spree of crimes, police say.
“I’ll never understand it,” said Williams,43. “There’s no reason for it.”
A high school photograph of Russell Williams being held by his father and mother, Katrina and Russell Williams Sr. at their home in Southwest Philadelphia on Feb. 6.
For Williams, the trauma of Merritt’s violent death never fully dissipated, she said, and the fatal shooting of her son only compounds her pain.
It’s a cycle of violence that is not unfamiliar in the city.
For others with relatives killed in the Kingsessing attack, the traumatic impact of gun violence did not end on that July day. Nyshyia Thomas lost her 15-year-old son, DaJuan Brown, to the gunfire and, while she was still mourning, her 21-year-old son, Daquan Brown, was arrested last year in connection with another mass shooting in Grays Ferry.
Asked about the evening of Jan. 28, when she and her husband, Russell Williams Sr., learned of their son’s death, Williams said two things came to mind:
“Déjà vu,” she said, and “hell.”
A seemingly random crime
Around 10 p.m. near 64th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard, police said, 19-year-old Zaamir Harris stepped off a SEPTA bus and stole a bike from the vehicle.
He rode up to Russell Williams, who was walking home from night school, where the teen was studying to become a commercial truck driver. Harris then pulled a gun and fired at Williams multiple times, striking him in the throat, police said.
Williams collapsed near 66th Street and Dicks Avenue, just three blocks from home. After the shooting,Harris ditched the bike and stole an e-scooter before fleeing, according to police.
Police tracked Harris to a Wawa at 84th Street and Bartram Avenue, where he was arrested. He was charged with murder and gun crimes. Investigators recovered three fired cartridge casings from the scene, as well as a 9mm handgun, according to police.
A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department declined to say whether investigators have determined a motive for the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation.
Katrina Williams said her son did not know Harris, and a police detective told her the shooting was random.
After he was shot, Russell Williams was rushed to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where he died from his injuries. It was the same hospital where Williams’ brother, Merritt, was taken after being shot in Kingsessing, she said.
Katrina Williams, whose son, Russell, 19, was shot and killed not far from family home in Southwest Philadelphia.
Russell Williams had recently graduated from Philadelphia Electrical and Technology Charter School and dreamed of an entrepreneurial career in stock trading.
Like her son, Williams said, Merritt was a hard worker who wanted to better his life. He worked for the IRS, had a girlfriend, and wanted to travel the world, she said.
“We lost two great people,” Williams said. “Two of them.”
That police made an arrest in the slaying of their son has brought little solace, Williams and her husband said as they sat in their Southwest Philadelphia living room on a recentFebruary day. Family photos filled the space, and a portrait of Russell, smiling and wearing a tuxedo, hung on the wall.
As the case against her son’s accused killer proceeds, Williams said, she will be in court every step of the way, just as she was when Carriker pleaded guiltyin the death of her brother.
In December, as Carriker faced sentencing, Williams said, she could not bring herself to address the judge and ask for a long prison sentence, as relatives of other victims did. She was so overcome with anger, she said, that she feared she might physically attack her brother’s killer.
But she was in the room when Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson sentenced him to 37½ to 75 years in prison. In Williams’ view, Carriker should have received a life sentence for each person he killed, she said, even if no punishment could make up for the loss of Merritt.
Now, Williams is preparing to head back to court as she once again seeks justice.
Since her son’s death, Williams said, she has taken comfort in the kindness of friends and family. She was touched, she said, to see a “block full of people” gather to honor his life and release balloons in his memory. But the ache of her loss remains.
“It’s like pain on top of pain — it’s just always gonna be hard,“ Williams said. ”I just gotta deal with it the best way I can.”
An enormous block of ice extended from the ceiling and covered the floor at the east-side entrance to the Tasker-Morris Station on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line on Tuesday afternoon after a pipe burst outside the station late Monday.
The pipe belonged to the Philadelphia Water Department, SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said. It was being repaired and crews were continuing to clean up the damage, Busch said Tuesday afternoon.
The damage did not affect train service, he said.
The transit authority has been dealing with a number of burst pipes the last few weeks, only some of which are theirs. Some belong to other property owners, such as the one that burst at the Convention Center and flooded Jefferson Station on Monday night.
Ice covers the Tasker Street east-side entrance/exit at the Tasker-Morris SEPTA Station on the Broad Street Line on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026 in Philadelphia.
“When we have these deep freezes and then it warms up, and it’s happening all over, that causes problems with the pipes,” Busch said. “In many cases the best we can do is make sure that we have crews ready to respond to it and then work on cleaning up.”
Over the last two weeks, SEPTA has recorded about 10 incidents of water main breaks or burst pipes leading to flooding in stations or water from SEPTA structures flooding streets, Busch said. In about half those cases, the pipes belonged to SEPTA.
Many of these issues have occurred along the eastern edge of the Market-Frankford Line from near Spring Garden to the Frankford Transportation Center, Busch said. That is the oldest part of the line and some sections of the pipes are exposed.
SEPTA is planning a winterization project starting this summer. The project will likely include installing new valves on the water lines, replacing pipe insulation, and upgrading strips in the pipes that heat them. Busch said SEPTA expects that project to be done by around the start of next year. No full cost estimate is available yet, Busch said.
One cannot truly claim to understand American history without knowing African American history, and without understanding America’s complete history, we’re condemned to repeat past mistakes.
With that recent obfuscation in mind — and in celebration of Black History Month — I’d like to introduce readers to some little-known history from Philadelphia during World War II.
Philadelphia’s newspapers legally listed nonfederal defense job openings and apartment rentals by race.
Newsreels and movies about the iconic battles of Guadalcanal, Saipan, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa almost never featured any Black servicemen, but they were there.
Cpl. Waverly B. Woodson Jr. was an army medic assigned to the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion. The battalion’s job was to set up explosive-rigged balloons to deter German planes. At a time when the military was still segregated by race, the balloon battalion was the only African American combat unit to land on Normandy on June 6, 1944.
On D-Day, Overbrook High grad Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a Black combat medic who, despite being wounded, treated over 200 soldiers at an Omaha Beach field dressing station. After toiling for over 30 straight hours and being completely exhausted, he resuscitated three soldiers who had nearly drowned in the frigid waters off the English Channel.
In 1943, Milton R. Henry, a Philadelphia Tuskegee pilot, got into a confrontation with an armed white Montgomery, Ala., bus driver over being forced to sit in the back of a bus. Henry might have been murdered if not for the quick intervention of several white English pilots.
A Philadelphia Transit Co. (which would eventually become SEPTA) protest supporting Black trolley drivers enters Reyburn Plaza across from City Hall on Nov. 8, 1943.
In 1944, racists struck the Philadelphia Transit Co., SEPTA’s predecessor, and prevented workers from using trolleys, buses, and subways for several days. Worker absenteeism caused the loss of a million war matériel production hours. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered 5,000 troops to Philadelphia — instead of to Europe or the Pacific — to restart and guard its transit system.
First lady Eleanor Roosevelt got a flight over the Tuskegee Institute with C. Alfred Anderson at the controls.
Irrespective of the Tuskegee Airmen’s flying skills, after the war, none was hired by a commercial airline. Some pilots had received their initial training from Bryn Mawr native C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson. In March 1941, Anderson flew Eleanor Roosevelt around Tuskegee, Ala., which caused some War Department skeptics to reevaluate their initial hesitancy with Black pilot training.
In April 1945, 101 Tuskegee Airmen, including several Philadelphians, were arrested for disobeying an unlawful discriminatory order. The charges were quickly dropped, but administrative reprimands were placed in these officers’ 201 files.
Philadelphia native William T. Coleman, a summa cum laude University of Pennsylvania graduate, interrupted his Harvard Law School studies to serve as an Army Air Force officer. Honorably discharged, he returned to Harvard, graduated first in his class, and clerked for a federal appeals court judge and a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Armed with his very substantial résumé and glowing recommendations, he initially moved to New York — as no white Philadelphia firm would hire him.
Throughout the war, while Philadelphia-based Whitman’s Chocolates was producing millions of pounds of “Samplers,” it was also producing “Pickaninny Peppermints,” despite protests by the NAACP to remove the offensive slur from the product’s name.
The Woodside Amusement Park. The Fairmount Park Transit Co.’s trolley stopped at the park until the line closed in 1946.
Paul L. Newman is an amateur historian specializing in African American history of the first half of the 20th century. He has created a mini-series docudrama that highlights the events in this essay.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker often says she isn’t a fan of “Monday-morning quarterbacks” and “expert AOPs” — her shorthand for so-called articulators of problems who don’t offer solutions.
The mayor acknowledged residents’ exasperation at a news conference at the Pelbano Recreation Center in Northeast Philadelphia on Wednesday, her first appearance dedicated to the city’s snow response since Jan. 26, the day after the storm walloped the region.
“For anyone who is frustrated right now about the ice, about the ability for all of the streets to be fully cleared, I want you to know that I understand,” she said. “Everybody can Monday-morning quarterback. … That’s cool. We can’t stop people from feeling the way they feel. But let me tell you something: We were prepared.”
Parker said the city deployed 1,000 workers and 800 pieces of snow-removal equipment to deal with the emergency.
“We don’t promise to be perfect, Philadelphia,” she said. “We promise to go to war with the status quo and to fix things, to be doers. … We’re going to continue doing everything that we can to make sure all of this work is done.”
A pedestrian walks past a large pile of snow and ice along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway days after a fierce winter storm dropped up to 9 inches of snow and sleet, with freezing temperatures leaving large banks of ice and snow on streets and sidewalks in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026.
Snowstorms are infamous for their ability to undermine constituents’ faith in their mayors. Over the years, they have been credited with ending political careers in Denver, New York, Chicago, and Seattle.
The risk of political fallout could be heightened for Parker, who campaigned on a promise to upgrade city services. When Parker ceremonially dropped the puck at Tuesday night’s Flyers game, she was greeted with boos from many fans at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
“Parker has pitched herself as the can-do mayor. ‘I’m not gonna deal with ideology. I’ve got principles, but I’m here to get the job done,’” said Randall M. Miller, a political historian and professor emeritus at St. Joseph’s University. “There’s that expectation you’re going to get this thing done.”
But Miller said the mobility issues associated with snow removal have unique psychological effects for constituents.
“You’re cold, you’re miserable, and you’re trapped. You’re looking around like, ‘Who is confining me?’” Miller said. “You get angry at the mayor because the mayor said, ‘I’m here to provide public services,’ and public service isn’t being provided.”
Fred Scheuren shovels snow at 12th Street, near Waverly Street, in Center City, Philadelphia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026.
The circumstances of this year’s winter weather emergency could also give Parker some breathing room. Municipal leaders in Pittsburgh, New York, Washington, D.C., and Providence, R.I., are all feeling the heat amid the polar temperatures, thanks to an unusually persistent cold snap that has hampered snow-removal operations.
A slight reprieve in the weather this week, with highs peaking above freezing Tuesday and Wednesday, could help the city’s cleanup efforts. But officials warned Wednesday that temperatures are forecast to fall again by the end of the week.
“It’s not hyperbole to consider that we’re still under emergency conditions,” Dominick Mireles, who leads the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, said Wednesday.
Lessons from past Philly storms
By some measures, the city threw more resources at the latest storm than in the past, but got fewer returns.
After the legendary blizzard of Jan. 7, 1996, then-Mayor Ed Rendell deployed more than 540 snowplows, dump trucks, and other vehicles to clear away the record 30.7 inches of snow that fell over two days, according to an Inquirer report from that year. Officials bragged at the time that the fleet eclipsed the 300 vehicles marshaled by former Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr. for the last major blizzard, in 1987.
Four days after the 1996 storm, the city said it hauled away 50,000 tons of snow, including truckloads famously dumped directly into the Delaware River and the Schuylkill. Officials also said that day that about 71% of roadways were passable, including around half of all side streets.
In February 2003, the city got walloped with 19 inches of snow, followed by days of subfreezing temperatures. Four days after that storm, the city said it had cleared 75% to 80% of city streets.
In 2016, Mayor Jim Kenney used 10,000 tons of salt and 1,600 city workers to clear away 22.5 inches of snow, clearing 92% of residential streets by day four — with a major assist from warmer temperatures a few days after the storm.
The 800 pieces of snow-removal equipment Parker cited that were used in the most recent storm are far more than even in the blizzard of 1996. She also said the city brought in a snow-melting machine from Chicago, saying workers had melted about 4.7 million pounds of snow, while scattering 30,000 tons of salt.
The result: More than a week after the end of the snowfall, about 85% of city streets had been “treated,” which includes salting, plowing, or both, according to the city.
Heavy equipment clearing snow along S. Broad Street at Dickinson Street, Philadelphia, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
But mobility nonetheless remains limited in much of the city, and officials pointed to the lingering icy conditions.
The prolonged freeze is “not unheard of, but it is unusual, and that stresses and makes the potential for a lot of not-great things to happen,” Mireles said. “It’s affecting the snow-fighting operation.”
An analysis of city plowing data shows that after the conclusion of the storm on Jan. 25, vehicles reached about 70% of city streets by the end of Monday. As the snow hardened, activity slowed by about a third on Jan. 27. Some parts of the city — including neighborhood-size chunks of South Philly — saw little plowing until five days after the storm or longer.
The psychology of snow
One reason voters punish mayors more harshly for failing to remove snow than for other problems is because of its omnipresence, from getting around the city to small talk about the weather, Miller said.
Even trash-collection problems tend not to get under residents’ skin to the same degree because they don’t shut the city down, he said.
“You are furious, and it’s day in, day out,” Miller said. “You’re constantly reminded.”
Trisha Swed walks with her dog Alberta Einstein at North 30th Street and Girard Avenue in Brewerytown on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026 in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, 9.3 inches of snow fell, the most in a decade.
Parker has turned to private contractors to help with the snow-removal operation. And at Wednesday’s news conference, she touted the city’s efforts to deploy 300 “same-day pay and work” laborers earning $25 per hour to help manually clear streets and sidewalks.
Those moves drew criticism Wednesday from the city’s largest union for municipal workers, District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers, which went on strike for higher wages last summer.
“District Council 33 is deeply concerned by the City’s decision to bring in outside laborers for snow‐removal operations without any consultation or collaboration with our union,” DC 33 president Greg Boulware said in a statement. “Our members deserve better, and the residents of Philadelphia deserve a snow‐removal strategy rooted in safety, foresight, and respect for the workforce that keeps this city running.”
Miller said those efforts show the city is doing everything it can to clear the city’s streets and sidewalks.
“There’s been a great effort to try to deal with it, but Philadelphia is a very difficult place to manage in terms of snow because it’s got so many older streets,” he said.
Man with shovel clearing snow from small park on Main Street in Manayunk on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026.
But, he said, hearing about the city’s efforts is cold comfort to residents struggling to navigate their neighborhoods.
“The major thoroughfares, they’ve done a pretty good job. But folks are concerned with their neighborhoods. They’re not concerned with if they go down to Fourth and Market,” he said. “Once you start to hear those kinds of complaints, it’s hard to contain it.”
Parker said complaints will not deter her team. “Whenever we’ve been dealing with something challenging in government … there are some people who are expert articulators for problems,” she said.
Her staff, she said, “is not a team of expert AOPs.”
“This is a team of subject-matter experts who are doers and they are fixers, and we don’t cry,” she said. “Our job won’t be done until every street in the city of Philadelphia is walkable.”
Staff writers Ximena Conde and Anna Orso contributed to this article.
HARRISBURG — Gov. Josh Shapiro on Tuesday unveiled a $53.2 billion state budget that focuses on making Pennsylvania a more affordable place to live — while proposing a 6.2% spending increase over last year and renewing his pitches to create new revenue streams to fill a significant budget deficit as he runs for reelection.
Shapiro’s fourth budget address attracted several standing ovations from Democrats as he stood before a joint session of the state House and Senate to pitch some of Democrats’ shared priorities, such as increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Afterward, Republicans decried the budget proposal as unaffordable, arguing such a steep increase in spending is unrealistic when the state is already poised to spend more than it brings in during the current fiscal year and in the future. Shapiro’s proposal would spend $4.6 billion more than the state is projected to bring in in the 2026-27 fiscal year, requiring officials to pull most new spending from Pennsylvania’s $7.7 billion Rainy Day Fund, or find funding from new revenue streams like the taxation of recreational marijuana that do not yet exist.
Screen shows skill games and cannabis regulation and reform as Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal in the state House chamber in Harrisburg Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
Shapiro’s proposed spending hike equates to a $2.7 billion total increase over the 2025-26 budget. Approximately $1 billion of that would fulfill increased federal Medicaid obligations, another $1 billion would be for new initiatives proposed by the governor, and $700 million would go to other funding increases, according to a Shapiro administration official.
The proposal does not include any broad tax increase on state residents. Instead, Shapiro’s budget pitch includes proposals to generate nearly $2 billion in new revenue, largely from the taxation and legalization of recreational marijuana and regulation of so-called skill games — suggestions that he put forward last year but that failed to gain traction within the legislature. He proposed taxing adult-use cannabis at 20% to generate $729.4 million. He is also seeking a 52% tax on skill games, the unregulated and untaxed slot-machine look-alikes that have proliferated around the state in corner stores, bars, and fraternal organizations, to generate an estimated $765.9 million in its first year.
“Everyone knows we need to get this done. So let’s come together and finally get it over the finish line,” he added.
Shapiro proposed the legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana in each of his prior three budget proposals. Last year, he pitched a 20% tax on the sale of legal marijuana that he estimated would bring in $535.6 million in its first year. This year’s projection of $729.4 million in that time frame would be a 36% increase without changing the proposed tax rate. A Shapiro administration official said Tuesday that the projected increase is due to more interest from marijuana companies that want to do business in Pennsylvania.
Gov. Josh Shapiro make his annual budget proposal in the state House chamber in Harrisburg Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Pa. House Speaker Joanna McClinton (left) and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis (right) are seated behind him.
Shapiro’s budget also called for an additional $565 million for public schools toward the state’s new adequacy funding and tax equity formulas, in the latest installment of a nine-year plan to ensure students get an equitable education no matter their zip code. He requested $30 million in additional funding toward three of Pennsylvania’s state-related universities — the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University, and Temple University — to be awarded based on a new performance-based funding mechanism.
The governor also pitched creating a “Federal Response Fund” in Pennsylvania, seeking to set aside a $100 million reserve to offset any impact from President Donald Trump’s administration, in the event the federal government moves to cut funding to social services programs and grants to state and local governments, as it has done several times over the last year.
A focus on affordability
As his reelection campaign ramps up ahead of November, Shapiro made a broad pitch for policies aimed at making Pennsylvania more affordable.
Shapiro said he was working with utility companies to rein in energy costs and called for the construction of new homes and a bevy of renter protections in a plan to expand the availability and affordability of housing across the state.
He proposed a $1 billion fund, supported by the issuing of bonds, to pay for a range of infrastructure projects relating to energy, housing, local governments, and schools. But he billed it largely as “a major investment in building new housing.”
“We need hundreds of thousands of new homes,” Shapiro said. “This is how we build them.”
Shapiro also called for the state to create a catalog of local zoning rules and to help local governments revamp ordinances to allow for more housing.
The governor again proposed raising Pennsylvania’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, billing it as a cost savings of $300 million to the state on entitlement programs such as Medicaid.
In a news conference hosted by Senate and House Republicans following Shapiro’s budget address, top legislative leaders contended that Shapiro’s affordability vision for the state is unnecessary.
“What we need to do is stand back and watch the private sector work, and watch the private sector grow the jobs that will support this economy,” said House Minority Leader Jesse Topper (R., Bedford). “What we need to do as a government is far less. We need to get our footprint down. That is what we believe will make things more affordable for Pennsylvanians.”
He announced a new plan he said would protect consumers against rising energy costs associated with data centers, while also easing a path for tech companies to build the centers.
The Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development (GRID) plan would make data center developers either bring their own power generation or pay for any new generation they will need, he said, “not saddling homeowners with added costs because of their development.”
Shapiro said that too many data center proposals have been “shrouded in secrecy” but that they are crucial for the country.
“The United States is locked in a battle for AI supremacy against China,” Shapiro said. “Look, I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather the future be controlled by the United States of America and not Communist China.”
Shapiro said Tuesday he wants to avoid another lengthy stalled budget, which forced schools, counties, and nonprofits to take out billions in loans to stay afloat during the four-month impasse.
He invited leaders of all four caucuses — Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, House Democrats, and House Republicans — to meet on Wednesday to start budget talks much sooner than in past years. They all agreed to attend, he added.
“We all recognize it took too long last year and that had real impacts on Pennsylvanians, but we learned some valuable lessons through that process,” Shapiro said in his address, which lasted an hour and 24 minutes. “We learned that we all need to be at the table, and that we all need to be at the table sooner.”
The state House chamber as Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal in Harrisburg Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
Budget negotiations will begin Wednesday, Shapiro said, before legislative committees begin meeting about the proposal later this month. The budget will be negotiated in closed-door meetings between top leaders and is due by the start of the new fiscal year, which begins July 1.
One contentious issue is off the negotiating table for the forthcoming fiscal year: funding mass transit. Shapiro again pitched the state to increase the share of the sales and use tax that goes to mass transit, including SEPTA, as the transit agencies desperately need a new recurring revenue source. Shapiro does not want that to begin until July 1, 2027, when his latest short-term transit funding fix is scheduled to run out.
Shapiro and most lawmakers in the General Assembly are up for reelection this year. In previous midterm election years, the electoral pressure has sped up negotiations, as legislators want to bring home results to their constituents before they return to the campaign trail in a year when the governor’s mansion and control of the state House and Senate are on the line. (Shapiro’s likely opponent, Republican State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, immediately criticized his budget proposal, saying the pitch “didn’t come nearly close enough” to bridging the state’s spending deficit.)
But even if lawmakers move with haste, this year’s budget negotiations may be tense as leaders try to reset spending to better align with how much the state generates in revenue.
“We’re going to do everything we can to protect the taxpayer and make sure that the dollars that are allocated are wisely used,” Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) said. “We have to make sure we’re, again, stretching every taxpayer dollar we can and bringing the cost of government down as much as possible.”
But with the high-stakes election just months away, House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) cautioned Republicans against coming down hard on Shapiro, who has boasted consistently high approval ratings.
“I would argue the polls indicate that we have a very popular governor. They tried to obstruct him and his numbers only got more popular,” Bradford said. “My suggestion is it would be the political imperative, regardless of the policy implications, that they start working with this governor to pass things.”
Staff writers Thomas Fitzgerald, Maddie Hanna, Ariana Perez-Castells, and Susan Snyder contributed to this article.
Starting Monday, SEPTA will no longer post alerts about potential delays and cancellations due to bus and trolley driver shortages on social media, the service announced this week on its website.
Alerts about delays due to weather and other issues will continue.
Driver shortage alerts originated shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, at a time when the service was operating with a significant deficit of drivers, SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said. Now that the service has partly resolved the staffing issue and improved its notification systems, the generic alerts are no longer necessary, he said.
“It was never very precise,” Busch said. Alerts were not “giving customers a good picture of what they should expect.”
Since the pandemic, Busch said, the service has refined its tools, like its app and website, to offer customers a more accuratesense of what is happening with their route in real time,including how late a bus may be running and if it has been canceled.
The service has also gotten a better handle on staffing. During 2022 and early 2023, SEPTA was operating withabout 220 fewer bus and trolley operators than its budgeted headcount, Busch said. Nowthat gap has shrunk to about 100 operators, which makes it easier to adjust for staffingfluctuations.
Between those two improvements, the generic delay and cancellation warnings became obsolete, Busch said.
“It just seemed like it was the right time to move on from that and to try to push customers to where they’re going to get more accurate information,” he said.
Riderswho do not rely on the website, social media, or the app can get updates on their route by calling 215-580-7800.
SEPTAwas at one time a trailblazer in governmental use of social media. It first started posting on Twitter, now X, in 2008, long before many municipal transit agencies had adopted social media. In 2013, it expanded its presence on Twitter with @SEPTA_Social, whichwas staffed by SEPTA employees.
Customers could post complaints and concerns and receive a personalized response from SEPTA staff, signedwith the initials of the staff member. SEPTA shared best practices on social media interaction with transit officials in Chicago, New York, and Boston, Busch said.
SEPTA does not plan onmoving away from social media any time soon, he said, even as other large organizations move away from personalized customer service with artificial intelligence. The goal for SEPTA is more tailored support, Busch said, not less.
“That’s been a very successful program and we’ll probably only grow that going forward,” he said.
