Snow isn’t a constant in Philadelphia but after two big storms dumped on us just weeks apart this year, it’s clear some things remain predictably consistent during a snowstorm in Philly, no matter the year.
While all hail hasn’t broken loose yet, we have fallen right back into our classic winter storm habits, some of which aren’t snow great. So put on your parka, pull up your boots, and come traipsing through our winter tropes with me, because if there’s one thing that certainly isn’t predictable during a snowstorm it’s SEPTA.
Acting like the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Vail
A snow boarder goes down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
I love that people sled and snowboard down the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art after a snowstorm like it was a ski resort. It’s one of those traditions that gives Philly such a wonderful, joyous sense of place, but, like many of our beloved traditions, it is also a highly dangerous activity.
There is no ground beneath the snow here, just pointy stone steps that could leave your face looking like a Picasso painting if you hit them the wrong way. Even if you manage to stay upright the entire way down, it’s a bumpier ride than Philly’s pothole-plagued streets (which are certainly going to get worse after this storm).
A sledder wipes out while sledding down the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps.
The substance
Throughout a snowstorm and for five minutes immediately following one, Philadelphia looks absolutely stunning. But after those five minutes are up, things get real gross, real quick. The snow turns into lakes of slush and large, gray mountains of immovable ice, making the city look like a dumpster site on Hoth for the next five weeks.
It reminds me of that movie The Substance with Demi Moore, except the substance for Philly is snow. It makes the city beautiful for a short time, but in the end, it just turns it into a bigger mess than it was to begin with.
A pedestrian walks past a large pile of snow and ice along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway this year.
Doggone dirty
Among the many reasons the snow gets so gross so quickly here is because some dog owners are under the impression that the laws of polite society freeze when the temperature does. Just because your dog left its pile on a pile of snow does not mean you don’t have to pick it up.
Trash spotted in the snow in Philadelphia. Photographed, but not pictured (as a courtesy to you), was also a pile of dog poo.
Then there are the really terrible, lazy owners who kick snow over their dog’s piles in an attempt to cover it up, thus leaving a nasty surprise for unsuspecting pedestrians. While all dogs may go to heaven, there’s a special circle of hell for those folks.
Snowstalgia
No matter how much snow is predicted or falls during a storm, it will inevitably be compared to the Blizzard of ‘96 by at least three people you speak you to, or three times by at least one person you speak to.
The Blizzard of ‘96 is pretty much our Beetlejuice, you have to say it three times or it doesn’t snow around here.
Front page and inside photos from The Philadelphia Inquirer. January 8, 1996. The Blizzard of 1996, or “Storm of the Century,” a severe nor’easter that was Philadelphia’s largest-ever snowfall of 30.7 inches Jan. 6-8, 1996.
Work or Wawa
There are two types of people who travel out in Philly during a storm: those who are going to work and those who are going to Wawa.
There’s absolutely no rational reason someone has to go on a Wawa run during a snowstorm — especially since everyone waited an hour in line at the Acme for milk and bread two days before it hit — yet there they always are, sometimes in flip-flops, just picking up a cup of coffee like it’s something they can’t get at home.
The flagship Wawa store near Independence Hall.
I’m sure some folks go just in the hopes of being interviewed by the 6ABC reporter who’s doing live shots from the Wawa parking lot, and some do it just to get out of the house while their kids are at home. Whatever the reason, if you’re one of those people, be nice to the Wawa workers who risked their lives to go to work so you had somewhere to go.
Savesies
Few things will pit neighbor-against-neighbor in this city quite like savesies, the longstanding Philly practice of using an orange cone, folding chair, or any other inanimate object to save a parking space you’ve shoveled out.
Collage of savesies, a long-held parking tradition across Philadelphia.
Folks are either firmly for or against the tradition, but no matter which camp they land in, few are bold enough to mess around and find out by parking in a saved space, lest they become the recipient of a strongly-worded letter on their windshield, a knock at their door, or whatever curse has plagued the Flyers since 1976.
Shorts shovelers
Shoveling in shorts is a long-standing tradition practiced by men in the Philadelphia region.
It could be 3 degrees out with a windshear of negative 10 and eight inches of snow on the ground and you will still see some dude out shoveling in shorts and an Eagles hoodie. In Delco, you will see several.
Do these men get hot flashes in their legs? Is their calf hair luxuriously thick? Did someone cut off the bottom half of all their pants? Inquirer minds (mainly mine) want to know!
Greetings from sunny Florida
During a snowstorm, someone you know will inevitable post a picture of themselves in Florida, where they snowbird in the winter or are visiting for Phillies spring training. The caption will say something like “Sorry to miss out on the storm!” or “Sending my friends in Philly sunny vibes from Florida!”
Philadelphia Phillies Trea Turner and Bryce Harper enter the field during the first full-squad workout of spring training Feb. 16, 2026, at BayCare Ballpark in Clearwater, Fla.
These are bold-faced lies. They are not sorry and they are not sending you anything but a hard time. Just rest assured in the knowledge that no matter what, you are in the greatest city in the world and they are still in Florida.
Saladine Sherrod was in a jam. The 34-year-old handyman from North Philly needed to get to a job in Roxborough, but he didn’t have a car. He says the PPA had towed it the night before. “I was on top of the snow,” Sherrod said. “There weren’t any lines of demarcation.”
And speaking of the winter storm, it was still wreaking havoc on SEPTA. “It was detour after detour after detour,” Sherrod said about the bus routes that day. It had been two weeks since it snowed, but cold weather had kept the city encased in snow and ice, and a brutal wind chill had plunged temperatures to historic lows. Sherrod said bus operators were unavailable as a result. “Employees were calling off because of the weather or some craziness like that.”
He would have to take three buses to get to his job and three more to get home. That would cost almost $18. He only had $40 to get through the rest of the week, and several more jobs lined up. Plus, “with the way the weather was,” he said, “I’d be sitting outside for hours.”
So Sherrod came up with a different plan. He found a shop that would finance an electric scooter for $40 down and set off toward Roxborough, following the “via bike” route on Google Maps. Having moved to Philadelphia from the Bronx in 2022, Sherrod still wasn’t all that familiar with the city. He knew his part of town, near Broad and Logan, but Germantown was a mystery. Still, he zipped along its side streets on his newly purchased Yaddea Elite Prime without much concern for his safety.
Saladine Sherrod, 34, of North Philadelphia, Pa., poses for a photo with his electric scooter in Philadelphia, Pa., on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026.
It wasn’t until Google Maps ushered him out of the neighborhood and pointed him toward a busy intersection in a dense, wooded area that his anxiety spiked. He could see he was meant to reach a bike path dotting the four-lane road he was about to turn onto, but it was closed because of the snow. He had no choice but to take the “via car” route. As he turned, the road narrowed. Vehicles flew past him. Unbeknown to Sherrod, he was now on one of Philadelphia’s most dangerous streets: Lincoln Drive.
Car accidents occur almost every day on Lincoln Drive, a treacherous, shoulderless state road that winds along the perimeter of Wissahickon Valley Park. Drivers regularly take its hairpin curves at nearly twice the posted speed limit of 25 mph. Since 2019, five people have died driving on it. Fed-up residents who live nearby have long pushed for additional safety measures. In September 2023, the city’s Streets Department added speed tables along one of the most dangerous stretches to force drivers to slow down.
But that mid-February afternoon, they still appeared to be speeding to Sherrod. “It looked like a NASCAR rally,” he said. Sherrod had never driven on Lincoln Drive, but he immediately sensed he was in a precarious situation. He maneuvered as far to the right as he could and focused on the snaking road ahead. He tried to ignore how cold he was. “My hands were numb,” he said. “My legs were dead. If I moved them, it felt like a bunch of needles were poking me.”
He wasn’t wearing a helmet. He was scared, he said, but he had a job to get to. “It was one of those scares that, because you have the responsibility, it’s almost OK,” Sherrod said. “Like, ‘I heard that there are alligators in this lake, but I’ve got to get to the other side.’”
What Sherrod saw as commitment, though, others saw as recklessness. He remembers one driver shouting at him “out of concern.” Sherrod let them know he was OK with a nod, and they drove off. But unbeknown to Sherrod, the driver had filmed him and uploaded the video to Instagram. “WHO MANS IS THIS??? Only in Philly electric scooter seen driving on Lincoln Drive,” the caption read.
The clip was already pinballing across local feeds when Sherrod finally escaped Lincoln Drive via Henry Avenue and arrived at work. A few hours later, he finished building furniture for his customer, and they paid for an Uber so he would not have to ride the scooter home in the freezing cold. By then, the video had spread across Philly.
Still, it would take a few days to reach Sherrod. He only saw it when a friend reached out to show it to him, wanting to know what happened to his car. Sherrod was stunned. But the commenters seemed to understand his circumstances. “That’s probably his only transportation to work,” read a typical comment. “He not tryna get fired cuz SEPTA on bulls—,” read another.
Sherrod seized the moment and reposted the clip. In follow-up videos, he criticized the PPA and SEPTA and hawked T-shirts he made to commemorate his ride.
He’s only made $50 so far, but it’s not his only income stream. In addition to his handyman work, he recently picked up a part-time job as a cashier at the Dollar Store. He hopes to be back behind the wheel soon. For now, he is still riding the scooter to work. “It’s all working itself out,” Sherrod said. “Slowly, but surely.”
If it wasn’t an actual blizzard, Philly’s biggest snowfall in a decade sure acted like one, and the weather the rest of this week isn’t expected to be particularly pleasant.
But in terms of disruption — not to mention aesthetics — this was in a wholly different category from the Jan. 25 siege of snow and ice. And the aftermath should not be anywhere near as punitive and burdensome.
Although the 14 inches measured officially at Philadelphia International Airport, dwarfed the 9.3 inches of snow and sleet that accumulated in last month’s storm, Zach Schwartz, 33, was among those who found the picturesque snow more palatable than the attack of ice balls and an Arctic freeze.
“The last snowstorm was a tough time for everyone,” said Schwartz, who was at a Point Breeze playground helping a friend build an igloo for their kids, “and I think the city was kind of in shock a little bit.”
The most recent storm, which left as much as 20 inches of snow in parts of South Jersey and southeastern Bucks County, did cause some issues.
More than 130,000 households lost power at some point. Scores of trees came down as the snow, heavy and wet at the start, glommed onto branches that took beatings from the winds that gusted past 40 mph.
The storms closed schools to the chagrin of hundreds of thousands of learning-eager children, and museums on Monday. It disrupted SEPTA services and airport operations.
At least 87 trees across the city were downed as a result of the storm as of Monday afternoon, and the city was working to determine which ones to prioritize clearing first, Parks and Recreation commissioner Susan Slawson said.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker advised Philadelphians to avoid unnecessary travel as crews worked to clear the streets.
Yet early fears that the snowfall would reach what the National Weather Service called “potentially historic” levels didn’t quite materialize, and it was not known if the storm had met “blizzard” criteria. Stopping short of “historic,” New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill called it “a generational storm.”
This one likely won’t have the staying power of last month’s storm
While the volume of snow is formidable, road crews throughout the region now have a tremendous ally — the late-February sun.
The city did adjust its response after the prior storm cleanup left many residents chock-full of complaints. Director of Clean and Green Initiatives Carlton Williams said Monday instead of one snow melter, the city secured three, with two already on the road Monday, despite the much shorter notice of the storm.
But the big melter is in the sky.
The amount of solar energy beaming toward Philadelphia is more than 35% stronger than it was on Jan. 25, according to NASA’s figures, and blacktop is great absorber of sunlight. Plus the region now is getting an hour more of daylight.
Plus, instead of an Arctic freeze, it is forecast to be moderately cold this week, with highs in the low 30s Tuesday, and in the 40s Wednesday and Thursday.
A weak clipper could produce an inch or less of snow early Wednesday, but, sorry kids, that won’t be another school-closer. More light rain or snow or a mix is possible Thursday.
Computer models on Monday were seeing a potential for more snow early next week, but they may well sober up come Tuesday.
After the Jan. 25 storm, Philly had 18 consecutive days of at least 3 inches on the ground officially at the airport, the longest stretch in 65 years. That streak won’t be challenged this time around.
One other huge difference: Those 14 inches didn’t include a speck of ice, which, as we learned, is amazingly melt-resistant.
Why snow totals varied tremendously
The nor’easter that generated the snow did qualify as a “bomb cyclone,” said Tom Kines, senior meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. The technical criteria aside, a bomb cyclone is particularly powerful storm.
In fact, the storm’s intensity, based on a measure of its central pressure, was equal to that of a Category 1 hurricane, he added.
Fortunately, the Shore escaped major flooding, but the winds circulating around the storm’s center over the ocean hurled back snow far inland.
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South Jersey locations received the most, along with areas in southeastern Bucks County. However, totals backed off precipitously to the west.
“There was a really tight gradient,” said Amanda Lee, a weather service meteorologist in Mount Holly. All areas in Philly’s neighboring Pennsylvania counties did report at least several inches of snow.
Within that broad east-west divide, however, amounts varied considerably from place to place, due in part to “banding,” in which narrow corridors of snow, caused by rapidly rising air, migrate from place depositing rapidly accumulating snow to areas underneath.
Conversely, areas on either side of the band are snow-deprived.
By the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s decree, a blizzard requires “frequent winds of 35 mph or higher with considerable falling and/or blowing snow that frequently reduces visibility to 1/4 of a mile or less. These conditions are expected to prevail for a minimum of 3 hours.”
That’s a lot to ask for a snowstorm, and it is going to take considerable forensic work of poring through observations to determine whether those conditions were met in Philadelphia or elsewhere in the region, said Nick Guzzo, a weather service meteorologist in Mount Holly.
Another big difference between this and the January storm
Whatever else it is called, this was the most spectacularly beautiful snowfall of the season, thanks to the snow’s remarkable adhesive power.
On the morning of Jan. 26 the trees were bare, as though they wanted no part of the snow and ice-ball assault.
On Monday this time around, snow enchanted the branches and uncannily worked its way into architectural details.
Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock said his town, famous for its Victorian buildings, “looks beautiful” covered in the foot of snow that had fallen.
Said Mullock, “It looks like a snow globe.”
Staff writers Ximena Conde, Kristen A. Graham, Michelle Myers, Amy S. Rosenberg, Henry Savage, and Nick Vadala contributed to this article.
Following several years of major worker organizing efforts and high-profile strikes, 2025 brought a change in momentum for the labor movement. President Donald Trump’s administration sought to end federal workers’ union contracts and, through a firing, left the National Labor Relations Board without a quorum and unable to make decisions.
But the percentage of workers who are union members nationwide has stayed pretty steady in the last year, new data shows. And in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, union membership rates fell.
In 2025, 10% of the country’s total workforce was part of a union, compared to 9.9% in 2024, according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s the first time since 2020 that the rate has inched up — albeit slightly — instead of down.
However, BLS noted, this year’s estimates are not fully comparable to past years because they are based on a BLS survey that is missing October figures due to the government being shut down in October and part of November.
In the past year, there have been “a lot of kind of anti-labor efforts coming out of the White House,” said Todd Vachon, assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University.
Despite those efforts Vachon said, “labor has pretty much maintained the same at the national level. … The Trump attacks haven’t really had any effect yet, at least in the first year.”
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Union membership rates dropped to an all-time low nationwide in 2023 and remained pretty similar in 2024. During those years, roughly one in 10 U.S. workers was part of a union.
When BLS first started recording this data in 1983, about two in 10 U.S. workers were unionized. There were 17.7 million unionized workers in 1983 and 14.7 million last year.
Danny Bauder, president of the Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, speaks at an event supporting federal workers in October.
Unionizing in N.J. and Pa.
In New Jersey, 14.7% of workers were unionized last year, and in Pennsylvania, it was 10.9%.
In both states, that was a decline of around one percentage point from 2024, but BLS noted that state-level data “should be interpreted with caution,” due to the shutdown-related incomplete data.
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Some local labor action highlights from this past year include:
Whole Foods unionization: Workers at the Spring Garden location voted to form a union in January, becoming the first unionized Whole Foods staff. Whole Foods challenged the election, and the NLRB was without a quorum to decide the case last year.
Graduate student workers at the University of Pennsylvania reached a tentative agreement on a first contract this month after threatening to strike, nearly two years after unionizing.
Employees of several hotels went on strike in Octoberand November as their union, Unite Here Local 274, sought new contracts for roughly 1,000 members at eight Philadelphia hotels.
National Starbucks strike: Philadelphia Starbucks workers joined a nationwide strike in November amid contract negotiations. Some have returned to their jobs, but over 1,000 continued to strike as of early February.
New teacher contract: The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers got a new contract for 14,000 teachers, nurses, counselors, secretaries, and paraprofessionals, averting a strike.
Some 271,000 federal jobs were cut between January and November. Meanwhile, the union membership rate in the public sector increased by 0.7% nationally in the last year according to the new BLS data.
Vachon notes that the vast majority of public sector workers are at the municipal level, not federal.
“The hiring of police, and teachers, and sanitation workers across the thousands of cities around the U.S. more than compensated for [cuts at the federal level], because we see an increase in the public sector,” he said.
Trump also fired a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) early last year, which left it without a quorum to issue rulings. In some cases that can slow down the formation of a new union — at the Amazon-owned Whole Foods in Philadelphia, for example.
The number of union elections overseen by the NLRB declined last year and the overall number of workers involved in those elections dropped too, according to the nonpartisan Center for American Progress.
“A huge percentage of new union organizing is required every year just to maintain the same level of unionization, because of the churning and the growth of the overall labor force,” said Vachon. “If the labor force is not growing, then you can actually see increases in union density.”
And unions are being cautious of reaching out to the NLRB under the Trump administration, he notes.
“There’s a fear [that] if something gets sent up to the NLRB that the ruling is going to set a precedent that makes it even more difficult to organize,” said Vachon. “It’s kind of had a dampening effect in that way.”
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.
