Many people say Center City is unsafe, but Prema Katari Gupta wants to change that perception in her new role

In 1991, Philadelphia had been losing residents for decades. Few new homes were being built in the city and Center City’s streets were largely vacant after 5 p.m.

That year, Paul Levy, an enthusiast for the kind of walkable dense urban areas rarely found in the United States, became the head of a newly founded business improvement district known as Center City District. Since then, CCD has grown to be one of America’s most influential business improvement districts. But while Levy has sway with many influential people, including Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker, earlier this year he announced he would step down as president of the organization at the end of 2023.

Prema Katari Gupta, who has worked at the organization since 2020, and previously worked at the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp.’s Navy Yard operation and for the University City District, will take over as president and CEO.

Gupta takes over at a pivotal time in Philadelphia, with a new mayor and a young City Council taking control of a city that in some ways is in a very different place than it was in 2019. Although Center City itself has seen substantial improvements, CCD’s latest study shows only 83% of pedestrian volume has returned when comparing November 2019 and November 2023.

Gupta sat down with The Inquirer just before Christmas for an interview about how she sees the state of downtown, how remote work has challenged CCD, and why she wants to emphasize Center City’s role in fighting climate change.

I wonder if it’s time to stop talking about recovery [from the pandemic]. We may have a differently formulated ecosystem now. We haven’t seen any evidence that the return to office has plateaued, but it’s clearly lagging. It’s not where we thought it might be.

But at the same time, we have more people living downtown. One of the things that’s kept our downtown really strong is that over the various disruptions of the last four years, we have had a strong and growing residential population. We had 2,800 new units built in 2022 in greater Center City.

People want to live here. We are the envy of a lot of other downtowns, because we do have that walkable, granular mixed-use downtown, with a lot of different populations using it at different times. That isn’t to say we don’t have a lot of challenges. But I think our downtown is very strong.

I’ll be focusing on continuity, and [keeping Center City] clean and safe, because that is what we’re hearing from folks. Downtown needs to be clean and safe and comfortable and inviting to a really broad range of users.

There’s no doubt we have some quality-of-life challenges, but I do think a lot about actual safety, and serious crimes are down in Center City. We don’t talk enough about that. And I think that there continues to be a gulf between perception and reality. I think this organization is in charge of telling the story of the great stuff that’s happening too.

One of our greatest attributes in Center City is this walkable grid we have. Not every land use fits in a walkable grid. What the Navy Yard does really well is create a home for production facilities that don’t fit in a grid. A lot of the development that I worked on when I was at the Navy Yard was really big buildings that wouldn’t fit here. So it’s not competition. I don’t see it that way at all.

There’s a case to be made that there’s almost a life cycle of companies. They start researching at a university in the city, get incubated in University City, and when they get their larger rounds of funding, traditionally, they’d go out in the suburbs somewhere. Now there’s a place [the Navy Yard] to keep the talent, the employment, the taxes, the vitality within the city. And I think it’s really exciting that residential is coming to the Navy Yard.

It’s definitely something we’ve thought about. The situation we’re in, that we weren’t in in the ‘90s, is that our assessments come from more diversified sources. So it comes from the rental apartment buildings, too. I think we’re still waiting and seeing. We haven’t seen any evidence that the return to work has plateaued. And we do know that the Class A product [the highest-end office buildings] in downtown is performing well. We are seeing more and more companies continue to come back to work.

Where it hasn’t happened, whether it’s on the company level or the individual level, I think we need to interrogate that a bit. Is it because of some logistical inefficiency, like a commute? Is it because of caregiving responsibilities? Is it about perceptions of safety? We can deal with that. We can manage that. We can support companies with information and information fairs, which we’ve done a good amount of and will continue to do.

I do think that there’s systemic things, like around caregiving, that the last couple of years has daylighted in a really obvious way. So I think that it’s something to continue to look at, but I don’t think there’s a looming crisis. I don’t think that it’s resolved yet.

That is something that we need to explore further. But I’ve always felt that the value proposition of both living and working downtown is quality of life. Where we can very immediately put our thumb on the scale is improving quality of life in Center City.

There’s also an undeveloped equity argument for downtown. We talk a lot about how two-thirds of jobs downtown don’t require a college degree. I think people have the perception that it’s a white-collar attorney working downtown. It’s not. So I’m thinking a lot about framing downtown as the best place, the most convenient place, for opportunity.

I’m also really interested in framing downtown in terms of climate change. We need to double down on dense land uses and public transportation. There’s no other place in the region, and I’m including University City in this, too, where you don’t need a car. We are accessible to most of the region without a car, and that’s a very strong both equity and climate consideration.