YouthBuild charter school expansion is planned in the long vacant Germantown Town Hall

After almost 30 years of vacancy, a new plan for Germantown Town Hall is raising hopes that the building will be brought back to life — although skeptical neighborhood groups fret about a track record of defunct proposals for the area’s historic landmarks.

The plan from Philadelphia-based West Powelton Development would bring office and lab space for YouthBuild charter school to the property, using up to 17,000 of its 27,000 square feet.

Councilmember Cindy Bass introduced legislation to move the property to the company’s control on March 19. That’s the furthest a redevelopment proposal for Germantown Town Hall has progressed in decades.

“The game changer for us was YouthBuild,” said Anthony Fullard, president of West Powelton Development, who sits on YouthBuild’s board but plans to resign. “You have a tenant that’s taking up two-thirds of your space. That is why we have the confidence to finally say this project will happen.”

The rest of West Powelton’s redevelopment plans include a ghost kitchen — where food trucks could prepare their wares — and a cafe taking up another 4,000 square feet, run by Chef Reeky of the Cheezy Vegan in South Philadelphia and Delaware County.

Programming for the remainder of the building is not finalized, but it could be used for community space and public services.

In January, Fullard’s daughter, Antoinene, formerly vice president of her father’s company, joined Bass’s staff as director of land use. Bass, who represents Germantown, said Antoinene Fullard is not working on anything related to the town hall project.

Bass has favored West Powelton to redevelop Germantown Town Hall since at least 2022, and her blessing is essential due to City Council’s role in land use.

Unlike in many other cities, legislation is needed to move sales of city-owned land forward, giving City Council effective veto power over development of public property.

YouthBuild provides education and training to students, ages 17 to 21, who have struggled in traditional schools. The charter school teaches job skills in food service, construction, and healthcare and is based out of a building at 2309 N. Broad St.

YouthBuild does not plan to use Germantown Town Hall for traditional classrooms but as office space and learning labs for students studying building trades and culinary arts.

YouthBuild’s Broad Street building doesn’t have space for students to use power tools or cut lumber inside. Fullard’s project will give them that room as well as access to a commercial kitchen.

“It’s not going to be a space for students every single day,” said Le’Yondo Dunn, CEO of YouthBuild.

“Our regional support team is going to be in there,” he said, “then we’re going to have these experiential learning labs that will be used throughout the year, where young people might come and do a cooking demonstration, or they’re doing carpentry.”

YouthBuild’s enrollment increased from 225 students to 280 this school year. The goal is to serve 400 in 2026-27.

The organization also is beginning to offer evening educational programs, which will be partly based out of the town hall.

No redevelopment proposal for Germantown Town Hall has advanced this far since an ill-fated attempt to give it to scandal-plagued Germantown Settlement in 2006.

More recently, Fullard sought to redevelop the building as apartments but says he was unable to secure financing.

This time, with YouthBuild on board, the developer is confident in securing by May the necessary $5.6 million in tax credits, $3 million in state grants, and $4.4 million in debt. No city money is devoted to the project beyond the land being transferred to Fullard’s company for a nominal fee.

Fullard is working with local architect Sam Olshin, who has designed historical renovations of major projects like The Met on North Broad Street.

While neighborhood groups are intrigued by the idea of YouthBuild coming to Germantown — the school has a good reputation — some are skeptical about the plan.

They point to the previous proposals for the town hall, and another nearby city-owned property, the Germantown YWCA, which have gone nowhere.

“We don’t have a lot of faith that he’ll be able to pull it off,” said Julie Stapleton Carroll of West Central Germantown Neighbors. “It would be awesome if he could, but we’re dubious.”

Carroll’s organization and other neighborhood groups are frustrated by what they describe as Bass’s unwillingness to move on from developers who have failed to deliver at city-owned properties.

At the YWCA, Bass supports the Ohio-based developer KBK Enterprises, which has done no development of the site since 2016. Last year, the Redevelopment Authority said it was not worth seeking a different developer without the Council member’s support.

“We’ve been here so many times before,” said Patrick Jones of the 59th Democratic Ward. “It seems like this is just another developer that Bass is pushing.”

Bass says her legislation will be signed into law by June at the latest.

Then West Powelton plans to complete acquisition and begin construction in the second half 2026. Fullard says he hopes to have the building open for the 2028-2029 school year.

Olshin, the architect, says he was inspired to get involved because he saw an Instagram post critical of the project.

He knew Fullard because they both served on YouthBuild’s board and reached out to see if he could help. The general contractor is Domus Construction, which also worked on The Met, and whose president served on the YouthBuild board with Fullard and Olshin.

“Everybody’s on the same side in this, and hopefully the community will rally behind it as well,” Olshin said.

The building will need repairs on exterior stone work that’s begun crumbling, and the interior, which still sports wall calendars from the mid-1990s, needs to be cleaned out.

In the long term, Anthony Fullard wants to build an apartment building on the surface parking lot behind the town hall.

But for now, “all of our energy is focused on the town hall,” he said. “We believe this preservation construction will be the lighthouse for the corridor and bring more restaurants, more retail, more development.”

Neighborhood groups have questions about Antoinene Fullard’s connection to the project.

Bass said that Fullard’s daughter is her new director of land use, as of early January, but that Antoinene is not working on anything related to the project.

“Obviously she’s connected to the developer, so we specifically made sure that she was not working on this project,” Bass said. “And more importantly, the project is moving forward.”

When Bass introduced the March 19 bill to move the project forward, she had Antoinene Fullard deliver printed materials about the town hall plan to an Inquirer reporter who had asked about the proposal.

Bass said later that the exchange was merely a “hand-off” and was not an indication that Antoinene Fullard was working on the project.

Antoinene Fullard did not respond to an interview request, beyond noting that she does not work at West Powelton Development anymore.

Philadelphia’s Ethics Board has regulations that require city employees with a financial interest in legislation involving themselves or family members to notify the Chief Clerk of City Council and every member of the legislative body of the conflict and recuse themselves from the matter.

Antoinene Fullard has until five days before a hearing about the bill, which is not yet scheduled, to submit a disclosure and disqualification letter.

“Someone working in a City Council office so closely connected to a project that the office is advancing, you can see why this would raise some eyebrows,” said Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director at Common Cause Pennsylvania. “Our stance on the situation is that the city has fairly strong ethical guidelines here, and it’s imperative that they be followed.”

Staff writer Kristen A. Graham contributed to this article.