Housing ban on former Hahnemann campus is on hold in City Council as concerns mount
For now, Councilmember Jeffery Young will not advance his ban of residential housing at the former hospital site.
Councilmember Jeffery Young pushed pause Tuesday on his highly controversial housing ban for the former Hahnemann hospital campus.
Young has proposed a “Vine Street Expressway” zoning overlay that would cover the shuttered medical center and its surroundings and block residential development from its largely empty buildings and lots.
Although developers have struggled to find new office or healthcare tenants for the area, Young initially described his legislation as a means to preserve the former campus as a jobs hub.
However, an apartment development is proposed in the former Hahnemann patient towers by New York-based developer Dwight City Group — which is why most observers were stunned when Young introduced his last-minute bill banning all housing development from the area.
Then in a sudden reversal at a City Council hearing Tuesday, Young said he was not advancing the bill.
“We’re holding it so we can further [communicate] with all the community stakeholders that are involved,” Young said in an interview after the hearing. “We want to make sure that this project represents the best interest of the city of Philadelphia, and by continuing dialogue, we’ll achieve that goal.”
No interest groups have officially come out in favor of the legislation. Pro-housing groups, the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, and the building trades unions have all expressed concerns about it.
Property owners who would be affected include influential local institutions including Brandywine Realty Trust and Drexel University. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration was also concerned, especially as the administration pushes to get 30,000 units of housing built or repaired during her term through the Housing Opportunities Made Easy (H.O.M.E.) plan.
“This bill conflicts with the goals of the comprehensive plan and the goals of the H.O.M.E. plan to support residential development,” said testimony prepared for Paula Brumbelow Burns of the City Planning Commission.
Ironically, as a result of Young’s anti-housing legislation, permits have been secured for 824 units of housing on the former hospital site, as property owners rushed to secure the right to develop apartments before the feared ban would be enacted.
With the exception of Dwight City Group’s proposal, it is not clear that many of those permits will quickly result in housing.
The application for 300 units at Martinelli Park and 163 units at the Brandywine-owned Bellet building do not appear to signify new projects in the immediate future, but instead an effort to preserve value and flexibility of use.
Young argued that the legislation has been successful in that it compelled property owners to talk with his office about their plans.
“People need to understand what’s happening when you have large properties where potentially thousands of units will be developed there,” Young said. “We have properties that as a former hospital that’s filled with asbestos and other types of issues, no one knows what’s going on.”