In 2019, a West Philly community development corporation was excited to announce a change coming to Parkside: a community-focused Starbucks would soon be coming to a shopping complex in the neighborhood.
Four years later, it’s clear the project never broke ground — and nobody wants to speak about what happened.
Calls and emails to Starbucks and the Parkside Association of Philadelphia, the CDC that touted the plan, have gone without response.
The planned cafe, in the ParkWest Town Center strip mall at 52nd and Jefferson, was announced as a “community store.”
Started in 2011, the community store program aims to adapt Starbucks’ typical model to the specifics of a neighborhood, in partnership with local nonprofits with a history of “creating progress for disadvantaged communities,” per Starbucks’ website.
ParkWest Town Center is anchored by a Lowe’s and a ShopRite, reachable by bus, and home to a diverse set of businesses. In the four years since the planned Starbucks was announced, some stores have actually left the complex, including a T-Mobile location that recently closed its doors.
Some people shopping there had never heard about the plan to open a Starbucks, community store or otherwise. Others said having a cafe would be nice, but not fill an essential role.
“Of course, I like coffee,” shopper Sara Issacs said. “But a pharmacy would be good in this area.”
Economic development and training young workers are a large part of the Starbucks community store effort, which in 2015 was projected to include at least 100 locations by 2025. The closest example to Philadelphia is in Trenton, New Jersey.
That store’s Facebook page is full of images from neighborhood events held in and around the store, another main initiative of community stores. The plan for Parkside was to have extra space in the store for community events, according to initial reporting.
“Starbucks will make this mall busier. And people will think about this neighborhood twice,” Lucinda Hudson, president of the Parkside Association, told WHYY News at the time. “They think about it now, but they’ll think about it twice when they see a Starbucks sign.”
The Parkside Association was supposed to help the Seattle-based coffee giant hire 20-25 people for part- and full-time positions, eligible to participate in the coffee giant’s tuition-funding partnership with Arizona State University.
VestedIn, a community development financial institution based in University City, is one of the local groups originally attached to the community store project. Representatives there did not return requests for comment.
The context around Starbucks opening a location in West Philly was quite different when the store was first announced, off the heels of the April 2018 viral incident where two Black men were arrested at the 18th and Spruce cafe, sparking national headlines and a national response from Starbucks.
The company settled with the men for an undisclosed amount and adjusted its trespassing policy in the wake of the brand-damaging arrests.
Local Starbucks news has recently been dominated by discussions around organized labor. A worker at the 9th and South cafe recently filed a petition to decertify the location’s union, while workers at the store on Penn’s campus filed a petition to unionize as part of a one-day strike.
