Mayor Cherelle Parker is hoping to boost new business and job creation in the city by offering “white glove treatment” to companies who need help navigating the city’s regulatory labyrinth.
During her annual start-of-the-year speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia, Parker signed an order creating a new city division called PHL PRIME. It will aim to provide selected businesses a single contact who can help them obtain permits and licenses and streamline communication with Streets, Water, Licenses & Inspections and other departments.
“You own a business, and you are thinking about coming to the city, but there are five different things you need to happen,” Parker said. “We will have one place for you to call. You call and speak with our PRIME PHL department, and they will navigate for you all of those departments and the whole bureaucracy in order to help us become more efficient.”
Businesses will be able to apply to the program, and will be admitted based on a few benchmark expectations: the number of “quality jobs” they will create in the city, the amount of tax revenue they will generate, and their projected capital investment, the order says.
The new division is a project of the Managing Director’s Office and the departments of Commerce and Planning, and will be staffed with existing city employees, Parker said.
The mayor announced the program to several hundred business people, elected officials and others attending the chamber’s annual mayoral luncheon at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Wednesday.
She also reviewed other administration initiatives that she said would help improve economic opportunity for city residents, and touted new or potential businesses that she said could generate tens of thousands of well-paying jobs over the long term. Those include developments at the Bellwether District and the Navy Yard, shipbuilding and defense work, and her oft-mentioned goal of a new entertainment district in the South Philadelphia stadium complex.
“Why? More jobs, more crowds, and more tax revenues in the city and the Commonwealth to help us provide the services that we need for our most vulnerable constituencies,” Parker said. “We can’t be afraid to think big, folks. That’s how you increase economic mobility.”
Confronting long-standing poverty
The speech came as the mayor is advancing a number of economic development efforts — her H.O.M.E. housing plan, workforce training programs, business tax cuts, and Market East corridor revival initiative, among others — and confronting ongoing entrenched poverty in the city.
She mentioned research by Harvard University economist Raj Chetty that found Philadelphia ranks in last place — 50th out of the 50 biggest metropolitan regions — in economic mobility, a measure of long-term economic outcomes for children born into poverty.
“We are making progress but, Philadelphia, we are nowhere near where we need to be,” Parker said. When she heard about the ranking, she said, “I got mad … but to me, it became a challenge. How are we going to find a way to do away with the status quo in the city of Philadelphia?”
Philadelphia’s unemployment rate stood at 4.5% in December, slightly higher than the state rate of 4.2%. But that figure masks a huge divide among demographic groups, with Black residents reportedly unemployed at double the rate of white residents.
While the city is no longer the “poorest big city in the country,” as it was for years, the most recent available data shows the poverty rate still exceeds 20%, higher than many peer cities.
As of 2023, about a quarter of Black and Hispanic residents and 19% of Asian residents lived in poverty, compared to 12.5% of white Philadelphians, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts report.
Housing factories and worker training
Describing the city’s response to its residents’ economic hurdles, she began with her signature initiative, the H.O.M.E., or Housing Opportunities Made Easy, program, which she says will spend $2 billion to build and restore 30,000 units of housing over the next few years.
Much of that money will go toward aiding homeowners and renters to find and maintain their homes, but last month Parker announced H.O.M.E. also encompasses a plan to build modular housing factories on the Logan Triangle, the former site of a neighborhood demolished in the 1980s because it was built on unstable ground.
“This is what we need most: factories with employees who are working around the clock, 24/7. Family-sustaining union jobs to build affordable and workforce housing for Philadelphians who really need housing right now,” she said Wednesday.
Other efforts she cited included the city’s $10 million commitment to support workforce development through community organizations and unions, and an additional $10 million for training programs from Comcast, the William Penn Foundation and the Philadelphia Foundation.
Parker also mentioned a number of programs aimed at helping residents, such as the city’s Financial Empowerment Center, which provides financial counseling; the BankOn Philadelphia Coalition, which provides low-cost banking; and the website claimyourmoneyPHL.com, which she said has helped residents obtain $19 million in tax refunds collectively.
She noted the expected economic impact of this year’s World Cup games, celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary and other events, and noted the city is spending $120 million to upgrade roads and infrastructure and stage events in many neighborhoods.
Envisioning thousands of jobs
Much of the mayor’s speech focused on business developments that may generate thousands of jobs in the future, such as a potential economic hub across a broad swath of South Philadelphia that city planners call “Lower South.”
The Bellwether District, the former oil refinery site being redeveloped into a warehouse complex, recently announced its first tenant — DrinkPAK, a canned beverage company that plans to create 175 jobs — and could eventually host more than 19,000 workers, Parker said. The Navy Yard could have 30,000 workers if it’s fully developed, and PhilaPort could employ 9,000, she added.
“You can begin to see and feel this vision of economic opportunity with me, because sometimes, Philadelphia … we get in our way, because we’re afraid to think big and think about Philadelphia in a way that we’ve never seen it before, and we have to begin to think bigger,” she said.
Parker touted planned expansions at Hanwha Philly Shipyard and at Rhoads Industries, which has U.S. Navy contracts, that she said could create several thousand new jobs, and said the city stands to benefit further from a potential boost in federal shipbuilding and defense spending.
Toward the end of her address, the mayor asked Chamber of Commerce CEO Chellie Cameron and other officials to join her on the stage as she signed the PHL PRIME order, which she said would ameliorate the “waiting game” businesses often endure as they seek permits and city approvals.
Philadelphia already offers some assistance programs for businesses, such as the Mayor’s Business Action Team, but Parker suggested PHL PRIME would be oriented more toward attracting new, “large-scale job creators” along the lines of the Bellwether’s DrinkPAK.
She ended the speech with references to celebrations of Philadelphia’s history, mentioning this year’s anniversary celebrations and the President’s House historic site, where the National Park Service’s removal of an exhibit about slavery recently led the city to sue the federal government.
“In this moment, where we’re celebrating democracy and the birth of our nation that occurred right here, I want you to remember that we cannot allow our history to be erased,” she said, to an extended burst of applause. “Our history matters.”
