5.0 University Place, a new parking garage to be developed near Penn’s campus, is located at 17 N. 41st St.
Credit: Weining Ding
A new 495-spot parking garage is set to be developed blocks away from Penn’s campus.
Officially named 5.0 University Place, the garage will be located at 17 N. 41st St. and replace a surface parking lot. The project’s purpose is to provide dedicated parking for the city’s new police forensic laboratory, which is moving into the neighboring 3.0 University Place.
According to project plans, 29 spaces on the garage’s ground floor will be reserved for the lab with a separate secured entrance. Another 100 spots will be reserved for city employees, and the remainder of the garage will serve as paid public parking for nearby office and life sciences buildings.
The garage, which is is being developed by University Place Associates in partnership with Silverstein Properties and Cantor Fitzgerald, will also include landscaped pedestrian areas, a dog park, green space, and a mural wall.
The project advanced after the Philadelphia City Council approved a zoning overlay in June, which was introduced by Councilmember Jamie Gauthier. The proposal is scheduled for Civic Design Review on Sept. 2, but developers expect limited regulatory hurdles.
City and Regional Planning assistant professor Xiaoxia Dong at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design voiced concerns about the project from an urban planning perspective.
Dong noted that the several issues, such as the “impact on the local community,” “air pollution in the surrounding area,” and “visual impact on the existing neighborhood” should be considered before building new infrastructure.
Dong added that leaders of large projects like 5.0 University Place and 3.0 University Place should consider using existing parking “more effectively.”
“We should ask ourselves during the planning stage … whether there is sufficient parking in University City already to accommodate the growth of new development,” he said.
Members of 5th Square, a Philadelphia-based urbanist political action committee, spoke to The Daily Pennsylvanian about their opposition to the project. In an interview with the DP, Brennan Maragh — co-chair of 5th Square’s Housing Committee — said that the parking garages, in general, “are not sustainable.”
“They bring a lot of cars into a neighborhood, they don’t generate positive consequences like people riding public transit, … and they further encourage things like car use and air pollution,” he said.
Maragh went on to explain that the necessity for a parking garage is diminished by the fact that West Philadelphia is “one of the more transit-rich areas of the city.”
“There’s the trolley network, there’s plenty of busses, things like that,” Maragh said. “And it’s also near a college campus, where obviously a lot of folks like yourself don’t own cars and take transit around every day.”
5th Square’s Housing Committee co-chair Natasha Tabachnikoff highlighted that that there “really is still a lot of parking vacancy in University City already.”
Tabachinikoff cited a 2023 city study, which found that garages in West Powelton — where the project site is located — were only 58.3% occupied.
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“We just don’t think this is necessary,” she said. “We’d like to see some more emphasis on transit and pedestrian and bike connections.”
Tabachnikoff voiced that if new construction were unavoidable, it should bring activity to the community.
“We’d prefer to see a genuinely mixed-use project that provides some parking but also other amenities,” she said. “Personally, I live about a 15-minute walk from the site, so I would prefer not just be walking by a parking structure that doesn’t bring anything to the streetscape.”
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