Protesters arrested after disrupting construction of CHOP parking garage in Grays Ferry

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Three activists were arrested Thursday morning for attempting to shut down construction at the site of the future Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia parking garage in the city’s Grays Ferry neighborhood.

The activists were among about two dozen members of the environmental justice nonprofit Philly Thrive and the No CHOP Garage coalition who rallied at the site, calling on CHOP to cancel plans for the garage and build a community center or clinic instead. Opposition to the project has centered around fears that the added traffic will harm the neighborhood.

“This garage will hurt children with asthma and other respiratory [conditions],” said DeMorra Hawkins, a Grays Ferry resident whose family has lived in the neighborhood for roughly a century.

“We have kids that walk this [sidewalk] going back and forth to school,” she added. “These cars are going to be flying in and out, running late to work. … Where does that leave us as a community?”

The six-story parking garage with space for 1,005 vehicles across from the Fresh Grocer on Grays Ferry Avenue is slated to open in late 2026. The garage will replace a 500-spot surface parking lot in the neighborhood that the hospital currently leases for employee parking but must vacate by this fall, CHOP spokesperson Dan Alt said in a statement to WHYY News.

Construction work on the garage’s foundation appeared to slow Thursday morning as activists stood on the site for more than an hour. Some workers continued to operate machinery to move dirt and a large metal beam.

Alt said that the project is needed to support the hospital’s “increasing patient care capacity” by providing “long-term, reliable” parking for CHOP staff.  He said the location on Grays Ferry Avenue was chosen because of its large size, proximity to CHOP’s campus in University City, its commercial zoning and location along a commercial corridor.

But Maggie Foster, who lives a block away from the site, worries the added traffic will make the neighborhood more dangerous for her 1-year-old daughter. The two often play at Finnegan Recreation Center, located just east of the planned garage site, Foster said.

“It’s going to bring a lot of extra cars and pollution right next to the place where we are all the time,” she said.

Foster also pointed to the legacy of industrial pollution around the Grays Ferry neighborhood, including the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery that closed after a fire and series of explosions in 2019. 

“Surely they could work something out where it’s not directly across from people’s homes and a playground and a neighborhood that’s already been through so much,” she said.

Hawkins worries the garage will make it harder for fire trucks and ambulances to leave a nearby station during an emergency. She also sees it as part of a troubling trend of new development in the neighborhood.

“We love the fact that there’ll be doctors moving in and nurses, because it’s closer to the job — but that increases the home values,” she said. “The residents … that are from here, they’re not going to be able to afford a half-a-million-dollar house. And so you’re literally pushing them out with no recourse.”

Alt said CHOP has held over 20 community meetings about the garage and taken steps to address community requests, including providing five-year grant funding for Grays Ferry nonprofits, making a financial contribution to the Finnegan Recreation Center, holding health workshops and exploring expanded pediatric clinical services in Grays Ferry. He said CHOP modified its original design for the garage by adding a planned community health space to the ground floor and is exploring using electric or natural gas-powered shuttles to reduce planet-warming emissions.

“Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia remains committed to engaging with the residents of Grays Ferry to understand and address their feedback,” Alt wrote. “We take all concerns from residents incredibly seriously as we look to support CHOP’s growing patient and staff needs.”

As police loaded the three activists into the back of a van outside of the construction site Thursday, the protesters who remained on the sidewalk promised to return.