Garage sales

    As the Philadelphia Zoning Code Commission prepares to change and improve zoning requirements and processes in the city, Center City residents are pushing for one major change to the code: retail space on the ground level of parking garages.

     

    Timothy Kerner, zoning chair of the Center City Residents Association, maintains that parking garages distrupt city life, and that adding outward-facing first-floor commercial space to these structures will improve the look and quality of the neighborhood.

    The Zoning Code Commission is seeking to balance the guidelines associated with parking lots, so that only main thoroughfares (Market, Chestnut and Walnut streets and JKF Boulevard) are required to have storefront space. Otherwise, garages could end up with vacant commerical space.

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    Kerner wants the overlay applied to all commerical corridors in the city, according an article by NewsWorks partner PlanPhilly.

    Feed the Feed: Should the new zoning code insist that all parking garages on commercial corridors have street-facing retail space?

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