A food hall with local vendors, a bar and social programming is coming to Philly’s historic Bulletin Building

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A new food hall will debut this fall across from 30th Street Station at a prominent gateway to University City. It will include six local vendors, an elevated bar and small business development programs.

The Gather Food Hall and Bar will open on the ground floor of the Bulletin Building, the historic former home of the Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper and a lynchpin of Brandywine Realty Trust’s $3.5 billion Schuylkill Yards development with luxury residences, retail, labs, and office space centered around Philadelphia’s gene therapy ecosystem. The food hall aims to serve office tenants, nearby college students and University City residents.

This is Brandywine’s second iteration of plans for a food hall at 3025 Market Street. The original plans, for the site to serve as a location of New York-based Urbanspace with 16 local and national vendors, fell through due to “pandemic issues,” a Brandywine spokesperson said.

Urbanspace was absorbed by a larger hospitality company in April 2023. Permitting and zoning for the site was stagnant until January, when a construction permit with a total cost of $1.3 million was approved.

Brandywine also wanted to identify a food hall operator with experience and a “Philadelphia connection,” the spokesperson added. The team building Gather includes Jeff Benjamin, a managing partner at Food and Beverage Advisory who serves as CEO of Federal Donuts & Chicken and founded the Italian restaurant Vetri Cucina in Center City.

Gather is partnering with Hospitality HQ, a New York-based consulting and management company that will curate and operate the food hall’s vendors. Owner Akhtar Nawab founded the company with a focus on delivering chef-driven food concepts. The yet-to-be-named vendors at Gather will bring a “mix of global flavors” and “artisan concepts,” Brandywine said.

Bell Butler Design & Architecture, a woman-owned firm headquartered in New Orleans, will design the 13,000-square-foot food hall. The goal is to nod to the building’s decades of history as a newspaper printing press and its more recent evolution as a hub for gene therapy research. Newspaper-inspired decor, lighting features, historical elements, vintage accents and graphics w​​ill be featured in those plans, Brandywine said.

The food hall will also undertake a two-part social mission supported by seed funding from Cerity Partners. The first part includes initiatives to make it easier for small vendors to grow their business, like mentorship programs with notable chefs in the region, financial consultations and opportunities to test their food concept. The idea grew out of Gather’s pandemic-era food hall pilot, an open-air pop-up in Callowhill that featured a rotation of minority food entrepreneurs.

In tandem with the national nonprofit Believe In Students, the food hall will also aim to make it easier for local students struggling with food insecurity to afford meals. An aspect of Gather’s mission is to provide affordable and free food options for the local college student community.

Philadelphia-based JEME Agency will be the creative team behind the food hall, which Brandywine said will serve as an attractive and convenient point in the neighborhood for Amtrak and SEPTA commuters entering and exiting 30th Street Station. Amtrak is currently leading a $550 million redesign of the station with its own new food hall and revamped restaurant offerings.

It’s all part of a development boomlet around the transit corridor straddling Center City and University City. Schuylkill Yards plans to add 33,000 additional square feet of retail space to its portfolio in 2025, including a Fine Wine & Good Spirits and a Starbucks at 3151 Market St.

Brandywine Realty Trust is holding off on breaking ground for planned developments at 3101 John F. Kennedy Blvd. and 3001 John F. Kennedy Blvd. as it works to secure tenants for the project’s vacant retail space, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported.