Construction begins at Philly’s Westpark Apartments site

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Following a yearslong delay, construction is underway to overhaul Westpark Apartments in West Philadelphia, the neighborhood’s only remaining public high-rise complex.

“You’re gonna see a lot of work happening this week and moving forward,” said Kelvin Jeremiah, president of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

The project is part of an ambitious plan to remake and expand the housing authority’s portfolio over eight years. Under “Opening Doors,” the agency will spend $6.3 billion to preserve, redevelop, build or acquire roughly 20,000 units.

Under the plan, the authority expects to modernize and redevelop roughly 13,000 units of conventional public housing, the majority of which are more than 70 years old. PHA expects to build or acquire about 7,000 additional units.

The work at Westpark, located at 46th and Market streets, will be completed over at least four phases and nearly triple the number of units at the 12-acre site, bringing the total to nearly 1,000.

As part of an ongoing effort to destigmatize public housing and its residents, the $500 million upgrade is expected to transform the complex into a mixed-income community.

History of Westpark

For decades, Westpark existed as a superblock with just one way in and one way out. This project will connect the site to the city’s streetscape, and fully integrate it into the broader neighborhood.

“These superblocks segregated and redlined these communities in ways that, I believe, further created and enhanced some of the social pathologies that we see when you have concentrated poverty — crime, violence, unemployment,” Jeremiah said. “This is a way for us to move away from that.”

Construction is slated to wrap up in 2030. In the coming years, PHA and its partners will gut and rehab the site’s three high-rise towers, erect a new mid-rise apartment building for seniors, and put up dozens of townhome-style units.

The towers, all of which had to be vacated, were built roughly 60 years ago.

The future of Westpark

Nearly 600 units will be considered affordable to PHA residents. The rest will be a mix of market-rate and workforce housing, a tier of housing that will be available to households earning no more than 120% of the area median income. That translates to $143,300 for a family of four.

“I’m excited by the transformation coming to Westpark,” Councilmember Jamie Gauthier said after PHA’s board approved the work in January 2023. “During one of the worst housing crises the city has ever seen, we need to do everything we can to preserve and create affordable housing and provide low-income families with high-quality, stable homes.”

The plan for Westpark is significantly different from the project PHA announced in 2019. Back then, the agency wanted to sell or demolish the two family towers on the site, while rehabbing the senior tower.

That proposal, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and staunch political opposition, was later replaced with a project that’s the product of a collaboration with New York outfits LMXD and MSquared. Jeremiah has said the decision to keep the towers intact was financially driven.

Money is also behind the most recent delay.

Construction was expected to start in early 2024, but it took until the end of last year to finalize critical elements of the agency’s funding stack for Westpark, primarily low-income housing tax credits from the state, said Jeremiah.

High interest rates, including on construction loans, as well as fallout from tariffs recently imposed on building materials that were already more expensive, also postponed the project.

“When the market is good, we’re in it,” Jeremiah said. “When the market is not so good, we still have to continue to do work necessary to build, to preserve and expand housing choices for Philadelphians. And we’re skilled at doing it I think.”

The “Opening Doors” plan is viewed as a companion to Mayor Cherelle Parker’s signature housing plan, which seeks to preserve and create 30,000 units of housing across incomes.

Before the holidays, City Council approved funding for the first phase of the Housing Opportunities Made Easy initiative. The vote came amid intense pressure from the Parker administration, which strongly opposed changes made to the budget measure to prioritize Philadelphia’s lowest-income households.

Lawmakers must still pass an amended version of a related but separate piece of legislation before any dollars can start flowing for the $2 billion initiative.