For more than two years, the city and developers have touted the shopping center under construction at the Army Quartermaster Depot as the answer to South Philadelphians’ dreams.
But with no immediate plans to open a bookstore — or any of the other retailers for which residents must travel to Center City or the suburbs — some are saying it just looks like more of the same old thing.
New York developer Forest City Ratner Companies broke ground on the 500,000-square-foot retail center on Friday with city officials and community representatives on hand.
When it is completed, Quartermaster Plaza, as it has been named, will be one of the largest shopping centers in the city. Its list of tenants will include The Home Depot, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Staples, Petsmart, apparel retailer A.J. Wright, Fleet Bank, Walgreens and restaurants Chili’s, Wendy’s and Old Country Buffet.
The cost to develop the complex will be $100 million, said Forest City Ratner’s CEO and president, Bruce C. Ratner, and it is expected to bring 1,000 jobs to the area.
Board members of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. accepted Forest City Ratner’s $20.5-million offer to develop the site at 2300 Oregon Ave. two years ago.
"It is never easy to figure out how to develop a large site like this that has been here for many years, with all the kinds of issues that a large site involves," Ratner said.
For more than 80 years, the U.S. Army had used the property, also known as the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, as a manufacturing center for its military uniforms and American flags. The Army closed its operations there in 1999, and for the last several years the location has grabbed attention for the 2-million-gallon oil plume lurking partly below its surface.
Cleanup of the plume continues and, as of last month, more than 820,000 gallons of petroleum have been pumped from the ground. That process will continue throughout construction and when the shopping center opens.
Richard Bell, the Base Realignment and Closure program’s environmental coordinator for the DSCP site, said the foundation of the shopping center’s buildings will be restricted to a depth of 10 feet below ground to avoid disturbing the plume. The federal government will retain ownership of ground deeper than 10 feet until the cleanup is completed.
At Friday’s groundbreaking, Council President Anna Verna thanked the community for its input in planning the project and predicted the center would be an asset to the neighborhood.
But Verna also suggested that the community leaders involved in the planning process might not be as happy with the result as the developer anticipated "because they are hearing things they apparently haven’t heard before."
Jody Della Barba, president of the Girard Estate Area Residents, and John Furey, president of Broad Street West Civic Association, both said they were surprised by an architectural rendering of the center that named the retailers expected to occupy the stores.
"I see a rendering there today that we were never shown," Della Barba said after the groundbreaking ceremony.
Forest City Ratner approached residents when it was awarded the project because it needed the community’s support for a zoning change, Furey said. In exchange for their support, the developer agreed to seek neighbors’ input on the center.
All along, residents clamored for some "high-end" stores to fill the new space — possibly a bookstore and department store, Furey said.
Most of the merchants slated for Quartermaster Plaza are already doing business at other South Philly locations. Furey suggested Forest City Ratner underestimated the demographics of the area. He pointed to the construction of $300,000 homes in Packer Park on the old Capehart Homes site, the elevated property values in Girard Estate and the redevelopment of Tasker Homes into a mixed-income neighborhood.
"We wanted some high-end stores that would save people from going over to New Jersey," Furey said.
Residents were promised they would be told whom the tenants would be prior to them signing leases, Della Barba said. They had been informed about The Home Depot several months ago, but she said they learned about Walgreens and Wendy’s at the groundbreaking.
Della Barba said she is "vehemently opposed" to those two businesses because of the proliferation of drugstores and fast-food restaurants in the area. She and Furey had fought to prevent them from building at 20th Street and Oregon Avenue, where Acme recently opened a supermarket.
"We want to keep the neighbors of Girard Estate and St. Richard’s [Parish] … from going to Jersey," she said. "And there is nothing here right now to entice the residents to shop here. They’ll still go to Jersey."
When he spoke before the groundbreaking, Ratner said he would continue to seek neighborhood input as long as his company owned the property.
"Most important to this project’s success is our partnership with the community," he said. "We will continue to work with them and do what we can to be helpful for many years to come."
