Condo sellout a Chinatown success story

Almost 20 years ago, Pan Am Realty owner Julie Wong realized that Chinatown needed fewer vacant lots and more housing.

She set her sights on a parking lot at Ninth and Arch Streets. But the $750,000 price tag was a problem.

"I talked to developers, telling them that we could pay $250,000 now and then $500,000 later, but they wouldn't do it," she recalled.

Wong didn't give up, though. In 2003, she and Parkway Corp. owners Joseph and Robert Zuritsky became partners in developing that lot.

The result is Pearl Condominiums, 90 one- and two-bedroom residential units ranging in price from $220,000 to $440,000 and 10 commercial suites that recently sold out - just three years after the start of construction.

The project's success demonstrates that if market-rate housing is produced in Chinatown, "professional, middle-class Asian Americans will be drawn back into the city," said Paul Levy, executive director of the Center City District. "A 100 percent sellout rate is very rare."

It certainly surprised Rob Zuritsky.

"We were very concerned when the housing market started to soften," Zuritsky said, "but Julie was incredibly effective at selling them [the condos] because she's so tapped into the community and has really good people working for her."

The target market was primarily first-generation Chinese, many of them business owners who had moved to the suburbs because of the shortage of suitable housing.

"Some people have to commute an hour to work every day," Wong said. "I knew they wanted to move back."

The developers knew their market well, said Mark Wade, a veteran agent with Prudential Fox & Roach in Center City, who sells condos in the neighborhoods surrounding Chinatown.

"The Pearl filled a special need," Wade said, "one- and two-bedroom units with a tax abatement and parking, at a price point that has not been too heavily saturated in the Center City condo market."

Convenience to government buildings and easy access to Interstate 676 and the Ben Franklin Bridge certainly helped the relatively quick sellout, he added.

Rob Zuritsky, whose company has developed five million square feet of space over the years, also is a partner of developer Tom Scannapieco in 1706 Rittenhouse, "a different niche market," where units start at $1 million and are selling briskly.

That both projects are doing well is unexpected in this economic climate because, Zuritsky said, "it's not easy being a developer in Philadelphia, and a lot of them have failed over the years."

There's a reason for that, said economist Kevin Gillen: If the city is shrinking and incomes are falling, "the difference between what it costs to build and what you can sell or rent it for is made up with public subsidies.

"The result is that Philadelphia has only two types of new housing: either very nice - but largely unaffordable - housing developed at market rates for the very rich, or very basic - but affordable - housing developed with public subsidies for the poor."

Still, Chinatown has always had an allure of its own. Though there have been stumbling blocks to development over the years, Levy said he could not emphasize enough how important the neighborhood has been to Center City in the past and will be in the future.

"In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the rest of Center City was empty, Chinatown was Philadelphia's 24/7 destination," he said, "because it remained a live/work environment and a regional destination.

"There are few neighborhoods that are simultaneously a regional draw and integrated commercially and residentially," Levy said, contrasting it with South Street, where the two sectors often collide.

Getting developers interested in Chinatown can be a challenge, said Terry Gillen, executive director of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, who is working with neighborhood groups to turn city-owned parcels into residential and commercial venues.

"Developers outside the neighborhood don't know how to do it," she said. Chinatown is a major tourist attraction and a regional portal for immigration, "so you need to figure out how to accommodate cultural differences."

Though Chinatown is known primarily for restaurants, other businesses are being added to the mix. The ground floor of the Pearl building reflects that, with law offices, a dry cleaner, and other retail, and First Trust Asian Bank.

In July, the Philadelphia Planning Commission published its plan for the Market Street area, including Chinatown. It recognizes the neighborhood's "latent potential for growth" by providing expansion opportunities toward Franklin Square and north of Vine Street, an area into which Chinatown has been moving for more than 20 years.

Chinatown groups, which have battled the city's government over the Convention Center, the Gallery, a proposed baseball stadium, and casinos, appear encouraged by the change in official attitudes toward the neighborhood.

But housing continues to rank at the top of the list of needs, said John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. - especially housing for low- and moderate-income families. Thirty-eight percent of residents there are at or below the poverty line.

"We have been trying to work with developers for set-asides for affordable housing, and there are some developments on the drawing board now with 10 percent."

The biggest affordable-housing need is among senior citizens, especially first-generation immigrants, who typically held low-paying jobs in the more than 100 businesses and restaurants in Chinatown and don't have much in savings or Social Security benefits.

Though the majority of condo owners at the Pearl are Asian Americans, the condo association president, Steven Liciardello, is not.

Liciardello now works at the Federal Court Building at Sixth and Market Streets. For many years, however, he was a police lieutenant stationed at the Police Administration Building at Eighth and Race Streets.

"I fell in love with the area, so when I saw the sign go up for the Pearl [in 2006], I decided to buy," he said. "I really enjoy the hustle and bustle, and I like being able to walk everywhere."

He moved into his seventh-floor unit in November 2007.

Some of the condos are being rented to Temple University medical students and others, and "when they go up for rent, they go pretty quickly," Liciardello said.

The condo board makes it clear to the students from the start that "this isn't a dormitory, so there are no problems," he said.

Not even with sightseers.

Four verdigris dragons, crafted by Kensington artist Ward Elicker, perch atop steel poles in a parking area next to the Pearl.

"Ever since the dragons went up, we've had lots of tourists photographing them, but that's no problem at all," he said.