This year’s annual Central Philadelphia Development Corporation (CPDC) and Center City District (CCD) meeting was held on April 22, 2014. During the meeting, Paul Levy discussed the CPDC’s yearly “State of Center City” report. A panel of experts, including, Jim Paterno (SREA), Christophe Terlizzi (First Niagra Bank), Alan Greenberger (City of Philadelphia) and Stephen Tang (The Science Center) shared their views on the changing business landscape in Philadelphia. Overall, the general consensus was that the current and future state of Philadelphia is promising, unemployment is down, graduating student retention is up and the landscape of the Central Business District is expanding.
Jim discussed how millenials, different industries and environmental factors all contributed to some of the work space changes. Stephen attributed the changes to technological advances while Christophe saw economics as the main driver. Alan said that the unemployment rate is currently its lowest since 2008 and there are 672,000 jobs in Philadelphia, the most since 2003.
The highlights of this discussion were published in the Philadelphia Business Journal, “Millenials Driving New Types of Space” and The Weekly Press, “CPDC’s Yearly “State of Center City” Report.” Please click either link to read the full stories.