The Redevelopment of the Old Family Court Building Is Dead
More than a decade after a luxury hotel was promised, the property sits empty. As for that new African American Museum ...
The former Family Court building in Philadelphia at 1801 Vine Street (photo via Wikimedia Commons)
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“What’s happening with the old Family Court building?”
It seemed like a simple enough question when a friend posed it to me recently. The last we both remembered, plans were afoot to transform the massive, block-long Beaux Arts behemoth at 1801 Vine Street into a 200-room hotel, and to give the underutilized African American Museum of Philadelphia at 7th and Arch streets a new home just behind the hotel. The glitzy new museum would replace a surface lot operated by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.
The fate of the Family Court building has been a topic of conversation since 2010, back when Michael Nutter was still the mayor of Philadelphia. That’s the year that the city first put out a request for proposals (RFP) for redeveloping the city-owned structure after the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania announced that Family Court would move to 15th and Arch streets, a move it completed in 2014.
In February 2014, despite interest from big-time Philly developers Ken Goldenberg and Carl Dranoff, city officials announced that they had awarded the redevelopment contract to Florida-based Peebles Corp., a firm run by entrepreneur and Democratic fundraiser Don Peebles, who was, at the time, the chairman of the board of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Peebles Corp. was to transform the site into a luxury hotel operated by Kimpton.
The Peebles deal fell through in 2021, in part because of issues Peebles encountered thanks to the Family Court building’s presence on the National Register of Historic Places and the protections that come with that. The global coronavirus pandemic didn’t help matters.
So the city put out a new RFP, and by August 2022 city officials and the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) had narrowed the search down to four finalists; one year later, PIDC president Jodie Harris announced that a new developer, National, would lead the charge for not just a hotel but also the aforementioned new location for the African American Museum. At a press conference, Harris called the National plan “a unique fusion of sustainable, forward-thinking development and a profound respect for Philadelphia’s history.”
This is what the luxury hotel was to look like, according to a 2023 rendering released by the city:
And the African American Museum:
All of which sounded and looked great. So what of it?
I took a walk over to 1801 Vine Street to see what was happening three years later and, well, it sure didn’t look like much. But I’m more a museum guy and less a hotel guy, so I also strolled over to 1901 Wood Street, site of the forthcoming new museum. I was excited to see what progress was being made. Instead, all I found was a PPA parking lot full of cars.
I reached out to a publicist representing the museum, who said she’d look into the matter and get back to me. Two weeks later, after hearing nothing, I checked in again. “The African American Museum in Philadelphia is excited about the planned moved to the Parkway and looks forward to having more to share in the coming weeks,” she replied. The weeks came and went, so I emailed her again. “I checked in with [the museum],” she replied eventually. “No updates at this time.”
This all began to seem a little odd. I called National. Nobody from the development firm got back to me. Same story with a PPA spokesperson — zilch. I contacted the PIDC’s Harris. She also didn’t respond, nor did various other people and officials connected with 1801 Vine and the museum.
Surely, though, work must have been done inside the old Family Court building. So I ventured to the Department of Licenses & Inspection, which maintains a database of all permits pulled for a development project. What I found was more than a little shocking: there hasn’t been a single permit requested or issued since 2019, back when Peebles Corp. was still involved. And that wasn’t even a construction permit; it was a request for a zoning change. No permits have been requested at all for 1901 Wood, the parking lot that may or may not become the future home of the African American Museum of Philadelphia.
In fact, the only official documents I could find for either property in the last six years were two violations the city issued (against itself) for 1801 Vine Street: one for high weeds outside and one for “homeless people using rear of property [as] a bathroom.”
Finally, on Sunday, Karen Guss, the director of communications for the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Planning and Development, confirmed for me what I was beginning to suspect: “Nothing has been done there,” she told me, referring to both properties. She added that National is no longer involved and that there is no RFP at this time. Meaning, effectively, the project is dead.
In an email, Guss wrote that “the Parker administration remains committed to the redevelopment of 1801 Vine/1901 Wood Streets, including relocation of the African American Museum in Philadelphia to the site. The City has pledged funds to support AAMP’s move.”
Those pledged funds amount to $50 million. But one city source with direct knowledge of the proposed museum move, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, points out that the construction of a brand new museum would cost far more than that and that they doubt the museum would be able to raise the required funds. “This is an organization with total assets of just $6 million,” they added. “And if you go to their website, you will notice that there’s no capital campaign designated for a new museum.”
Another source connected to the overall project had this to say, also under the condition of anonymity: “There are entities ready to move on 1801 and the museum, but it’s just crickets from City Hall. If you told me this was never going to happen, I wouldn’t have any reason to doubt you.”
