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After a fire broke out on the 9th floor of the infamous Spruce Parker Hotel at 13th and Spruce last year, many locals cheered. But the revelry was premature, and what we've been left with is a vacant eyesore on a prime corner of Center City. Perhaps worse, a longtime popular restaurant and bar, the Westbury, closed with it.
Since then there's been little speculation.
The Wankawala Organization has been working with the building's owners to purchase the property since November. Wankawala's managing director finally spoke out to Philadelphia Magazine on a plan to convert the building into a moderately upscale hotel.
Despite Wankawala's optimism and their portfolio of corporate hotels, Councilman Mark Squilla remains apprehensive. His concerns are just. Wankawala has been leasing the Parker for the past four years, years that are marred by the hotel's troublesome reputation. The point being, if Wankawala wanted to cash in on the hotel's potential, why now? And if Wankawala simply wants to reopen the hotel, why not simply reopen it as it was? And what it was, at best, was a hostel.
But there are other reasons Wankawala may be interested in finally maximizing the property's potential, even purchasing it. The city's Gayborhood is rapidly evolving. With new mixed use development transforming the East Chestnut Corridor and Midtown Village's 13th Street Strip expanding south, 13th and Spruce will inevitably become too valuable to remain vacant.
That in itself may not sit too easy with longtime residents and patrons of the Gayborhood. While this corner was once riddled with prostitutes and homeless people (often two-in-one living at the Parker), it was also the heart of the city's thriving LGBT community, and the Westbury was its Cheers.
Seedy strip clubs have been replaced with daycare centers and local business relocated for fast food burritos, and some aren't thrilled with the change. Revitalizing the Spruce Parker Hotel is a necessity, but how it's reborn is an important part of what this neighborhood is about to become. Will a new boutique hotel be an asset to the city's still-relevant Gayborhood, or will it be a part of the area's continued gentrification?
As the days grow colder, homelessness in Philadelphia becomes painfully more apparent. Holding doors, peddling their stories - legitimate or not - in exchange for change, sleeping atop steam vents to escape the cold of Fairmount Park and our abandoned underground, winter sweeps in and turns a nuisance into a heartbreaking reality for all but the most cynical pedestrians.
With the closure of the Spruce Parker Hotel at 13th and Spruce, some former residents have found themselves with nowhere to go at the worst possible time. You don't need to interview homeless men and women to see it. You just need to walk around Washington Square West in the early morning and you'll see those who once called the Parker home, or just an occasional warm bed.
For all the ills that came with the Parker Hotel, it offered a small reprieve for those we'd rather forget. Some are drug addicts, some of them prostitutes, but for all the homeless, they have found themselves in a very dark world nearly impossible to escape.
Conservative estimates state that nearly 40,000 of America's homeless are military veterans. In 2013, according to a HUD survey, there were 440 homeless vets living in Philadelphia with more than 1400 in the Commonwealth. The numbers skyrocket in sun-drenched Los Angeles where "Skid Row" appears on Google Maps as if it were simply the Fashion District.
In Philadelphia, we have no more answers than Los Angeles, Seattle, or Miami. And whether or not we ever understand every single instance of homelessness, we have the means to give back a little more than the food in the back of your pantry. And it doesn't have to be a solely city or state funded effort. With a little good will and a sense of civic pride, Philadelphia has more than 200 rooms awaiting those in need.
U.S.Vets-Phoenix is converting a hotel in Arizona through donations. For $2000, a company or individual can pay for the renovation of one hotel room to be offered as affordable housing for one of the state's homeless veterans.
The Spruce Parker Hotel has never been a desirable venue. At best it will sit vacant for years. At worst, it will be demolished for a parking lot. Why not solicit donations to convert the place into affordable veteran housing? Similar housing exists in Philadelphia, but largely to provide a place for those in danger of losing what they have, not those who've already lost.
With the right campaign, the Parker could provide volunteer counseling, medical care, and security in a sober place for rehabilitation. Sure, it could become dorms, apartments, or condos. But there is plenty of land for profitable development to build from scratch. The Parker exists in tact, and doesn't need to be much more than it already is, not for those who need it. Why not turn something with such a dark and nefarious past into a beacon of something greater? Hope.
In an unfortunate series of events, Philadelphia's Gayborhood neighborhood was delivered several hits in the last month. The former Letto Deli, a unique piece of 50s era Americana, was demolished. iCandy was faced with the suspension of its liquor license. And sadly, it seems, Westbury will be closing.
After a fire broke out in the Spruce Parker Hotel, the city shut it down. The Westbury, a popular gay bar, was caught in the cross fire. Without a second exit, the bar was shut down along with the hotel.
The city has been looking for a reason to shut down the Parker for years. The hotel is a remnant of a city that no longer exists. Some call it a hostel, others a whore house.
It's by-the-day, -week, and -month rates harken us back to a time when cities were more than Carrie Bradshaw and Co. brunching with their trikes in toe. Cities were places of diversity...ugly, ugly diversity.
To be fair, the Parker has become a venue for prostitutes, drugs abuse, suicide, and other ill repute. But it was also a place for those struggling to make ends meet, newcomers, and rent hikes. The Parker represents the ugly diversity that self ascribed champions of sympathy love to love but refuse to talk about: hardship, crime, and homelessness.
As unfortunate as it is, the Westbury is collateral damage. But the Parker offered something unique: affordable housing in a city that still needs it.
For all that's been said of the Parker, I'd love to see someone rattle off the crime rates at 13th and Spruce relative to any other corner of Center City, even Rittenhouse. The Parker was a flea-bag hotel, sure, but that's all it was. It was as much a place of struggle as it was for insidious activity.
People only want to see the worst in others.
Liberalism can be a blindly double edged sword. While many who proclaim themselves champions of cause pat themselves on the back for cleaning up their neighborhoods, they've ignored those they've displaced with nowhere to go. We liberals view community gardens as improvements, but turn a blind eye to those who strive for a warm meal from McDonald's.
What sickens me most about the Parker's closure isn't the building's closure, it's the hypocrisy behind the unofficial campaign to eradicate the occasional warm bed for those accustomed to sleeping on the street.
The Gayborhood of all places is Center City's last vestige of cause. We should know better than anyone. When a kid is thrown out of a suburban home for coming out to his parents, the Parker was a bed. Now he or she has a steam vent along Market East.
Progress isn't measured in the superficiality of new condos and hotels, it's measured in compassion. The Parker may have been a den of inequity, but no one stopped to question why that den existed. Its drug abuse, prostitution, and suicides weren't products of the hotel, they were products of our society. Now that the Parker is gone, those atrocities won't vanish, they'll be relinquished to the streets where they'll be ignored.
We shouldn't have been campaigning to close the Parker, we should have been campaigning to end the reason the Parker served a need.
13th and Spruce may find itself with a new hotel, market rate apartments, or a vacant building. But erasing the Parker from Philadelphia did nothing for those who needed it. At best it traded a rare alternative to a homeless shelter for boutique hotel rooms. At worst, those who resided at the Parker will be living on the streets in exchange for an abandoned high-rise.
Think about that, then pat yourself on the back. As so-called "progress" transforms American cities with upscale apartments and trendy cafes, is it any wonder that homelessness is on the rise?
It's got two stars on Yelp, a whopping one and a half on TripAdvisor, but what may be surprising is that the tenants of the Spruce Parker Hotel at 13th and Spruce have access to the internet, or even know what it is. However, if you take the time to read any of the reviews you may see a wide gap between the urban legends that surround the place and those told by many who've stayed there.
Not long ago our inner cities were dotted with unassuming hotels that appealed to international backpackers or fresh faced high school graduates with no credit and minimum wage jobs. Something happened between Adventures in Babysitting and Sex and the City.
Old City's eclectic grit has been replaced with luxury lofts and parking lots for their tenants and the Furnished Room District's flop houses and dive bars were eradicated for the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Meanwhile, backpackers have uncovered chains of clean hostels while kids who want an affordable piece of the city have decided to watch it from the shores of their parents' basements.
It's good and bad. The Spruce Parker's popular perception is indicative of the polarized vision behind the New City, those who don't remember sacrificing luxury amenities for a piece of downtown, those who pride themselves on tolerance but pull their child a little closer when they see a transsexual walk past Nest...those who use brunch as a verb.
While there is some truth in the Spruce Parker's reputation, it's truth that lies in any hotel that doesn't require a credit card. Does it harbor prostitutes and drug dealers? Quite possibly. But so does a Motel 6 that sidles up to a truck stop. One that also houses travelers looking for a cheap room.
Throughout the Spruce Parker's storied history it's never been a source of pride, but its stable presence proves it serves a demand. Some of the negative attitude towards the hotel may be warranted, but reserve your judgments until you've been inside. Would the corner of 13th and Spruce be better if the hotel were apartments, condos, or dorms? Perhaps.
But would the corner of 13th and Walnut be safer without Woody's? Would the small streets between 12th and 13th be safer without iCandy, Tavern on Camac, and Voyeur? Dangerous things happen when you take property owners to task for evils that the city is responsible for enforcing.
Next time you cast stones from a nearby condo, ask yourself, are you concerned with the activity you think takes place in the Spruce Parker, or are you concerned with the fact that you simply don't like someone enjoying the city from a $59 a night bed? But more importantly, as you're licking the icing off the cake of the city, ask yourself what's next? The only thing under it is bread.
