Features: Who Really Runs This Town?

30. Steven M. Altschuler
president and ceo, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Rank in 2000: Not on list 
While other CEOs consider moving their businesses to the suburbs, Altschuler, who turns 52 this month, is leading CHOP in a $1.1 billion expansion, mostly in West Philly, where the hospital’s business has grown by some 60 percent in his five years at the helm. That’s no surprise, really: In that same time, U.S. News & World Report has anointed CHOP the number one pediatric hospital in the country three years in a row. Forget the Convention Center — it’s brilliant medicine that’s filling the city’s hotel rooms.
Strength: Elegantly walks the doctor/­administrator line, managing expectations of both CHOP’s board of directors and its doctors.
Weakness: Reserved and somewhat shy, Altschuler doesn’t use his influence — or the connections he’s made through his high-profile board — much beyond the hospital walls.

31. Arthur Makadon
chairman, Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll. Rank in 2000: 80
Friend to Rendell, Cohen, Specter and Street; head of the city’s most politically connected law firm; a go-to guy for dealmakers and those who want to make them. Makadon, 62, is also considered by many to be the one lawyer you’d want to hire if you got in trouble in Philadelphia. (Just ask the Mayor: Makadon’s repping him in the federal corruption probe.)
Strength: Far-reaching credibility that gives him rare access to insiders across the legal, political and business spectrums.
Weakness: Doesn’t suffer fools gladly. If he thinks you’re an idiot, he’ll say so, no matter who he offends.

32. Bart Blatstein
president, tower investments. Rank in 2000: Not on list
Bart made his grubstake throwing up strip malls along the Delaware, but has since reinvented himself as the enlightened landlord of the creative class. Despite having his Penn’s Landing proposal shot down by Mayor Street, he still has half a billion dollars in ambitious mixed-use developments planned for Northern Liberties, Coatesville, and North Broad near Temple. His formula for real estate success? Win the locals over with a few choice hires, and pay your contractors as you go along. But much like the multi-tasking Gen-Y-ers he’s trying to woo to his Liberties lofts, Blatstein, 51, can be better at dreaming up projects than seeing them through. “Just imagine this time next year,” he told us in late 2001 while laying out his plan for the massive, vacant Schmidt’s brewery site. Four years later, there’s still a lot of dirt there.
Strength: Well-wired. Knows how to push big projects through the local political establishment.
Weakness: Arrogance. Eye-rolls his way through neighborhood zoning meetings.

33. Nick DeBenedictis
president and chairman, Aqua America. Rank in 2000: 37
Looking to make the water utility industry a little less fragmented, DeBenedictis, 60, has expanded his Bryn Mawr-based company into the largest publicly traded water company in the U.S.; he’s bought more than 175 water companies that service 13 states and 2.5 million customers and net around $80 million a year. He’s also chairman of the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, taking on the thankless tasks of repping Philly’s hospitality industry in Harrisburg and getting the PCVB and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission to see eye-to-eye. He participates (with his wife) in many causes, such as fighting for the disabled.
Strength: Known as one of those people who are always in three places at once, DeBenedictis somehow gets the job done, even though he’s so busy that … 
Weakness: He rarely attends entire meetings.

34. Chip Marshall
CEO, Temple Health Care System. Rank in 2000: Not on list
Approaching the problem of saving the once-failing Temple Heath Care System from a lawyer’s point of view rather than a doctor’s, Chip Marshall, 52, has consolidated multi-hospital programs, organized services, added a new $70 million ambulatory service building, and expanded the oncology department — all since 2001. Last year, revenues hit $1 billion, and this North Philly institution spent $60 million on care for the uninsured. Marshall’s longtime buddy, House Speaker John Perzel, appointed him to the Pennsylvania Gaming Committee in 2004 to help broker the city’s stake in slots. Now, given his seniority among area hospital CEOs, Marshall has influence on two important fronts.
Strength: Trashing plans to move to Center City, Marshall is keeping Temple’s headquarters in North Philly, hoping to stimulate growth there.
Weakness: In order to reorganize THCS, he unloaded problem nursing homes, which sparked a lawsuit claiming that Temple defaulted on its bonds and that investors lost millions.