Can This Woman Convince People to Return to Center City in Droves?

Prema Katari Gupta, the new head of the Center City District in Philadelphia, photographed at K’Far / Photograph by Linette & Kyle Kielinski

Paul Levy started the Center City District in 1991 with a mission to keep the area clean and safe. He ran the organization until the end of 2023. Now, proudly nerdy Prema Katari Gupta is in charge. The Penn grad and mother of two has lots of data. Lots of hope. And … lots of photos of trash cans.

Good morning, Prema.
Good morning. I hope you don’t mind, but I have to start by asking you a question.

Well, this is a first.
Why am I the subject of this interview when some of your previous interviews have been with people like the governor and Patti LaBelle?

I just feel like Center City is ready to come back. And your job is very much tied to that.
It’s truly an exciting time in the city. And something does feel different. The energy is palpable.

Although, I can always interview you again in a year to see if you lived up to our expectations.
Hopefully, your report card will be better than my report cards in school.

You had bad grades?
I had bad grades if calibrated to the expectations of Indian immigrant parents.

Let’s start with a definition. As far as CCD is concerned, what is Center City?
You would really need to look at our map, because the boundaries are dictated by property ownership. But it includes Logan Circle to the Market Street Bridge to down around Rittenhouse Square, Broad Street down to Lombard or so, and then over and hugging the inside of Independence Mall and up around to the Convention Center.

Certainly not a rectangle.
It is definitely not a form I ever learned in math class.

CCD was founded in 1991. Why?
Center City property owners agreed that they wanted to pay fees based on their property assessments so they could have services delivered to them above and beyond what city government does. So it was enlightened self-interest, and our core mission is: Clean and safe.

What were you doing in 1991, when all this started?
Back then, I was in the seventh grade in Simsbury, Connecticut. I came to Penn for grad school and simultaneously fell in love with Philadelphia and my husband, Anuj.

Can I assume you live within the boundaries of Center City?
We don’t! We’ve lived in Mount Airy for about 15 years. It’s such a great place to raise kids, and this is where we will remain while they’re school-age.

Did the subject of you moving to Center City ever come up when you were asked to take the lead role?
No. It never came up.

What are those supplemental services you mentioned earlier that CCD delivers?
We clean sidewalks, remove graffiti, power-wash. We have community-service representatives who are hospitality folks. They answer questions and keep an eye on things. We do a lot of homelessness outreach. We do research reports. And then there are our programs like Restaurant Week, which just celebrated 20 years. My third date with Anuj was dinner out during the first Center City Restaurant Week.

What did your predecessor, Paul Levy, accomplish at CCD?
I can answer that for the city but also candidly as a mom. What Paul created was work that enabled us to be resilient and diversified enough to come out of the challenges of the past four years. We’re doing better than a lot of other downtowns. We are increasingly using real facts and data to tell a story that makes people feel comfortable with their continued investment downtown and reinforces the experience of coming downtown, people coming to work, going to the Orchestra and doctor’s appointments. Speaking as a mom, my children — Leela, 14, and Ren, 11 — love the parks. They grew up playing in the fountains. Leela loves nothing more than taking the train into town with her friends and going skating at Dilworth Park. The CCD has helped give kids access to special places.

You joined CCD in 2020. In what role?
Yes, I started six days before the world shut down. That was interesting! I was the vice president of parks. CCD is in charge of four parks: Dilworth, Sister Cities, Collins — a pocket park on Chestnut — and Cret, the triangular park across from the Municipal Services Building.

Is being an optimistic person a job requirement?
I do feel really good right now about Philadelphia and the tone of the new mayoral administration. There have been dark moments, but CCD is tethered to facts and reality, and while we need to work on actual public safety, we also have to work on the perception of public safety.

Have you met with Mayor Parker personally?
No, but I’ve met with many members of her team. We are excited to partner with them on public safety as well as cleanliness. There are some things we can change pretty quickly. For instance, a lot of people complain about the Big Belly trash cans and say it’s not the right way to collect trash. But Big Bellies aren’t the issue. We just need to keep them clean and empty them. It’s low-hanging­ fruit that we can address quickly. I am obsessed with trash-management systems.

Surprisingly, I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody say that to me before, Prema.
[Laughs] I have photos of trash bins from my travels all over the world. Really. I’ll be on an anniversary trip with my husband, snapping photos of trash-collection systems.

It’s fortunate for you that we love nerds.
[Laughs] One hundred percent.

Center City District head Prema Katari Gupta in Sister Cities Park in Philadelphia / Photograph by Colin Lenton

Mayor Parker recently called for all Philly businesses to have their employees return to the office full-time. Is CCD back five days a week and, if not, will you be eventually?
Four. We’re evaluating five. Four seems to be working well. One thing we’re all trying to understand is why many cities in Asia and Australia and Europe and South Africa are back to the office at pre-pandemic levels. There’s something uniquely American going on here. But we do have data showing that employees willingly returning to work correlates with commute time. And that’s one reason we’re excited about the new apartment buildings in Center City, which are performing quite well. Also, when considering back-to-work, it’s important to remember that we’re not great as a country at helping people with childcare. And I think the standard 40-hour workweek is not super-helpful. There’s a lot we need to interrogate.

Okay, but for me, I’m a writer. There’s no reason for me to work from an office.
But I truly believe people are better off when they’re together. As I said, I was only in the office for a week before the shutdown. It took a long time for me to build rapport and trust and conviviality with my colleagues. That would have happened fast if we were in person. Being together makes work more efficient, but it’s also just … nice. I’m on a group text with great friends who are women I worked with in my first job, at Yale, from 2000 until 2003. These are women who taught me how to work in an office and be a grown-up. So there’s this whole tier of soft skills people aren’t getting. Being on Zoom is miserable. Being in-person can be fun. But flexibility is really important.

Were you going into Center City at all during 2020? I was, and it was just bleak.
It was bleak. Sometimes I would go in, and the only people I’d encounter on some blocks would be our street cleaners in their teal uniforms. But here’s the problem: That’s the image people still have in their heads. It is no longer bleak.

I’m wondering if during the bleak times, you found any brightness.
Absolutely. I think that anytime we could people-watch, when we could look strangers in the eye, it felt really, really good. It was special when 18th Street and 13th Street were shut down, with restaurants setting up outdoor dining, and you could just walk down the middle of 13th Street. This was at a time when there wasn’t a lot of joy. We weren’t vaxxed yet. We were worried about the older people in our lives. Moments like this were special.

We’re Phillies fans, and we went to one of the first games open with reduced seating, and I just looked around at other people and cried. It was the same reason I was probably the only 45-year-old woman crying at a Taylor Swift concert. I believe in cities and the shared, collective experiences they bring us, whether it’s dining on 13th Street, Taylor Swift, the Broad Street Run, or a Phillies victory. These things only happen in cities, and they make life worth living.

You’re a data person, so let’s talk current data about Center City.
Yes, let’s talk about pedestrian vitality! Here are the most important numbers we know. On any given day, we have 85 percent of the people we had downtown pre-pandemic, which is a lot better than some of our peer cities. We also know that the Center City residential population has grown three percent since before the pandemic. People want to live in Center City. I also found it striking that while overall pedestrian volume is at 85 percent, it’s 95 percent on evenings and 87 percent on weekends. People are going to bars and restaurants. Daytime stuff is lagging, which relates, as we all know, to return-to-office. There is positive momentum.

I love our James Beard winners and finalists. I love that Lonely Planet picked us as one of two American cities to visit in 2024. And let’s talk about Center City retail. People think that because Gap and Ann Taylor are gone, it’s over. It’s not. What we see is that digitally native brands want storefronts. Warby Parker started that, and now we have brands like Aritzia, Brooklinen and Saatva that have followed suit. Pre-pandemic, our retail spaces were at 89 percent occupancy. That went as low as 54 percent in the summer of 2020, with widespread closures and civil unrest. We’re now at 85 percent.

I just took my wife to Michael Schulson’s sexy French spot Bar Lesieur. It was a weeknight. And I have to say, Center City felt really good.
Yes! When you’re walking around Center City, it does feel good. We need to figure out how better to tell that story.

And yet, we need only look back to the last third of 2023 to find shocking crime incidents­ in Center City that made national news. As good as you might feel today walking around the area, don’t you just have this sinking feeling that something terrible could happen tomorrow?
I really don’t. Look, there’s a big concentration of people downtown,­ 400,000 or so a day. So yes, bad stuff happens, but bad stuff happens everywhere, and on a risk-adjusted basis, you are safe downtown. I’m the daughter of an actuary, and that’s just how I view things. So no, I don’t have that fear. I happily let my daughter travel into the city with her friends.   

I want to talk for a moment about two CCD activities that have their fair share of detractors.
Oh boy. [laughs]

There are those who love to hate on Center City Sips. Then again, Center City Sips is ridiculously popular.
Here’s what’s funny. Post-pandemic, Sips is a return-to-the-office strategy for employers. They’ve told me that. It’s hilarious and magical and wonderful: People are more likely to come to work on Wednesday in the summertime. And when is Sips? Wednesdays in the summertime. My son is going to kill me for dropping a sports reference here, but Joel Embiid tweeted about Sips. C’mon! It’s iconic! I understand there are critics, but Sips is really important, and it’s an institution for young professionals. Employers­ love it.

Fine. But Restaurant Week? Find me one restaurant worker who doesn’t hate it. Tell me why Restaurant Week isn’t a terrible idea.
[Laughs] I appreciate what you’re saying. I do. But this is a program deliberately designed to target weeks when restaurants are traditionally slow. It drives traffic to the restaurant and the area. Because of the discounted prices, Restaurant Week also makes fine dining accessible to those who couldn’t do it otherwise, like when I was a grad student at Penn. That said — and we’ve started to put this on all our collateral about Restaurant Week — people need to tip extremely generously. We need to support the people who are working Restaurant Week.

So, everybody is talking about Philadelphia 2026. The semiquincentennial. The sestercentennial. And I just learned this one: the quarter-millennial.
Oooh! I love “quarter-millennial”!

We also have the World Cup, with the potential for the United States to play in Philly on July 4th. The city would positively implode, in a good way.
We also have the All-Star Game. And the Home Run Derby. We have some very talented people working on 2026. We have a lot to show off. All eyes will be on us. It’s going to be a bit crowded but great for the city.

When I emailed you earlier this week to ask you for some of your favorite Center City spots (check out all of her picks, below), I was excited to see you mentioned Amma’s South Indian restaurant. As a guy married to a South Indian woman, I wish more people would be introduced to Southern Indian food.
It’s so true. We used to drive to Central Jersey before Amma’s came along. Amma’s is also a cool lens into the city. There’s actually a direct line between Comcast and H1-B work visas and the fact that there’s now a South Indian restaurant in Center City.

Lastly: Although my wife is the one from India, I’m actually the one who does most of the Indian cooking in the house. I make mean vindaloos, rajma and naan. What can you make better than me?
[Laughs] One of my proudest moments was when my daughter was in day care, playing in a toy kitchen, and the teacher said, “Are you cooking like your mommy?” And she said, “My mom only makes coffee. I’m cooking like my daddy.” My husband is a phenomenal cook. And I’m phenomenal at doing the dishes.

Prema’s Favorite Places

Photograph by AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Here’s where the CCD head heads.

Amy Sherald’s Untitled Mural
1108 Sansom Street
“This is the phenomenal artist who did Michelle Obama’s official portrait. I am struck by the scale of the mural. It’s massive, powerful and beautiful. It never doesn’t take my breath away.”

The Dream Garden Mosaic
601 Walnut Street
“The Tiffany mosaic inside the Curtis Building is simply a spectacular museum-quality piece that, like the Amy Sherald mural, is publicly accessible. It’s the perfect place to have a quiet moment.”

Amma’s South Indian Cuisine in Center City Philadelphia / Photograph by Will Figg

Amma’s South Indian Cuisine
1518 Chestnut Street
“My mother is from Hyderabad and my father from Bangalore, both in South India. So this is very much the food I grew up on. You must order the idlis and the dosa.”

Barnes & Noble
1708 Chestnut Street
“I read fiction obsessively, and I spend lots of time browsing for books at the new bookstore. It gets great light, and the books are always just so beautifully arranged.”

Collins Park in Center City / Photograph courtesy of Center City District

Collins Park
1707 Chestnut Street
“This is a verdant oasis in the middle of the office district. Great horticulture. I don’t think there’s a lovelier park in the city, and so many people who spend lots of time near it don’t even know it’s there.”

Fox & Son Fair Foods
1136 Arch Street
“I’m gluten-free, and this is an entirely gluten-free menu of carnival food, which I don’t mean to sound pejorative. I can’t stop eating the corn dogs, cheese curds and funnel cake.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Published as “Downtown Driver” in the April 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.