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The Outdoor Seating report is an annual survey of outdoor cafés and seating in and around downtown Philadelphia.
At the start of 2020, before the pandemic upended daily life and shook every aspect of the city’s economy, Philadelphia was in its 11th straight year of growth. Now, as vaccination rates rise and vitality is steadily returning to the downtown and neighborhoods throughout Philadelphia, the CCD and CPDC are releasing a pair of reports which look at the past year’s challenges and track multiple indicators of recovery.
The steady, incremental lifting of pandemic-related restrictions has enabled retail, restaurant and service businesses gradually to reopen, drawing an increasing number of pedestrians back to Center City’s sidewalks and helping to restore thousands of jobs. This new report from CCD/CPDC tracks the rebound over the last three months.
Sidewalk seating at outside cafés in Center City has increased 383% since the Center City District began surveying in 2001, and the amenity has been adopted by a variety of other retail and non-retail venues throughout the downtown.
This new CCD/CPDC report examines the current state of the downtown restaurant and retail sectors. Using pedestrian, transit and parking occupancy counts and detailed visual surveys of almost 2,000 retail premises, conducted by CCD staff, the report provides a close-up look at business conditions, supplemented with information from the commercial office sector, employment trends, housing market data and ecommerce trends.
Sidewalk cafés have increased by 439% since the Center City District (CCD) began surveys in 2001 and now number 372 with 5,579 seats at restaurants, cafés, bakeries, and ice cream parlors between Vine and South Streets, river to river, according to a new report from the Center City District/Central Philadelphia Development Corporation.