Highway Ramps Promised To Deliver Chester From Hardship. Residents Are Still Waiting.

Buildings in Chester, PA. (Source: Wikimedia Commons/Smallbones.)

In November 2022, Chester, Pennsylvania, filed for bankruptcy. Chester has a reputation for being the region’s most rapidly declining city, puzzling those who note its assets: rail lines, proximity to Philadelphia International Airport, waterfront access, and the ability to argue it is the state’s oldest city. The city’s ongoing fiscal emergency marks 10 years since the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) inaugurated two highway ramps in Chester, which Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi promised at the time would produce “an explosion of economic development.” Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn was less optimistic.

In his 2012 piece “PennDot Fiddles,” Marohn called the $77 million ramps a “very expensive gimmick,” especially given Chester’s demographic data. “These ramps represent an investment of $9,060 for a Chester family of four. For a city with a 12% reported rate of unemployment, how many real jobs could be created if $77 million were put into an economic gardening program? This is an unconscionable expenditure.”

The ramps were welcomed along with a soccer stadium, which Marohn referred to as “the universal sign of desperation in economic development.” At the ribbon-cutting, Pileggi made an explicit connection between the stadium and the ramps, alleging that the former wouldn’t have happened if not for the latter. 

In 2008, $25 million was allocated to the construction of the stadium—now called Suburu Park—with an additional $7 million put toward a two-phase project known as “the village,” composed of 186 townhouses, 25 apartments, 335,000 square feet of office space, over 20,00 square feet of retail, and additional commercial amenities. Residents of Chester were looking forward to a revitalized waterfront but also to standard amenities like a supermarket, which the city did not possess for decades. The Inquirer reported that $4 million was earmarked for a supermarket as part of the stadium deal, but much like “the village,” it never materialized.

In 2019,  The Athletic caught up with Chester locals who live across the street from the stadium. “The soccer team?” one of them laughed. “They haven’t given the city s———, as far as I know.” Since the stadium’s opening, community-oriented developments like “the village” stalled while training fields, a training center, and a riverwalk that hugged the stadium came to fruition. Critics remarked that the latter amenities were for the exclusive benefit of the soccer team and not the locals.

Another lifelong resident compared the stadium to several other expensive projects that failed to deliver Chester from its financial decline. “Something is always ‘coming to Chester,'” he told The Athletic, listing the highway that broke ground in the 1960s and the interchanges and bridges that have arisen since. “Then they talked about ‘oh, (interstate) 95 is coming through between Wilmington and Philadelphia, that’s gonna bring all this opportunity.’ People drove right f—————— by us.”

Despite consecutive large-scale, multi-million dollar projects, locals have not felt much of an investment. Much of the historic commercial corridor has remained boarded up, some residents remain embarrassed by the abandoned buildings visible from the highway, and others fear that focusing on making Chester a “destination” neglects the needs of Chester’s full-time citizens. 

Furthermore, in 2020, eight years after officials connected the highway ramps to an imminent economic boom in Chester, the city entered a receivership. WHYY, a local news source that reported on it, describes receivership as “the process in which the state appoints a manager with a degree of direct control over local finances to avoid bankruptcy.” Ultimately, Chester was unable to emerge successfully from its receivership and filed for bankruptcy in November of last year, calling into question the multi-million dollar investments and promises made in the last 15 years.

Nevertheless, its residents haven’t given up. “Let’s put some respect on our name!” cheered Stefan Roots, a Chester native and mayoral hopeful at his candidacy announcement in February. The crowd cheered back. The room was filled with locals eager to rehabilitate Chester’s reputation. “There’s great food here and an arts scene, but you’d never know that from the media,” said one resident. “All they talk about is the highway and the crimes.”

“Chester is the place the professional class puts on the marketing brochure when they seek public funding for a project, but none of these investments are scaled to the people that live there.” Marohn noted. The tragedy, he points out, is that “nobody starts by humbly asking Chester residents what they really want or need.”

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