last word
Paul Levy
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
P aul Levy moved to Philadelphia
in 1976. He had attended
graduate school at Columbia
University in New York City and expe-
rienced the city’s spiral “toward bank-
ruptcy,” as he described it.

And right before he moved south, he
was living on a farm in upstate New
York where one winter the temperature
dropped to 25 degrees below zero.

Levy, who was about to turn 30, said
“enough living on a farm.” He started
exploring options in Boston, North
Jersey, where he was originally from,
and Philadelphia. He chose the latter
because his brother, Michael Levy, was
working in its district attorney’s office.

But when Levy arrived, he started
walking around and saw a similarly
dense downtown to the one he experi-
enced in New York. Then he walked a
few blocks and recognized that, all of a
sudden, he was in a neighborhood.

“I fell in love with the scale of the
city,” he said. “It’s a small town that’s
a big city. Very quickly, you meet a lot
of people.”
And once Levy met people, he never
left. Almost five decades later, he’s still
living in Center City. And Parkway
Corp. Chairman Joe Zuritsky, an associ-
ate for many years, said, “It’s Paul more
than anyone who has built Center City.”
On Nov. 16 at Vie, a venue on North
Broad Street, Levy will receive the
2022 Civic Achievement Award from
the American Jewish Committee
Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey, a
nonprofit that works to combat antisem-
itism and promote Israel. Levy is being
honored for his many local accom-
plishments as the founding CEO of the
Center City District, an organization
that tries to make Philly an attractive
destination for employees, residents and
tourists, according to its website.

An AJC news release lists Levy’s
accomplishments as “$151 million in
streetscape, lighting, park and facade
improvements,” the “$60 million
36 reconstruction of Dilworth Park” next
to City Hall and the renovation of four
other parks.

Levy, who attends Congregation
Rodeph Shalom, founded the Center
City District in 1991. But in the 1980s,
while still working for the city, he real-
ized that the budget for community
development had dropped from the
last year of the Jimmy Carter admin-
istration in 1980 to the first year of the
Ronald Reagan administration.

In the coming years, he would need
to work with the private sector to
achieve his goals.

“I came out of the 1960s,” he said.

“Everything was about community
commitment.” Zuritsky remembers the city as
OCTOBER 20, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
“dark, dangerous and dirty” before
Levy got to work. The sidewalks were
unlit. Everyone went inside when the
sun went down.

According to Zuritsky, in 1991 Jewish
developer Ronald Rubin bought the
Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on South Broad
Street. After the purchase, Rubin wanted
to fill his hotel with high-end tenants and
“remake Walnut Street from Broad to
Rittenhouse Square,” Zuritsky said.

Rubin researched other cities and
discovered that they had created suc-
cessful “special services districts.”
These were clean, safe areas that could
be taxed at higher levels for “special
services,” Zuritsky said.

Zuritsky, Rubin and other business-
men determined that Philadelphia’s
special services district should feature
businesses. Developers are willing to
take risks and invest in the future and,
therefore, are more willing to be taxed
at a higher level, Zuritsky explained.

The business leaders knew
Levy because he was running the
Philadelphia Parking Authority. Since
Zuritsky led a private parking com-
pany, he saw Levy as a competitor and
“jumped” at the chance to work with
him. The businessmen tapped Levy to
guide the development project.

“Paul created a district that was
probably 98% business,” Zuritsky said.

“Paul is brilliant.”
As Levy explained, his Center City
District that led this effort did not
construct any buildings. It just “set the
stage.” Levy’s organization put in lower
lights to illuminate sidewalks, cleaned
up graffiti and “bought machines that
blasted the sidewalk and got the gum
off of it,” Zuritsky said.

These efforts were visible; they
made people feel comfortable coming
to Philadelphia again, and, according
to Zuritsky, they galvanized migra-
tion to Center City. He estimated that
“100,000 additional people have been
drawn to Center City and its immedi-
ate surroundings.”
“All the areas that touch Center City
have been rehabilitated and rebuilt,”
he added.

Unfortunately in pandemic-era
Philadelphia, that old “dark, danger-
ous” vibe has returned to a degree.

Crime is rampant and residents talk
of no longer feeling safe on the streets.

“The notion that cities were won-
derful places for young people and to
raise families, that was challenged,”
Levy said.

So, for the man who remains the
CEO of the Center City District, the
rebirth must begin.

“Building people’s confidence,”
he said. “That’s what started as our
mission. And I think it’s our mission
today.” JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of Paul Levy
REFLECTS ON CENTER CITY LEGACY