Quote:
Originally Posted by wanderer34
I look at last decade as very rough for Philadelphia commerce as a whole. Never have I seen a city lose that many companies. Even during the Wall Street crash of 1987, many companies preferred to stay in NYC and even today, you don't hear of any company based in Chicago wanting to leave despite negative news about the city plus the everyday violence in that city. Heck, Pittsburgh still has more Fortune 500 companies than Phila at this moment.
I don't think it's really related to old vs new, but it's just that the business tax situation is awful over here plus the city and state for some strange reason doesn't know how to attract and retain companies, let alone people, from moving here. I still feel that the "Sixth Borough" designation that we've been hearing may be a reality and I wouldn't be surprised if NYC and Philadelphia combined into one huge CSA (which I'm against), but anything's possible.
I still think that it's nice the the city of Philadelphia can retain a good number of Fortune 500 companies here to help with the tax base. I'm not sure who's gonna be the next startup to be a Fortune 500 company but after losing so many bank HQs (PSFS, CoreStates, Santander), and seeing other companies getting acquired (Pepboys and Rohm & Haas), I'm not sure if Philadelphia can continue to be the corporate center it once was.
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What is the fascination with Fortune 500 companies?... Minneapolis has more Fortune 500s than Chicago, LA, San Fran and Philadelphia, does that make it more economically relevant?...
The fact is, Philadelphia (city and metro) remains one of the strongest and most diverse/relevant economies in the nation, with a very strong and growing presence in bio-tech/research, which is a major plus moving forward.
And while our suburbs have long been the base of job growth especially in white collar sectors, Philadelphia has shown good improvement in job growth, companies adding city satellite offices, record setting investment and start-up funding, etc.
Philadelphia's improvement moves at a slow pace, but pre-Covid, it was very noticeable. The biggest challenge at this point is leadership, which generally doesn't care to grow/market Philadelphia as a national and international place to do business. Most growth is largely left up to investment which largely stems from large companies, universities, hospitals, etc. in the city and region.
So yes, there are things I would like to change, but lets be realistic here... Philadelphia is not New York or London, but its certainly in the next tier down with Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. (plus, Philadelphia metro has a higher GDP per capita than many other comparable regions, which is important to note).
Your description of Philadelphia makes it sound like a hopeless, depressed town.
(I feel like I've seen your posts on City-Data, which are equally negative).