The walking tour begins at 9th and Wood Streets, home to the operating address of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation and the adjacent Hing Wah Yuen apartment complex. Completed in 1998, the Hing Wah Yuen project was marketed to a mix of open-market and lower-income buyers. Out of a total of 51 homes, 15 were sold on the open market and 36 were reserved for low-income buyers. A key consideration for housing development in Chinatown is the provision of housing for low-income buyers as well as first-time homeowners that tend to have a disproportionately high representation within the Chinatown demographic.
Since the completion of Hing Wah Yuen (barely visible at the right extreme of this photo), the opposite property has also been spruced up through PCDC efforts. The corner ground floor unit has churned a number of unsuccessful retail tenants, and is presently an auxiliary meeting space for the PCDC. The difficulty in establishing a retail shop can be attributed to the lack of a critical threshold of residential density in the area, a circumstance that may not persist for too long, but is dependent on achieving a critical mass of prospective patrons in the form of nearby residents. Andy Toy and YQ both pointed out that the improvements to the buildings have had a positive spin-off on adjacent properties; both of them recounted that the two newly-renovated three-and-a-half story townhouses on the left of the photograph used to be extremely run down [5],[6].
There is a palpable momentum of change taking place in the Chinatown North area, and as the neighborhood evolves, there will be associated "growth pains," as some of the subsequent photographs will outline.
