Vigil at Controversial Parking Ramp Site after Fatal Accident Kills Three Workers
Dozens of inspections waived and cancelled before fatal Philadelphia parking ramp disaster, after decades of industrial & refinery pollution in Grays Ferry
PHILADELPHIA, PA – The mood was somber among a small group of parking ramp opponents and local media on a corner of Grays Ferry Avenue on the morning of Thursday, April 9. The commercial throughfare was shuttered and taped off after a parking ramp under construction suddenly crumbled the day before, killing three union steel workers. Ironworkers Local 401 members Matthew Kane, Mark Scott Jr. and Stepan Shevchuk were killed Wednesday. For months, many community members opposed construction of the 1,000-vehicle, seven-story ramp for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) complex across the Schuylkill River.
“Our hope, our hearts go out to their families and this is just what we’ve been dealing with our whole existence here in our community. […] This is just a tragedy, because the community has stood. And we said we didn’t want this in our community. And now a tragedy is happening here,” Shawmar Pitts, managing co-director of local environmental justice organization Philly Thrive, told UR.
“We thought it was hereditary because that’s how it was passed down from generation to generation. It’s not passed down from generation to generation. It’s forced on us. So just knowing that, just knowing that, how could you in good conscience say we’re going to build a thousand-car garage in a community that, you know of, because where do we go to get treatment for our asthma?
We go to Children’s Hospital! So they know full well the details of what’s going on in our community when it comes to the health impacts. They don’t care. […] And that’s the people at the top. […] The physicians and the doctors and all of those people, they care tremendously.”
Shawmar Pitts, Managing Co-Director, Philly Thrive
Several sections of concrete buckled in the chaos in the afternoon of April 8, and the building was considered too unstable to be searched by first responders.
The ramp had been quickly assembled from pre-cast concrete forms created offsite and placed by an enormous yellow crane, but last week this methodology failed when a roof section being placed collapsed and caused the entire stairwell section to crumble.
“And at least one person is dead. And that’s CHOP’s fault because they’re so afraid of the community and they’re so impatient to make their money that they throw human lives to the side. […] It’s going to give kids asthma, it increases sudden infant death syndrome. And CHOP knows that, they’re doctors. They know that. And there’s also many people who are employees of CHOP who say this isn’t right, who attended past rallies and attend meetings about this. But we have to be clear and keep being forceful, as forceful as they’re being to jam this down our throat.”
Erica Brown, Philly Thrive
A brightly colored drone had been used to probe the unstable area. On the ground they’d seen “one kind of like crawl around” as well, Brown said.
A protest had already been scheduled for last Thursday morning, before the deadly collapse. Officials from the city’s Office of Emergency Management were spotted along with construction workers; police and civil traffic enforcement officers maintained a large perimeter. The entire mall, Fresh Grocer and McDonald’s were closed. The mall stayed closed for nearly a week.
Westbound lanes reopened but eastbound remains closed as of April 15. The already-constructed portion of the ramp was demolished days after the collapse, and the two missing workers’ bodies finally recovered.
The Grays Ferry neighborhood has faced decades of chronic health problems well known to CHOP physicians, due to sometimes lethal industrial and automotive pollution in the area, but its management decided to move ahead with attempting to build this parking ramp.
We heard from Philly Thrive that the parking ramp lot was sold by the city for less than $20 decades ago, and flipped to the hospital system for $24,750,000 in 2024. While there had been promises that the lot would be used to serve the community, it had been almost entirely neglected. According to Pitts, CHOP had discussed putting an administrative building that could have generated jobs but this plan was superseded by the parking ramp project.
There’s an opportunity to get something more useful for local residents like a clinic or pharmacy in its place, according to Brown:
“We’ve been doing canvassing, been hosting rallies, and protests and vigils like this to make sure that CHOP knows that they have to do the right thing, that everyone else in the city knows that CHOP is doing the wrong thing right now. Because when there’s a thousand cars right at your doorstep that’s going to kill kids. […] This is a new opportunity for CHOP to change their ways, to forgive what they’ve done. And for [City Council President] Kenyatta Johnson to forgive himself and what he’s done and say this time CHOP, you’re going to have to make sure that you’re building the health clinic, with no garage, a health clinic that you can also teach people in the neighborhood. You can give them trade so they can become nurses, so they can become doctors. That’s what we need.”
Erica Brown, Philly Thrive
City Investigation, Permits & Pollution Data
The lot is zoned CMX-3 which allows “by-right” development of parking garages. In April 2025 the building faced a Civic Design Review hearing (pdf) but this committee has no authority to block or adjust construction plans like these. The adjacent 17-acre James Finnegan Playground is getting upgraded under the Rebuild project, but children there would be subjected to more pollution if the project is completed.
The parking ramp project had 58 inspections scheduled but more than half were canceled or waived. Eight project permits were issued. Of 19 foundation wall inspections one was cancelled, five passed and 13 waived NBC10 pointed out.
In Eclipse, the city’s permit website, Commercial building permit CP-2025-004036 shows after February 5, 2026, the bulk of the foundation footing and wall inspections got waived or cancelled.
City Executive Order 03-26 (pdf) orders an investigation into the collapse. The city has a info page.
New Department of Public Health “Breathe Philly” sensors show hourly pollution levels at Grays Ferry Stinger Square Park. (New reports and hourly raw data is here from sensors in the 2025 air pollution plan [pdf]. )
Demolition has caused more particle pollution in the area. Lane closures and bus routing along Grays Ferry Avenue has impacted the city & traffic has worsened on alternate routes in recent days.
OSHA has opened an investigation. Their records show some HSC Builders & Construction Managers cases but no violations according to USA Today.
Under commercial permit CP-2025-004036 the building was “not required to be sprinklered” although the sprinkler industry association says there have been around 650 parking garage fires in the US each year and requiring sprinklers has been in the International Building Code (IBC) guidelines since 2021. Of the $32.2 million for total construction, zero dollars are allocated to “fire suppression cost of work.”
Grays Ferry hit by 2019 PES Refinery Disaster; “Bellwether” Site Developed
“You can just see around this entire area is lined with houses. And this type of force from a developer, and taking and stealing from a developer, is not new in this area. This is the same area where there was the PES oil refinery that exploded in 2019, where the big wigs and the 1% just wanted to make their money.”
Erica Brown, Philly Thrive
Grays Ferry has often been on the frontlines of environmental devastation, more than other sections of Philadelphia. In June 2019 the neighborhood’s Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery exploded, the oldest on the East Coast — the area has been used for the petroleum industry since 1866 (pdf). Hazardous hydrogen fluoride was discharged and an enormous fireball ejected a school bus sized tank across the Schulykill River, as a detailed federal investigators’ video shows. Only due to luck and quick action was a more massive toxic discharge averted that could have killed and injured thousands of people.
2022: Protesters Call Attention to Development and Gentrification in Philadelphia
The source of the disaster was traced by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigations Board to a pipe that was installed in 1973. PES was jointly owned by the Carlyle Group and Sunoco/Energy Transfer. (Energy Transfer subpoenaed Unicorn Riot in 2021 over our reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed our rights as a media organization in 2025.)
The Carlyle Group is a private equity firm that controls a large share of fossil fuel infrastructure and the military-industrial complex; it was founded in 1987 by well-connected members of the Carter and Reagan administrations like former Deputy CIA director and Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. A 2018 analysis by Littlesis showed Carlyle effectively ran PES into the ground by stripping its assets before the disaster.
Another much smaller fire hit the refinery in December 2016 which spurred a protest blocking the entrance by Philly Thrive. The refinery shuttered after the disaster, PES entered bankruptcy and the site was sold to a company called Hilco, which has rebranded the ex-refinery area as the Bellwether District. Hilco has been building new warehouses while brushing off community involvement, as Philly Thrive sees it. Politicians including Governor Josh Shapiro (D), U.S. Senator Dave McCormick (R), Mayor Cherelle Parker (D) and City Council President Kenyatta Johnson (D), who represents the area, recently touted the arrival of TerraPower Isotopes at the site, a company that manufactures radioactive actinium-225 materials for cancer treatment.
The Bellwether District releases its own environmental reports including dust and volatile organic compounds (February 2026). An October 2024 (pdf) Community Benefits Agreement with Bellwether District Holdings LLC (pdf) includes a governance board and nonprofit corporation plan for funding local projects — many board appointments are controlled by Johnson. A January 2026 “Tank Group 1” release investigation report (2200 page large PDF) mentions a lot of previous spills in the refinery.
Interstate 76 also generates fine particulate pollution throughout the neighborhood. The Grays Ferry Cogeneration Project power station that looms over the avenue was built in 1915; it currently burns natural gas, sometimes with loud noises, and originally ran on coal.
Follow us on X (aka Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky and Patreon.
Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization:
