{"id":144014,"date":"2026-03-20T19:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T19:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144014\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T19:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T19:50:07","slug":"philadelphia-school-closures-rezoning-plan-cuts-value-for-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/144014\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia school closures: Rezoning plan cuts value for developers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>A member of Philadelphia City Council has introduced rezoning legislation for a number of schools that are proposed to be closed in her district to take away their land value for redevelopment.\n<\/p>\n<p>Councilmember Jamie Gauthier believes the schools are worth too much for redevelopers, and that\u2019s why they were put on the closure list.\n<\/p>\n<p>Under the plan, the five schools would be rezoned only for \u201ccivic use\u201d and not for \u201cmultifamily housing use,\u201d which is currently making them prime targets for redevelopment.\n  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is zoning to correct the zoning that\u2019s there now,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cSo, these are school spaces. Many of them are currently zoned for multifamily. We did corrective zoning to rezone them as civic spaces, school spaces, because that is the use of those properties.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Without the multifamily zoning, developers would have less incentive to buy the prime real estate, which Gauthier believes will influence the minds of those in the school district that want to shutter them and sell the land.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s highly inappropriate to be having this closure conversation at the same time we\u2019re having a discussion about what land we like to give over to developers. So I\u2019m removing that from the equation,\u201d Gauthier said. \u201cThis conversation needs to be about students and communities and the well-being of the people in West Philadelphia.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[223,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-144014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-pennsylvania-education","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}