The Porch at 30th Street Station: An Experiment in Success

The Porch at 30th Street Station, which evolved from an underutilized concrete parking lot into University City District’s signature public space, was always intended to be temporary. During its nearly 15-year run, the public space impacted hundreds of thousands of visitors with its design, its sense of whimsy, and its powerful collaborations with local small business owners and programming partners.   

But now, UCD’s operation of The Porch time is drawing to a close as we move toward a long-planned transition to permanence. At midnight on October 31st, 2025, University City District (UCD) will officially relinquish our stewardship over The Porch at 30th Street Station, ending a 15-year run of planning, programming, and partnership. On November 1st, the space will formally be turned over to Amtrak and their partners at Plenary Infrastructure Philadelphia (PIP) as part of Amtrak’s Philadelphia 30th Street Station District plan, which includes a reimagining of the plaza outside the historic train station where The Porch currently stands.   

At UCD, we’ve enjoyed great successes and unexpected challenges with The Porch, and this transition, while exciting, is also bittersweet for us. The Porch will always hold a special place in our history as our first major foray into public space development, and the impact of this quirky and animated public space will have lasting effects for years to come. Read on to learn how the Porch went from pop-up to a key gateway for Philadelphia, and what comes next.   

The Porch’s Origins (2010-2011)  

In 2010, the area outside the southern boundary of Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station was a drab strip of concrete used primarily for parking. With no trees, shade, or character to speak of, the area was a stark contrast to the grandeur located inside the historic station, meaning thousands of workers within a short radius didn’t have walkable access to a green space for respite or an outdoor lunch break.   

When the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) began the lengthy process of rehabilitating nearby bridges that span the nearby Schuylkill River, they sought organizations willing to invest in this underused space and reimagine it as a place for people. A core group of partners including Amtrak, Brandywine Realty Trust, the City of Philadelphia, Drexel University, the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, and the University of Pennsylvania convened to explore options and landed on an idea of a “Station Square.” PennDOT invested in infrastructure and surface improvements to create a 55’ by 500’ stretch of sidewalk for public use, and we at University City District (UCD) stepped up to raise funds that would allow us to populate and program the area and turn it into a new, accessible space.   

UCD worked with other organizations and design partners to sketch ideas for how to quickly and inexpensively install non-permanent furniture, plantings, and other design elements to enliven the space. Because The Porch sits atop a cap over the Northeast Corridor Amtrak tracks, we needed to work around square footage weight limitations that prevented us from investing in heavier structures like planters large enough to support tall trees, permanent restrooms, or kiosks. We received initial funding from the William Penn Foundation for design and programming support and drew inspiration from the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) motto of “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper” on the original furniture. 

Backed by a $375,000 investment, we laid out a simple design that featured lightweight, brightly-colored chairs, tables, umbrellas, and planters. On November 1st, 2011, UCD unveiled The Porch at 30th Street, named after our desire to create a “front porch” for the iconic train station. We wanted to deliver a space that could be used by neighbors, nearby employees, and commuters that could serve as an oasis among the nearby traffic and concrete.   

The Early Years 2011-2014  

During The Porch’s first years, the furniture, planters, umbrellas, and amenities were all chosen based on how easy they would be to remove. The focus was for everything at The Porch to be both temporary and inexpensive, so it could be removed at a moment’s notice if required.    

In our first few seasons, we developed a robust programming schedule to draw people to the space and show its appeal as an urban oasis. We presented free concerts, flea markets, yoga classes, mini golf, and rotating food and beverage options for users to sample. We viewed every new activation as a test case to see what users wanted, and we weren’t afraid to try something, fail, and learn from our mistakes. For example, we discovered  farmers’ markets and fitness classes didn’t work with our audience, whereas beer gardens, food trucks, and small musical performances consistently attracted users.  

We tracked usage data through pedestrian counts and surveys, food truck sales, and event attendance to understand what times of day, weather, and programming drew the most active and passive users. We made tweaks and alterations: to the food trucks we worked with; the styles of music we booked; the furniture; when we opened and closed umbrellas; and much more. We hired a full-time concierge to oversee daily operations, contracted with a local landscape company to manage our planters, and fundraised for capital to fuel investments in public art and performances and upgraded furniture.    

By the end of 2014, we considered our “pop-up” experiment to be a success, and began plotting a way to make the temporary space feel more permanent.   

The Porch 2.0   

After four successful years of operation, we decided to double down on our investment in The Porch. Our first few successful years allowed us to secure new funding from ArtPlace America and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and we partnered with Groundswell Design Group and Gehl Studio to create new elements to refresh and enhance The Porch.   

We added new, higher-quality furniture, including sturdier chairs, picnic tables, and three unique versions of bright, colorful swings designed by Gehl Studio and manufactured by Bill Curran Design. We introduced raised platforms and artificial grass to create flexible “rooms” people could arrange according to their usage needs. Wo worked with Visit Philly to install one of their popular “XOXO” sculptures, perfect for social media photo ops. We installed more lighting, electric outlets, and additional shade based on user feedback. And we worked with a local restaurateur on a season-long food truck concept that allowed for a corresponding beer garden before reverting back to rotating food trucks the next year based on yet more user feedback.   

By 2016, the new elements had led to a 33% increase in visitors over the previous year and we felt The Porch had finally begun to drop its “pop-up” status after 5 years of success. We began to emphasize the semi-permanent features and scaled back on the amount of programming as the space settled into what we felt could be its final form, with comfortable and fun features relying more on passive recreation.    

Around the same time, however, we learned from Amtrak that their long-planned overhaul to 30th Street Station would involve reenvisioning and expanding the area that housed The Porch. Amtrak needed to improve the building’s tangled vehicle circulation to consolidate pick-ups and drop-offs for taxis and ride shares, and they began to conceptualize a new version of the “Station Square” idea would require them to take over ownership of the space.   

Amtrak envisioned the project taking a few years until they were ready to begin work on overhauling The Porch, but at UCD we now knew the clock was ticking, and that every new season could be our last. We experimented with a new custom-designed structure as a beer garden, the colorful swings became huge successes, and we commissioned and installed a pavilion that provided additional shade. As more dining options opened within 30th Street Station and in the surrounding neighborhood, and as the beer garden and food truck crazes began to wane, we pulled back on our food and beverage offerings.  

We once again felt like we’d settled on a successful new version of The Porch, a comfortable public space for local employees, tourists, and commuters to enjoy as a break from the office or the grind of city life.   

And then came COVID-19. 

The COVID Era to Summer of 2025  

UCD was well into its planning for the 2020 season at The Porch when COVID-19 upended the entire world. Suddenly, our main charge of bringing people together was seemingly the last thing we should be doing. UCD canceled all event programming, including our plans for food trucks and performances at The Porch. With offices closed and public transportation severely reduced, The Porch lost its draw as a gathering place for people seeking a break from their job or commutes.  With few daily users, the twin tragedies of homelessness and opioid addiction played out in The Porch and other public spaces. As always, The Porch became an inspiration to invent solutions.  We respected the rights of every Philadelphian to seek comfort in public spaces, while standing up an in-house outreach team to connect scores of people with desperately needed shelter and services through our empathy-first approach.

Along with the rest of the city, we anxiously waited for conditions to improve and for employees to return to their offices, but days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and the “return to normal” many kept projecting never quite materialized. In many ways, The Porch had been UCD’s downpayment on civic space amidst a private building boom.  As University City had grown, transformative developments such as Schuylkill Yards and uCity Square accelerated the trend by leading with green space as cornerstones. We had been the first to create a welcoming oasis in that neighborhood, but now wonderful new public spaces including Cira Green and Drexel Square had opened and offered similar amenities.   

After experimenting with programming and offerings for two seasons, Amtrak provided a new estimate for all their work to be finished by 2027, and that they would need us to be fully off The Porch by October 31st of 2025. 

What We’ve Learned and What’s Next   

The Porch as a space may be going away, but its impact on our own placemaking work and in our neighborhood and beyond will be felt and remembered for years to come. 14 years after its debut, Amtrak is now planning to make our temporary efforts bigger, more hearty, and permanent.  We are actively finding new homes within our community for the unique furniture and elements we’ve purchased or commissioned over the years, and soon you’ll find Porch furniture at the Lawn at uCity Square, local schools including Lea Elementary and Penn Alexander, and at other UCD public spaces even at our office. Officials from Amtrak used The Porch as inspiration when adding chairs, tables, and umbrellas outside of Baltimore’s Penn Station, and in August of 2025, the Louisville Downtown Management District in Louisville, Kentucky installed two custom swings based on our original designs.

The lessons we learned on how to evaluate public spaces, iterate on new ideas, and chase and amplify trends have been baked into all of our public space work since, most notable Trolley Portal Gardens at 40th and Baltimore, our design and delivery of the Lawn at uCity Square for our partners at Wexford Science + Technology, and our plans for the West Philly Waterfront along the west bank of the Schuylkill River.  

We once heard from dissenters that no one would ever want to relax next to six lanes of traffic. 14 years of results have proven that the best public spaces are those built to respond to the needs of their users, where the operators aren’t afraid to take risks, fail, improve, and try again. We learned to collaborate, respond thoughtfully to challenges, and treat all users with dignity. Above all, it proved that the best public spaces evolve through experimentation, risk-taking, and refinement. 

We hope you enjoyed your time with The Porch. Before it’s gone completely, pull up a chair, bask in the sunlight, stop and smell the flowers, and join us in imagining what comes next. 

The success of The Porch at 30th Street Station would not have been possible without the hard work and vision of these current and former UCD colleagues: Matt Bergheiser, Prema Katari Gupta, Roy Conlin, Nate Hommel, Alan Garry, Brian English, Lori Klein Brennan, Brian English, Margaret Starke, Sarah Davis, Chris Richman, Shawn Ryan, Morgan Rogers Burns, and Seth Budick, among hundreds of other collarators, food truck operators, landscapers, safety ambassadors, and public space maintanence employees.