The sign in the first photo says SCHUYLKILL YARDS, 3025 JFK, and under it, HIGHLINE PARK. Behind it a blue steel rail bridge crosses over a patio of blue chairs and folded umbrellas, and a glass tower rises past the bridge into a gray sky. I took that picture on a Saturday morning in Philadelphia, a few minutes before a meeting I had been looking forward to. I’m Harry Hayman, and I had never been inside this building before. The meeting was with my friend Donna, who had just come from speaking at Michael Forman’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Club. We sat down to talk about food insecurity, economic mobility, and something I keep coming back to: a lot of the problems we treat as separate probably are not all that separate. Sometimes you just know you’re in the right place at the right time.

The room Donna had just left

I will be honest about what I know here. Donna had just spoken at Michael Forman’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Club, and I somehow did not know enough about it before now. What she told me is the part I keep thinking about. Michael has spent years getting people who should know each other into the same room: business people, entrepreneurs, government, institutions, community leaders, people with access to capital and people looking for opportunity.

That is a simple idea. It is not a particularly simple thing to do. I am not going to describe its membership, its schedule or its record here. I can only tell you what I heard on a Saturday morning from someone who had just been there. That Saturday the topic was upward economic mobility, which sits right in the middle of a lot of what I have been thinking about lately.

Why upward economic mobility is the topic that matters

The numbers explain why a room like that gets filled on a weekend. A March 2026 Philadelphia Magazine analysis of the city’s economy reports that Philadelphia ranks 50th of 50 major metros in economic mobility, per Harvard economist Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights study. Children born into poverty here have the lowest chances of rising to higher income levels. The same piece cites a Federal Reserve report finding that nearly half of Philadelphians face economic insecurity.

I read that and I think about food. Food insecurity is what economic insecurity looks like at the kitchen table, and it connects to wages, to jobs, to transportation, to who gets a seat at which table. That is what I meant about problems that are not all that separate. Pull on one thread and three others move.

Philadelphia has plenty of smart people doing good work. We have resources. We have organizations. We have ideas. What we are not always particularly good at is making sure all of those people actually know what everybody else is doing. Getting them into the same room is not going to solve everything. But it is a start, and I am grateful to Michael and everybody involved for continuing to create those rooms.

And speaking of rooms: Avira at 3025 JFK

My meeting with Donna happened at Avira at 3025 JFK, which I had never been inside. According to Brandywine Realty Trust’s property page, the building is a 28 story tower with offices, retail and homes of 570,000 square feet in the Schuylkill Yards neighborhood, which Brandywine describes as 14 acres and master planned, and it includes 326 residences at Avira. Brandywine’s own article on Avira calls it Schuylkill Yards’ first residential offering, occupying the top 18 floors of the tower.

A Philadelphia Magazine profile of Avira adds the details that matter to anyone who has to live there: the address is just west of 30th Street Station, the building design is by Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, and the interiors are by CetraRuddy. Gotham Organization handles management and programming. The ninth floor holds the amenity level, with a pool terrace and a lounge, and the profile says workers in the offices below can use it too.

I did not tour the apartments. I walked in as a visitor on a Saturday morning, and my first reaction was a single word: wow. Brandywine has created something pretty freaking spectacular over there. Half museum, half nightclub. I’m ready, bro, let’s go.

The museum half: art you can walk up to

The museum half is not just my joke. Out front, Highline Park holds a sculpture called Galaxyscape Zone, and the plaque names the artist as Anthony P. Bayne Sr. and the year as 2024. Schuylkill Yards’ own page on the piece describes Bayne as a West Philadelphia sculptor who taught himself who first built and displayed it outside his garage at 51st and Chestnut. Brandywine later bought it for permanent display in the park’s viewing garden. I like that story a lot. A neighborhood favorite from a garage became a focal point for a new park, and the artist is from the neighborhood.

Across the street is a mural called Schuylkill Falls. Its plaque credits David Guinn Studio and the year 2025. Brandywine’s account of the August 2025 public art unveiling describes lighting that responds to motion that changes as people pass, and says Guinn drew on the movement of the Schuylkill River, the Fairmount Dam and the geometric plantings and paving of the park. PhillyVoice’s coverage of the park and its art places the mural on a facade of 3101 Market Street along JFK Boulevard and notes the park was developed with Mural Arts Philadelphia and Drexel University. Drexel’s own news item on the new public art covers the same openings from the university side.

The pictures in this post follow that walk: the signage, the entrance, a welcome sign inside, the lobby artwork, a bronze tulip sculpture, the sculpture garden, the mural plaque, the bridge from the street, and, at the end, a Brandywine doormat. That last one is my small nod to Brandywine and to my friend Jerry.

Right people, right place

My friend Jerry apparently knows what he’s doing. Jerry, I think you are finally getting the hang of this development thing. I am not giving his last name here because I do not need to. He knows who he is, and so does Brandywine.

Here is how the two halves of that Saturday fit together for me. In the morning, a room full of people who should know each other, talking about whether a kid born in Philadelphia can climb. Then a building where a developer put a neighborhood sculptor who taught himself in a public park and lit a mural so that walking past it changes it. Both are about who gets access to what, and who gets seen.

Maybe Brandywine and the City should keep thinking together about how we make an already beautiful Philadelphia even more beautiful. Just saying. It is funny what comes out of a Saturday morning meeting when you get the right people in the right place.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Club and Avira at 3025 JFK in Schuylkill Yards

The room Donna had just left

Why upward economic mobility is the topic that matters

And speaking of rooms: Avira at 3025 JFK

The museum half: art you can walk up to

Right people, right place

Sources and references