As one of the nation’s oldest and largest public markets, Reading Terminal Market Corporation (RTMC) sought to document and quantify the full breadth of its value to Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Reading Terminal Market needed a comprehensive, defensible accounting of the Market’s economic, fiscal, tourism, and community contributions to support its advocacy, fundraising, and capital development efforts, including its pursuit of public matching grants and its positioning as a continued recipient of civic investment.
ESI conducted an economic, fiscal, and community impact analysis spanning the Market’s capital investments, operational footprint, tourism draw, and community stewardship. Working in collaboration with RTMC and the Reading Terminal Market Merchants Association, ESI designed and administered a detailed merchant survey to capture critical data points, anonymizing and aggregating all merchant inputs to represent the merchant community as a single entity.
ESI reviewed multiple years of the Corporation’s financial statements and annualized capital and operational expenditures to establish model inputs. Economic and fiscal impacts were estimated using a customized IMPLAN input-output model that captured direct, indirect, and induced effects across the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania economies, with a tax revenue model translating economic activity into estimated City and Commonwealth tax revenues.
To quantify tourism impacts, ESI integrated foot-traffic and location data from Placer.ai, on-site SMS store traffic camera counts, and the most current Visit Philly visitor spending profiles to attribute spending across local, regional, and overnight visitor segments.
The analysis established Reading Terminal Market as a major economic engine for the region. ESI found that the Market’s combined capital and operational investments generate $125.6 million in annual economic output, 650 full-time jobs, and $36.9 million in employee compensation. The study also quantified the Market as Philadelphia’s most-visited attraction, drawing nearly six million visitors annually whose trip-related spending of $1.2 billion accounts for 19 percent of the city’s entire tourism economy. These findings provided the Corporation with an evidence base for its advocacy and capital strategy, reinforcing the case for continued public and philanthropic investment in the Market as a driver of inclusive growth.
ESI also documented the Market’s role as a community anchor and small business incubator, including its standing as what is believed to be the largest site for food assistance benefit redemption in Pennsylvania, its support for women- and minority-owned businesses, and its low barrier entry programs that move emerging entrepreneurs toward permanent tenancy.