An ordinance that expands a business curfew currently in effect in a section of Kensington will be enforced in much of North Philadelphia and more of Kensington in 60 days. The law was passed by Philadelphia City Council in June and became law without Mayor Cherelle Parker’s signature on Thursday. 

The ordinance requires businesses without liquor licenses to close from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., or face a $1,000 fine for each day violation continues. It will soon apply to businesses in all of the 7th and 8th Districts, and parts of the 1st District. It applies to businesses located on both sides of the boundary blocks.

There will be a 60-day “education process” for newly impacted businesses before enforcement begins. After that, businesses found to be in violation will face a $1,000 fine. The ordinance is set to expire by December 31, 2030. 

Currently, the curfew applies to businesses between Kensington and Frankford avenues and between Lehigh Avenue and Tioga Street. At least 30 businesses were impacted when the curfew took effect in April 2024, including 24-hour convenience stores, bodegas, and take-out restaurants. 

While Lozada and other bill supporters claim the change has helped make the neighborhood safer, multiple Kensington business workers who’ve abided by the curfew over the past year told Kensington Voice the change has hurt their bottom line without making a meaningful dent in crime. Some community members say the law is a superficial solution. Many business owners who will be impacted by the curfew expansion have been pushing back, concerned over losing late-night profits.  

“We have got to do these drastic pieces of legislation in order to bring structure and order and discipline back into my community, in order for us to be able to start again and welcome businesses,”  Councilmember Quetcy Lozada said at Thursday’s council meeting. 

In a letter to council, Parker explained that she did not sign the bill because the expansion “introduces operational challenges to the administration and to responsible Philadelphia business owners.” 

Parker mentioned that with the curfew only in effect in a small section of Kensington, the administration can “deploy limited resources” in a targeted way, versus needing to enforce the law in a large area.

The Philadelphia Police Department expressed similar sentiments at a May council meeting, noting that applying the law to new districts would be difficult given staffing limitations. 

“This change introduces significant operational challenges … this would likely result in inconsistent or uneven enforcement,” said a city representative reading testimony from PPD Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy. 

Residents and workers respond

On Thursday, Lozada said the curfew has made a positive impact based on information she’s gathered by working closely with the police department, public safety officials, as well as the impacted businesses and neighbors. 

Resident Christina Brown disagrees. While standing inside the late-night Chinese takeout restaurant Big Garden on Ontario Street Wednesday, she said she doesn’t have anywhere to grab a late-night meal in her immediate neighborhood when she gets off work. 

“It’s not making the hood safe,” Brown said. “The curfew is ‘not stopping them.’” 

Lin’s Garden on Frankford Avenue, another Chinese takeout spot, was one of the restaurants impacted. Chef Leon, who declined to share his last name, said business has slowed since having to close at 11 p.m. instead of 1 a.m.

He relied on a regular midnight surge of late-night workers looking for a meal, drink, or snack after their shifts, Leon said. 

“That's the main business for the restaurant,” he said. 

A Big Garden worker, who wished to remain anonymous, also said he’s lost business since the curfew was enacted. He’s worried about the restaurant having to close. 

The curfew has affected many convenience stores in the neighborhood that used to be open 24-7, such as King Kensington Convenience Store on Kensington Avenue.

But one worker there who wished to remain anonymous said he thinks the curfew has had a positive impact on the area. 

“Because you don’t give a chance to the homeless people to come and sleep in stores, hang out,” he said. “They used to come in and sleep on the floor, we had a lot of problems at night. Especially at night.”

He said it hasn’t affected profits because customers shop earlier now. “People are used to it. They know the situation,” he said. 

Shpëtim Resuli, owner of One Pound Cheesesteaks on Lehigh Avenue, said he didn’t know about the curfew until one of his employees heard about it on the news this week.

“Nobody told me,” he said. 

Currently the shop stays open until midnight making one and two foot cheesesteaks, as it has for the last three decades. The walk-up’s exterior is plastered with photos of customers enjoying sandwiches and posing with staff. 

Resuli fears that losing even an hour of open business time would make it difficult to pay his electric, gas and water bills. 

“How am I gonna make money? I’m not making enough money now,” he said. “If they lower the taxes they can make me close at 11.”

He said the area around his business doesn’t experience elevated crime during the 11 o’ clock hour. He also worries that if businesses have to fire workers, those people will turn to criminal activity out of desperation. 

“Everyone needs money to pay the bills.”

Two North Philadelphia business food truck owners who will be impacted by the expanded curfew expressed financial worries at the council meeting Thursday. 

Lozada said in an interview on Thursday that she is “open to continuing the conversation” relating to how the curfew negatively impacts small businesses that are not part of the problem she’s trying to address.  

“We are open to continuously having dialogue with these business owners, as well as with the neighbors, and I am willing to make the necessary adjustments, even if it means that I have to respond and make those adjustments before the sunset clause of 2030,” Lozada said. 

Do curfews really curb crime?

Lozada defended the expansion in Thursday’s city council meeting, citing the success of the original Kensington curfew. Lozada has said this legislation is meant to address “nuisance businesses,” typically convenience stores. 

“They are a part of the open air narcotics trade in the Seventh Council District,” Lozada said. “We are not trying to prevent small businesses from coming into the seventh. We want our businesses to grow, but we have to go back to basics and hold people accountable.”

She also claimed that the curfew has contributed to a drop in violent crime the area has seen overall since 2023.  

Backing up that claim would require a high level of data work, according to Temple University criminologist Caterina Roman. In order to link the curfew to lower crime in the 7th Council District, city data analysts would need to compare overnight arrests in the area in the six month period before the curfew took effect to the six month period after. 

Analysts would then need to compare any documented reduction to a control neighborhood that did not experience the curfew. And even then it wouldn’t be enough to prove causation, she said.

“You also have to think about Kensington, where there are so many different efforts and programs going on,” Roman said. “In addition to having a comparison neighborhood that did not implement the curfew, you would also want to have some knowledge that there weren't other interventions in Kensington that started around the same time as the curfew.” 

There’s little research on the impact of broad business curfews, but studies of youth curfews in multiple cities have shown that limiting when teens can be outside does not decrease crime and sometimes leads to an increase.

Part of the problem is that streets with no activity or supervision invite more illegal activity, Roman said. A study she conducted in Washington D.C. in 2008 also showed that establishments vending alcohol were attractors of assault and disorderly conduct. Under state law, businesses with liquor licenses are permitted to stay open late, so the curfew can’t affect them.

Roman questioned the intentions of the bill, and why the city chose to implement a curfew despite a lack of evidence to back up the strategy. 

“It didn't necessarily need to be a curfew where you're asking the businesses to close down. There could have been lots of other types of interventions or policies put in place to curb loitering,” she said. “We always have to ask when we're thinking about an intervention, not only what's the impact on crime, but who is the intervention harming?”

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