Harrisburg’s draft Opportunity Zone map keeps exactly one Northeast tract, the Tacony waterfront, down from about six, and the final list is due October 28.
The state has published its draft map for the next round of federal Opportunity Zones, and the Northeast nearly got shut out. Of the tracts Harrisburg is proposing across Pennsylvania, exactly one sits in Northeast Philadelphia, down from roughly half a dozen in the current round, according to Bisnow’s review of the draft.
Opportunity Zones are low-income census tracts where investors who put capital gains into special funds get federal tax breaks, an incentive meant to pull private money into places that struggle to attract it. Governors nominate the tracts and the U.S. Treasury certifies them. Pennsylvania has 300 zones today, and they stay active through the end of 2028. The program is now permanent, with new maps every ten years, and the draft for the next decade is where the fight is. The state’s Department of Community and Economic Development has marked 208 tracts for nomination out of 871 eligible statewide, with a cap of 218, and 10 slots deliberately left open. Philadelphia County actually has the most draft picks of any county in the state, 44 of them. Almost none of that map is up here.
The Northeast’s one survivor is worth watching. It is a tract that takes in part of the Tacony waterfront, rolled over from the current map. Bisnow reports that One River Development plans an $80M marina there, and that the developer stayed in close contact with local officials to make sure the site kept its designation. That is how much a line on this map is worth. A tract that falls off it loses its shot at tax-advantaged investment for ten years.
Elsewhere in the city, the draft tells the story of where Harrisburg thinks the action is. Southwest Philadelphia gained four new tracts along Woodland Avenue. North Philadelphia’s picks cluster along Broad Street near Temple University. South Philadelphia drops from four tracts to two. Fishtown, Kensington, and Brewerytown tracts from the first round did not make the cut at all. DCED says it prioritized housing and mixed-use projects, site-ready industrial and commercial land, and downtowns and main streets, and the second round of the program tightened eligibility while tilting new benefits toward rural areas. Some of the Northeast’s near neighbors did fine out of that tilt. Directly across the city line, two sections of Upper Darby and all of Millbourne made the draft map in an area that was completely excluded from the first round, and Chester’s waterfront rolled over.
None of this is final, and the clock is loud. The map is a draft, 10 slots are still open, and nothing becomes an Opportunity Zone until the Governor submits the list and Treasury certifies it. Pennsylvania’s deadline is October 28, 2026, and the new zones take effect January 1, 2027. DCED takes questions at oppzones@pa.gov. For a part of the city that sells itself on riverfront land, industrial sites, and room to build, one tract is a thin slice of a ten-year program. If the Northeast wants a bigger one, it has about a week to say so.
