A weekly compilation of the Philadephia metro's biggest leases, sales, financing deals, construction updates and personnel moves. Have news you’d like to submit? Email matthew.rothstein@bisnow.com.
New York powerhouse developer The Durst Organization has broken ground on its first development in Philadelphia.
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Durst is underway on excavation work at the site of its 25-story, 69K SF multifamily tower at 300 North Christopher Columbus Blvd., which includes careful archaeological work preserving one of the oldest known shipyard sites in Philadelphia, Rising reports. As a result, beginning construction in earnest on the vertical portion of the tower may still be months off.
The 312-foot, 360-unit building took advantage of several zoning bonuses, most notably 36 extra feet in exchange for using 35% of the lot's area on a public park, which will integrate the historic shipyard ruins, and a 48-foot bonus from paying $1.1M into Philly's Housing Trust Fund.
SALES
DH Property Holdings acquired a 96K SF warehouse, located blocks away from Citizens Bank Park in South Philadelphia, for $24M, the company announced. The Class-B property, which contains 25K SF of cold storage and 19K SF of freezer storage, is fully occupied by two tenants, one of which is a food service company that has operated out of the building for 30 years. The seller, Ivy Realty, managed to triple the price for which it acquired the property in 2019, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
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Lubert-Adler Real Estate Partners has purchased the former John W. Hallahan Catholic Girls' High School campus in the northwest portion of Center City, Philadelphia Business Journal reports. Lubert-Adler bought the two historically protected buildings, totaling 92K SF between them, from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for $13.2M, with plans for redevelopment. The former school sits behind the Family Court building overlooking Benjamin Franklin Parkway, for which the city of Philadelphia is in the process of selecting a developer.
CONSTRUCTION
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Midwood Investment and Development has begun construction on a 366-foot multifamily tower with ground-floor retail at 210 South 12th St., Philadelphia YIMBY reports. New York-based Midwood, which owns a raft of retail properties in Center City, demolished the previous buildings on the site by early 2021 but took a year to begin work on the 378-unit development itself.
FINANCE
Paramount Realty, a landlord specializing in neighborhood shopping centers and single-tenant retail properties, has secured a $215M refinancing deal on a 30-property portfolio made up of those property types, as well as grocery-anchored shopping centers, office and medical office buildings. The new financing was arranged by a JLL Capital Markets team of David Sitt, Stephen Van Leer, Eliott Zeitoune, Chris Pratt and George Kordahl. Financing for the portfolio, consisting of properties spread across the Philadelphia and Baltimore regions and Central Pennsylvania, came in the form of three fixed-rate loans, one each from Oceans First Bank, Provident Bank and a subsidiary of Citizens Bank.
PEOPLE
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Toll Brothers Apartment Living has appointed Chris Simon as vice president of operations to oversee its portfolio of about 4,500 properties across seven states. Simon, after previous stops at Greystar and RangeWater Real Estate, will also be involved in an expansion that the multifamily division of Toll Brothers expects to involve over 15,000 new units across five new states.
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Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania has hired Mark Christine to serve as a senior portfolio manager in the commercial real estate services firm's asset services division. The 27-year industry veteran will be tasked with growing LAEP's asset services business in Central Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland.
CORRECTION, MAY 9, 5 P.M. ET: A previous version of this article misstated the origins of the zoning bonuses for The Durst Organization's multifamily project by the Delaware River waterfront.
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