Arts & Crafts Holdings strengthened its hold on the area between Callowhill and Spring Garden streets east of Broad Street with a new portfolio buy.

The developer purchased five buildings from local owner Mark Rubin, four of which were part of the eight properties he offered as the Callow East portfolio in March, for a total of $36M. Led by General Partner Craig Grossman, Arts & Crafts now owns 1.2M SF of office real estate in the Callowhill neighborhood, which contains an estimated 2M SF total.

As the "hole in the doughnut" between Old City and Northern Liberties, Callowhill was rezoned in the past two years to support mixed-use development, and Grossman has been buying up anything he can to include as part of a curated vision for the area. Among his more notable purchases was the Electric Factory building on Seventh Street.

The properties included in the transaction were 444 and 437-461 North Third St., 600 and 827 Spring Garden St. and 854-56 North Third St., which stands as an outlier in that it comfortably resides in Northern Liberties, north of Spring Garden. The five buildings have a total footprint of 195K SF, which means Arts & Crafts paid $185/SF in the deal brokered by Colliers International.