Developer Hopes To Put Free Public Gallery, Artist Studios And Apartments In Former UArts Buildings
The lead bidder for two adjoining former University of the Arts buildings wants to turn them into a mixed-use space with a gallery, a café and apartments.
Dwight City Group placed a $12M bid on Hamilton Hall, a stately building with iconic Doric columns at 320 S. Broad St. and the former dormitories in the attached Furness Hall.
“Our goal is to create a live, work, play environment with an artisan component to it,” Dwight City Group CEO Judah Angster told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The gallery in the front lobby of Hamilton Hall would feature work by local artists. It would be free and open to the public. A café and artist studios are set for the building’s atrium.
Angster wants to convert the old dorms into “affordable luxury” units, he told the Inquirer.
Dwight City's winning bid came after the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office objected to the sale of the Arts Bank, another former UArts property, to the developer Quadro Bay LLC earlier this year.
The attorney general’s office unsuccessfully argued that the property should go to the Lantern Theater Co., which submitted a slightly lower bid, due to the terms of a grant UArts received to renovate the building from the William Penn Foundation in the 1990s.
Dwight City Group is also facing some competition. Scout, a real estate company known for redeveloping the Bok Building in South Philadelphia, plans to challenge the bid and force a public auction.
Scout Managing Partner Lindsey Scannapieco had hoped to put artist workspaces in Hamilton and subsidized apartments for creative professionals in Furness, the Inquirer reported.
Scout also placed a $12M bid, but it wasn't accepted because the company wasn’t able to offer cash for the properties as Dwight City Group did.
Angster said he is also considering offering subsidized apartments for artists in the space.
A bankruptcy court in Wilmington is also auctioning off nine former UArts properties. The listings are being handled by JLL, which estimated the portfolio would fetch a collective $87M.
Three of those properties have already been purchased, Axios reported.
Temple University bought Terra Hall at 211 S. Broad St. for $18M, the Curtis Institute of Music got the Art Alliance Building at 251 S. 18th St. for $7.6M, and Quadro Bay LLC purchased the Arts Bank Building at 601 S. Broad St. for $2.7M.
