PhillyDeals: Pennsylvania's capital budget is fat with development grants

The latest edition of Pennsylvania's $4 billion capital budget appropriations bill contains fat cash grants to a string of Philadelphia-area developers and government agencies.

They'll get the money, if they can raise matching funds, dollar-for-dollar, and the governor's office gives final approval.

As I noted Tuesday, developer Bart Blatstein's Tower Investments is in line for a $45 million grant for his hotel and parking development at the Piazza at Schmidts in Northern Liberties.

My colleague Angela Couloumbis adds in Wednesday's paper that the budget proposal also would give Blatstein $25 million more for another hotel and parking area at Second and Poplar, plus $25 million to help him buy the former State Office Building at Broad and Spring Garden Streets and turn it into apartments and stores. That deal has been held up for more than a year as Blatstein sought to complete his financing.

At least someone is funding new construction, and jobs for builders, in Pennsylvania. But can the state afford all this?

Blatstein says his private financing is ready once the state dollars come through. He insists his Northern Liberties apartments are still attracting tenants. He said he had not had to cut his apartment rents, which range up to around $2,000 a month. He says he's also drawing new stores and restaurants to his properties.

Taxpayers better hope more tenants (and students, riders, and other users) are out there, despite the slow economy, to make these projects financially viable once they're done.

The budget also includes, among many others:

$25 million for developer Dennis Maloomian's Village at Valley Forge shopping center, just west of the King of Prussia malls.

$45 million for new facilities at the Keystone Industrial Port Complex in Falls Township in Bucks County; $11 million for the Norfolk Southern railroad to build a terminal and a trash-shipping station at the former Philadelphia Navy Yard; $10 million for new buildings and to "remove a crane" at the financially imperiled, state-subsidized Aker Philadelphia Shipyard, and $45 million for other, unspecified "facilities" at the former Navy Yard site.

$100 million for a new library at Temple University.

$62 million for Lincoln University, the historically African American state-related school in Chester County, to renovate four buildings.

$30 million for a new Life Sciences Building at the University of Pennsylvania, plus $29 million for Penn's planned animal-health diagnostic laboratory at New Bolton Center near Kennett Square.

$20 million for Immaculata University's new science building. Plus $10 million or more, each, for buildings at Delaware Valley College, LaSalle, Holy Family, and Drexel.

More than $200 million for improvements at SEPTA's Conshohocken, Croydon, Glenside, Jenkintown, Levittown, Paoli, 69th Street, and Villanova stations, and to buy new buses and other equipment.

$115 million to redevelop the former Norristown State Hospital and, nearby, Montgomery Hospital and Sacred Heart Hospital.

$25 million for Lankenau Hospital expansion. Millions more for work at Holy Redeemer, Aria Health-Frankford, and Abington Memorial.

More than $120 million for unnmamed developers to build housing, commercial projects and charter schools at more than 10 separate sites in South Philadelphia. Plus $15 million for unnamed "economic development projects" in Bucks, Chester and Montgomery Counties.

More than $6 million for a hangar and terminal at New Garden Flying Field in southern Chester County.

And we're not forgetting our founder, William Penn, who said and wrote so much about government's responsibility for the common wealth.

The bill allots $3.6 million for geothermal heating at state-owned Pennsbury Manor, Penn's old home in Bucks County, now surrounded by garbage landfills.