Gallery rehab bet: Taxpayer aid, Euro tenant, Broad St. hotel

As Gallery and Market East businesses continue to close (the Taco Bell and more than half the food-court businsses are gone) Macerich, the California-based mall landlord that agreed last year to invest $106.7 million in Philadelphia's urban shopping center, are readying plans to tell investors what they have in store for the aging three-story Center City mall. 

Joseph Coradino, boss at Gallery operator Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, and Art Coppola, his counterpart at Macerich, have given hints. Here's what my colleague David Sell wrote last fall about PREIT's attempt to get city aid for a "substantial renovation" of the Gallery. Here's what Coppola told his investors around the same time (see also my column and reader comments in the Jan. 19 Inquirer):

- Taxpayer aid: Coppola has had "numerous meetings with city and state officials" about public "entitlements" that will help Macerich meet its target of earning 8 to 10 percent, or up to $10.7 million, in yearly profits from its investment in the Gallery, he told investors in a conference call last October.

PREIT, the Gallery's developer, which shares ownership with Macerich, is "heading in the right direction" in "perfecting"  those economic-development arrangements, he added. PREIT hasn't returned calls seeking comment on its Gallery plans.

- Good neighbors: "SLS is doing a new luxury hotel just a couple of blocks away from The Gallery, and that's a great sign," Coppola told analyst Ki Bin Kim of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey at the conference call, after Kim raised questions about the neighborhood and noted it had been considered for a gambling casino. (The SLS International hotel that developer Carl Dranoff hopes to site at Broad and Spruce is four blocks west and four blocks south of The Gallery.) 

- New stores: "We're really bullish on the leasing conversations that we've had with retailers to come to the property," Coppola added at the October call. He named Primark, the largest clothing retailer in Britain, as having a "particular" interest in a location like the Gallery.

Primark, owned by Associated British Foods, has already agreed to open a location at the former Sears store at King of Prussia, and six other former Sears stores from Boston to Baltimore. 

The chain plans to hire 480 for its 80,000 sf King of Prussia store (apply at primark.com), according to sokeswoman Colleen Cleary.

She told me last week that Primark is looking for additional sites in the Northeast, but wouldn't say if Center City Philadelphia a (or the Gallery) will be among them. "We expect to have them all open by late 2016," she told me.

Primark says it offers women's, men's and children's clothing at competitive prices because it doesn't advertise, buys clothes in large lots and well in advance, and pays suppliers promptly.

Besides its interest in the Gallery, Macerich's Philadlephia-area properties include the Deptford Mall in South Jersey.