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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Phila planners to vet Drexel, Blatstein, Urban Outfitters expansion

UPDATES: As commercial property slumps, we're hearing rumors. A big Philadelphia construction company has been sold -- we're chasing the details. A big Center City construction proposal may have lost key funding -- though that wouldn't be so unusual, these days. 
Still, there are projects in motion around the city. The Philadelphia City Planning Commission has a long agenda for its meeting next Tuesday, Jan. 20, 1 pm, upstairs at 1515 Arch St.  See it here, or browse the highlights:
 
- Expansion by Drexel University into the University City Science Center, which was supposed to incubate new companies, but is increasingly a landlord to its neighbor-owners. Drexel wants to change permitted land use at 3501 Market so it can put its new design center, funded with $25 million from Urban Outfitters founder Richard Hayne, at the site, where it will replace Thomson Reuters (the old Institute for Scientific Information), which plans to move its 579 workers to 1500 Spring Garden by year's end, as my colleague Stacey Burling has reported.

- Urban Outfitters, whose chains have done less bad than most women's clothing sellers in the retail collapse, wants permission to expand its new headquarters at the old Navy Yard.

- Bart Blatstein's Tower Investments is vetting zoning changes for its 11-story, 86-unit Poplar Hotel Development "with ground floor retail, a take-out restaurant, and 86 below-grade parking spaces" at 828 N. 2d St., the old Schmidt's Brewery. "We've got seven buildings under construction. Money is still available," said Blatstein, whose financiers include union pension managers. "It's better than in 1990, when the S&L debacle happened."

- Zoning changes for Blatstein's planned apartments-and-stores at the old State Office Building, S.E. Broad and Spring Garden. That's 300 apartments in the renovated tower, plus a new row of stores, and later 200 units in a new building at the west end of the property, with rents around $1200-1300/month. "When the state moves out, we'll start," says Blatstein.

Plus a "transit-oriented neighborhood plan" in parts of Germantown and Nicetown near Septa Chestnut Hill line stations, like last year's proposals along Septa's Trenton line in Northeast Philly; John Buck Co.'s residential development at 2116 Chestnut St.; the transfer of land near 8th and Race, and on Florist between 2d and 4th, from the Delaware River Port Authority to the city; bloc rezoning in Northern Liberties and near Temple; and more.
Posted by Joseph N. DiStefano @ 8:49 AM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:05 PM, 01/18/2009
    Ed Rendell favors Blatstein's purchase of Broad & Spring Garden to join the Center City boom witha a planned apartments-and-stores at the old State Office Building. To bad the Market busted. The real story big news story is how PA leases spaces to favored landlords. Insiders at the State gossip that is why the Broad and Springgarden building was really sold. The State should have sought out and bought the historic building at Broad and Arch next to the convention center that Praxis tried to save. Expanded and built right it would have been a premiere Crown on north broad street attached to the Convention Center...(making more reasonst to "Visit PA")
    — John Jr.


1 comments
About Joseph N. DiStefano
Joseph N. DiStefano writes this blog to feed his PhillyDeals column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Joe has been a member of Bloomberg LP’s New York Finance Team, wrote the book “Comcasted,” taught writing at St. Joseph’s University, and studied economics and history at Penn. Reach Joe at 215-854-5194 and JoeD@phillynews.com
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