Whole Foods grocery, hotel, homes, offices for Newtown Sq. site
Hotel, apartments, homes, offices projected at Ellis campus
Equus Capital Partners, Daniel M. DiLella's Philadelphia-based real estate investment firm, says it has agreed to build a 41,700 sq. ft. (size corrected) Whole Foods Market at the 210-acre Ellis Preserve, the former girls' charity school that Equus and its predecessors have developed into a corporate office center.
Whole Foods will be the first store at the complex, which includes or adjoins head offices for SAP Americas, Catholic Health East, Main Line Health, Petplan, the Graham investment group and other companies. Sunoco plans to move there from Tinicum and Center City in the Spring.
DiLella's group also plans a 127-room hotel, and at least 63,000 sq. ft. of additional stores next to Whole Foods. Equus had battled rival developer Claude de Botton in court for years for permission to build stores on the site. The announcement follows a 4-3 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in which Equus, whose plans are backed by Newtown Township, crushed de Botton's last appeal. (Rival justices Castille and McCaffery, who has since departed, were on the same side: they ruled for Equus.) Work is scheduled to start in the Spring.
Among the center's selling points: "dual feed electric service from two PECO substations," which kept the offices running during Hurricane Sandy and the 2014 ice storm that left large areas of neighboring Chester County without power last winter, Equus senior vice president Stephen Spaeder said in a statement.
Equus plans to add 350,000 sq. ft. of additional stores, 310 luxury apartments, 100 rowhomes, 270,000 sq. ft. "headquarters" office space, connected by plazas, trails and walkways, see renderings at www.ellispreserve.com.