Work starts at $31M West Philly office building
TD Bank, Tom Leonard backs LEED Platinum Neighborhood Restorations site for US immigration
Work starts at $31M West Philly office building
Joseph N. DiStefano
Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., and other officials are listed for Monday morning's groundbreaking of Univeristy Place Associates LLC's five-story office building at 41st and Filbert (just below Market), where partners Scott Mazo and Jim Levin of Neighborhood Restorations (which owns and manages 1,000 mostly single-family city rentals), and Tom Leonard (partner at Obermayer, real estate investor and Democratic fundraiser), have already started work on the $31 million, 105,000-sq-ft office building, one of the biggest office projects in town since the recession started.
The federal government's Citizenship and Immigration Services will lease three of the floors, moving from 16th and Callwowhill after the building won a General Services Administraotin bidding process, GSA said last year. Other tenants are in discussion, Mazo told me. Mazo says lenders led by TD Bank are in for a little over 60% of the price, with the three partners, as University Place Associates Equity, putting up the cash balance. The site, once home to a ball-bearing plant, is the first in the city pre-certified Platinum LEED for efficient energy and water use, according to Mazo. "It's appropriate, in one of the nation's largest research centers, to have a building with this level of energy efficiency, environmental responsibility and workplace enfvironment," he said. "That's a statement about who we are." Penntex Construction's Fort Washington office, whose clients include University Property Trust, will manage construction on the union-labor site. Special features include a green roof, stormwater holding tanks, a gray-water recycling system that feeds toilets and other non-potable uses, solar-band glass from PPG Industries, and a European chilled-beam heating-ventilating-air conditioning system.
So, who will be leasing the 16th and Callowhill location now that the Fed Govt will be moving their offices? What is being done to draw new business into Philly as opposed to shifting current offices from one site to another in this city? A great deal of focus is going to West Philly but there is a massive amount of Industrial land in this city that remains vacant. What is being done to entice businesses to move into this area?— Moving On- Chakah Fattah still stealing taxpayers' money for boondoggles in West Philadelphia. This place will be vacant in ten years. All employees being transferred to this location should have concealed carry permits issued in order to confront all the street thugs who will be harrassing them on a daily basis. How the heck did the beautiful, classy Renee Chenault marry such a dope of a guy? I guess they're right, women love to associate with men in power regardless of their lack of brains.— wlkelly
- Kelly. You been to 41st below Market lately? That's Penn. Not the 'hood. Didn't hear you complain when Rick Santorum helped Pat Keating get really big bucks to move the IRS - from Northeast Philly - to U. City, again— Joe D
