PhillyDeals: Apartment tower is new plan for 1919 Market

The latest plan for Philadelphia's most expensive grassy field - at

1919 Market St.

, the gap in Center City's skyscraper row - is to dig it up and build a 29-story, 321-apartment, $140 million glass-walled tower, owner

Brandywine Realty Trust

said Monday.

There have been other plans for towers on the site, before and since Brandywine bought the lot in 2011. But this time the money is committed, and work is to start immediately, Brandywine says. Its new partner is Berwyn-based LCOR CalSTRS, a successor to the former Linpro Co., which invests for the giant California State Teachers Retirement System.

Brandywine previously planned a little more business and a little less housing at the site with partner Independence Blue Cross, whose headquarters is next door.

But "since we're a health insurer and not typically in the real estate business, after reviewing our strategic business needs, we decided to sell our interest in the land to Brandywine and to become a tenant in a portion of the retail space," Independence spokeswoman Judimarie Thomas told me. Independence and a CVS drugstore will fill most of the 24,000 square feet of commercial space in the 455,000-square-foot tower.

With new office towers still mostly uneconomical at Center City rents, the project is an extension of the high-rise housing boom whose cranes now are prominent on the skyline in nearby University City and neighborhoods adjoining the Market Street office strip west of City Hall.

By building apartments instead of offices, Brandywine protects demand for the seven million square feet of Center City office space it controls, including the nearby Logan Square and Commerce Plaza high-rises and the Cira Centre across the Schuylkill.

Together, LCOR and Brandywine are investing $59 million in 1919 Market, including the land, which Brandywine values at $13 million. They say they have arranged to borrow the rest, at Libor-plus-2.25 percent interest. There will be "luxury" amenities and a 215-car garage open to the public.

The architect is BartonPartners; the builder is Hunter Roberts Construction Group.

Delaware's Buccini brothers - partners in Buccini/Pollin Group Inc., the hotel-entertainment-apartment developers whose projects stretch across Wilmington, the Chester waterfront, and the Washington area - have acquired control of the ghost city on the Brandywine that is the former Bancroft Mills property in Wilmington, King of Prussia-based developer Brian O'Neill confirms.

O'Neill's past-due $14.8 million loan on the property went on sale earlier this year. He had hoped to build as many as 1,400 homes there.

The complex, which employed thousands as recently as the 1960s, towers over the swirling creek on beds of "blue rock" granite, and is picturesque and historic but lacks easy road access, neighbors who challenged previous plans have warned.

O'Neill told me he expects Rob and Chris Buccini will succeed in getting city approvals to redevelop the main complex.

"They're my good friends," O'Neill told me. "They're the best at what they do in the state of Delaware, and I couldn't be happier for them." The Buccinis were not immediately available for comment.