PREIT, the Philadelphia real estate trust that owns the Gallery and several suburban Philadelphia malls, has bought the low-rise retail-and-office building in the northwest corner of 15th and Walnut Sts. -- because PREIT employees were tired of walking out the back door of their Belleuve building headquarters and seeing the unrenovated structure, PREIT boss Joseph Coradino joked to a group of shopping center developers he was lecturing at Villanova University, says my colleague Jane Von Bergen, who was there.
PREIT isn't announcing any plans for the site just yet, spokeswoman Heather Crowell told me. The building is home to a Pa. Lottery and smoke shop, a tailor, a former athletic shoe store. Oh, and modernist architect Louis I. Kahn's former offices, with a historic marker, and all -- it was the address on his passport. "Great old building," broker Angel Luis Franqui of Solo Realty tells me. He notes the 14,000 sq ft property's city real estate tax-assessed value is $1.76 milllion (two-thirds for the building), with an estimated 2014 bill of $23,500, down from last year's pre-reassessment $34,400. Past owners Meyer and Stephanie Glin had held the property since 1966. Sale not recorded yet.
Separately, Midwood Properties of New York is promoting three other retail locations in that neighborhood (and one in the 9th Street Italian Market).