News
FOUR NORTH BROAD PROJECTS TO WATCH
April 12, 2012
| There's an ever-growing collection of multifamily and CRE projects that have risen on the strip of North Broad Street between City Hall and Temple University over the past couple years. Here are four that you should keep an eye on. |
| 1. PASEO VERDE |
 |
| On Tuesday, the $47.3M Paseo Verde, a mixed-use, transit-oriented development, broke ground on a 1.9-acre land parcel next to the Temple University train station. Aside from its rendering (in which someone captured the superhero The Flash running past), the 206k SF facility will also have an altruistic mission: The 120 rental units will be offered to low- and moderate-income families, and the 30k SF on the ground floor will combine retail with community service space, including a primary-care clinic and a pharmacy. |
 |
| Philadelphia's Asociación Puertorriqueños en Marcha (APM), which is developing the publicly-funded project with NY-based Jonathan Rose Cos, will also be operating a social services facility at the site. With over a dozen financing sources ranging from the city's OHCD to JPMorgan Chase, the project was initially on track to be much less sustainable, says APM's Rose Gray. "I pooh-poohed green [development] in 2000," she said, when the Wallace Roberts & Todd group were brought on to critique APM's Neighborhood Revitalization Plan. "But what I did start to think about was the Temple train station.What an asset!" (Green development forgives your original pooh-poohing.) It took eight years, Rose says, before APM realized it had a TOD project in its revitalization plan. "We were able, in a year in a half, to raise all the money we needed, and we got in the ground," she says. The development is scheduled to wrap up sometime in the spring of '13. |
| 2. NORTH BROAD LIVING'S STUDENT APTS |
 |
| On a slightly smaller scale, a new addition is also coming to the student-rental market in the Temple area. We spoke with North Broad Living's Daniel Greenberg, who's putting together a four-story, 36-unit rental at 1516-18 N 15th St. "The design is higher-end in terms of a student product," Daniel says of the $5.4M project, a mix of studio and two- and three-bedroom apartments being designed by CANNOdesign's Carey Jackson Yonce. It's scheduled for August occupancy. |
| 3. POSTGREEN HOMES' FIRST STEEL |
 |
| We stopped by the Postgreen Homes' open house in Kensington South earlier this week, where president Chad Ludeman and his wife Courtney (who does double-duty as both a Keller Williams Realtor and Postgreen's CFO) were proudly showing off their latest eco-project in progress: a metal-clad double rowhouse site known as First Steel. The event wasn't even half over when Courtney informed us that an offer had already been made on the smaller of the two homes, which was listed at $300k. |
 |
| Regardless of the eco-firm's micro size, Postgreen always seems to have multiple projects under way at once, and Courtney filled us in on some of the developments that are gaining serious steam.K'House is probably the most unusual: It's a co-housing project that will feature two separate residences with a shared working and common space, and it's being built just behind First Steel (and not far from the company's now-legendary 100k House). |
| 4. AWESOME TOWN |
 |
| Along with the reNewbold residential and retail project in South Philly, which recently earned its zoning approval (above), Chad says the company's Awesome Town project (a mixed-income development in Fishtown that's supposed to be... well, awesome) is also gaining traction and has already secured financing. We'll let you know when that project moves forward. |
