This Week's Philadelphia Deal Sheet
A week after the announced sale of a centrally located hotel in Philadelphia, the buyer and its financing source have now been made public.
A joint venture of Oaktree Capital Management and Clearview Hotel Capital acquired the 306-room Sofitel Philadelphia at Rittenhouse Square for $80M from Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, supported in part by a $56M construction loan from Square Mile Capital.
A JLL team led by Senior Managing Director Ryan Ade and Managing Director Mark Fisher arranged the loan for the JV between Oaktree, a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, and the California-based Clearview.
CONSTRUCTION
Completion is expected this month at a 400K SF distribution center in the Central Pennsylvania township of North Lebanon, owned by Transwestern Development Co. and leased to Walmart. The facility, which has already hired 500 out of nearly 1,000 planned part-time and full-time employees, will operate as a "consolidation center" where goods from small to midsized companies can be compiled to be sent to regional distribution centers.
The facility, which will employ heavy use of automation, is the second of its kind for Walmart, with the first having opened in California in 2019. Built on former farmland acquired by Transwestern for $19M early last year, the warehouse is the first logistics property to be built in North Lebanon.
LEASING
Keystone Development + Investment has signed two new leases totaling more than 60K SF at The Washington, its 880K SF office building at 510 Walnut St., and renewed one of its largest tenants. The oversized ground floor has been leased to Impact Museums and Lighthouse Immersive, the partnership that brought the immersive Van Gogh Experience to Philadelphia last year as a traveling exhibition. The nearly 32K SF space is scheduled to open early next year.
On the second floor, the U.S. General Services Administration has signed a new 31K SF lease, while Ace American Insurance Co. renewed its lease of over 140K SF. The GSA's lease is a relocation, though it was not disclosed what office the federal government's property management agency would depart. The GSA leases more than 100K SF just a few blocks away at 100 South Independence Mall West, also owned by Keystone, for its regional headquarters.
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Pharmaceutical giant Merck has agreed to lease the entirety of a 76K SF lab building at Spring House Innovation Park in the Montgomery County suburb of Lower Gwynedd, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports. It is the largest of four leases that the owner, a joint venture of Beacon Capital Partners and MRA Group, has signed in the past few months, bringing the 600K SF campus to 60% leased.
Merck, which has a much larger campus in the town of West Point 6 miles away, will use the Spring House space on vaccine development, PBJ reports. For 100K SF of what remains to be leased at Spring House, Beacon is planning a new redevelopment into lab space, in addition to two speculative lab suites, each 12K SF in size.
PARTNERSHIPS
Suburban multifamily giant Morgan Properties has partnered with NewPoint Real Estate Capital to launch a new lending platform to arrange government-subsidized financing for privately financed owners. The venture, named NewPoint impact, will be helmed by NewPoint President of Affordable Strategies Rob Wrzosek.
Meant to target both for-profit and nonprofit acquirers and developers, NewPoint Impact will make use of Low Income Housing Tax Credit financing for new and refinancing deals, the latter of which is expected to be provided by NewPoint Real Estate Capital itself. NewPoint Impact will have a minimum loan size of $8M.
