This Week's Philadelphia Deal Sheet
The next major life sciences development in University City has a new completion date as its owners turn their focus to leasing up the ground floor.
Once scheduled to deliver in late 2022, 3.0 University Place at 41st and Market streets is now on track to be ready for tenant fit-out in April. The eight-story, 250K SF building is designed to contain small-scale biomanufacturing space on the second floor. Incubator Ben Franklin Technology Partners will take space on the fourth floor.
The 20K SF third floor and the fifth through eighth floors, each about 30K SF, have yet to be leased, but co-developers University Place Associates and Silverstein Properties foregrounded the 25K SF ground-floor retail space in their announcement of the new completion date.
A New York-based joint venture of Silverstein and Cantor Fitzgerald purchased a 90% equity stake in the property from UPA in 2020, but only Silverstein joined UPA as a strategic partner in the development.
UPA and Silverstein are targeting an urgent care provider, a restaurant and a café to fill the ground floor, which is set back far enough from the street to fit expansive outdoor dining options. So far, only Fulton Bank has signed on to operate a 2,300 SF bank branch.
SALES
A joint venture of Jenkintown-based Goodman Properties and Provco Group purchased a 135K SF shopping center anchored by Pennsylvania's first Amazon Fresh grocery store in the Bucks County suburb of Warrington for nearly $25M, Commercial Property Executive reports.
Creekview Center, which also includes tenants like Bank of America, Chipotle and Petco, is shadow-anchored by a Target and a Lowe's. JLL represented the seller, ShopCore Properties, in the transaction.
OPENINGS
Thrillz High Flying Adventure Park, a 37K SF entertainment venue with an assortment of obstacle courses, arcade games and attractions, opened at 555 South Henderson Road in King of Prussia on Feb. 17. Sharing a parking lot with a Floors USA store, Thrillz advertises its offerings on social media, including a 6K SF jungle gym, a 360-degree spinning virtual reality roller coaster and a NASA-developed spinning gyroscope tumbler.
PEOPLE
Some of the region's most influential entities in commercial real estate have formed Everybody Builds, a new partnership to centralize diversity, equity and inclusion efforts for the industry, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports. With developers, unions and key institutions all signing on, the goal of Everybody Builds is to be a central entity for advising and guiding diversity initiatives as well as connecting diverse businesses to projects looking for a diversity component.
Andreina Perez Hein has been tapped to lead Everybody Builds as executive director. Among the organizations signed on as partners are the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, Drexel University, Temple University, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, Eastern Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, Mosaic Development Partners and Hilco Redevelopment Partners/The Bellwether District.
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Meyer Architects has been nationally certified as a Minority-owned Business Enterprise by the Eastern Minority Supplier Development Council. Principals Phil Burkett and Alicia Karr took over as majority owners from the firm's founder, George Wilson, last year. All four owners have been with the commercial architecture firm for at least 20 years. Principals Mike Stanczak and Dan King are minority shareholders.
FINANCING
New Jersey Community Capital, the state's largest community development financial institution, is expanding beyond its home state's borders with its first loan in Philadelphia. NJCC has closed a $1.3M loan covering acquisition, construction and permanent financing with local MBE Fine Print Construction for a 17-unit multifamily development. More than half of the units will be designated as affordable.
NJCC is the first institution to provide a loan through the Philadelphia Accelerator Fund, a nonprofit loan conduit for development in disadvantaged areas, which launched in 2019.
CORRECTION, FEB. 23, 11:45 A.M: A previous version of this article misstated the lease commitments for 3.0 University Place. This article has been updated.
