This Week's Philadelphia Deal Sheet
Keystone Development + Investment is about to launch its next phase of life sciences conversion at The Curtis, its 912K SF historic commercial building in the heart of Philadelphia's most historic area, Bisnow can exclusively report.
Before the end of the first quarter, Keystone will begin infrastructure and systems work to convert 200K SF of vacant office space to life sciences usage. That process should only take a few months, and work on the leasable space will follow. The timeline of that next phase, as well as the specific use, will be determined by the leasing process. The project will be funded with a $265M loan Keystone obtained from Nuveen in August.
The 125K SF at the Curtis that was already converted from its former life as a magazine publishing floor is fully leased to a handful of tenants, the largest of which is BioLabs. The lab-as-a-service operator, which originated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, manages 23K SF of "graduate" lab space, which targets startups progressing out of incubators. In late 2023, it will open a 30K SF incubator in the same building.
PEOPLE
King of Prussia-based Morgan Properties, the third-largest multifamily landlord in the U.S. by unit count, has promoted Marina Dikos to chief financial officer. Dikos, who was elevated from her post as senior vice president and chief accounting officer, replaces Patrick O'Grady, who is retiring after 14 years at the post.
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Philly-based tenant-only commercial brokerage Tactix Real Estate Advisors has hired Dana Hammill to serve as its first life sciences adviser specializing in cell and gene therapy. Hammill had been running her own consulting business in the two specialized scientific fields after serving as the director of strategy and business development for the University of Pennsylvania's cell therapy program for nearly a decade.
SALES
Blackstone subsidiary Link Logistics Real Estate has acquired a 453K SF distribution center in the Lehigh Valley for $91M from Rockefeller Group. The building at 800 Willowbrook Road in Northampton, Pennsylvania, is part of the three-building, 1.8M SF Rockefeller Logistics Park.
The property was completed last year and was listed on Rockefeller's website as fully available as of Wednesday. JLL Capital Markets represented Rockefeller in the sale.
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Horizon Equities has purchased a 10-property, 310K SF portfolio of retail and medical office assets spread across the Ocean County, New Jersey, townships of Toms River and Brick. The 70% occupied portfolio was sold for $46M by Edele Hovnanian, head of and heir to the family office of her father, Armenian developer Hirair Hovnanian, who died in 2021. She was represented in the transaction by Marcus & Millichap.
Over 250K SF of the portfolio is retail, including multiple strip centers, single-tenant outparcels and a 38K SF enclosed mall called Holiday City Plaza I in Toms River.
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BET Investments, the mixed-use development firm owned by Toll Brothers co-founder Bruce Toll, has purchased an office building and nearby parking lot adjacent to a SEPTA regional rail stop in the Montgomery County suburb of Ambler, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports.
Engineering firm Hatch LTK sold the two properties to BET for $13M in a sale-leaseback transaction, and it plans to remain as a long-term tenant in the two-story, 67K SF office building alongside fellow engineering company Precis Engineering. Though BET is better known for its redevelopments, it plans to simply own the building as an income-producing property as long as the tenants remain in place.
FINANCING
An affiliate of D2 Organization has secured an $8.5M loan to refinance a vacant 81K SF office property in Collegeville, a Montgomery County suburb a few miles down U.S. Route 422 from King of Prussia. The loan both refinances D2's acquisition loan and helps fund property improvements in service of finding a tenant in a forbidding market for suburban office leasing.
D2 purchased the property for $13M in 2017 when it was fully leased to Iron Mountain, which had already planned to vacate the building and consolidate at its nearby Royersford location. D2 negotiated a buyout with Iron Mountain that allowed it to vacate in 2020.
Cadence Real Estate Advisors has been retained to market the building, which sits within the 340-acre Providence Corporate Center, for lease. The 18 acres on which the building sits have development rights for a further 80K SF of commercial use.
CORRECTION, JAN. 27, 11:45 A.M. ET: A previous version of this article misstated Morgan Properties' rank among the largest U.S. multifamily owners and contained an erroneous description of the company's C-suite. This article has been updated.
