This Week's Philadelphia Deal Sheet
American Real Estate Partners has acquired a 1M SF distribution center in Middletown, Delaware, through its Strategic Opportunity Fund III, which closed in June with $63M in outside capital raised.
The purchase, from an undisclosed seller and for an undisclosed price, marks AREP's fund being 60% deployed out of a total target of $1.5B to $2B in total asset value. AREP partnered with Machine Investment Group in a joint venture to acquire the New Castle County property.
PEOPLE
Four commercial real estate financing and advisory veterans with PREIT as a common thread between them have formed a new financial and consulting business based in the region, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports.
Associated Real Estate Consultants was founded by principals Charles Fitzgerald, Ed Glickman, Christophe Terlizzi and Bob McCadden. The new company will offer a range of services based on their decades of shared experience with high-level management in the industry.
Glickman, Terlizzi and McCadden all had previously worked at PREIT, where McCadden served as chief financial officer until he was let go on the eve of the grand opening of PREIT's star-crossed downtown mall Fashion District Philadelphia. Fitzgerald helped PREIT finance a big-box retail center it developed in Plymouth Meeting while working for Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
CONSTRUCTION
Brandywine Realty Trust commenced demolition in late June at 3151 Market St. for a 12-story, 417K SF life sciences-focused development that will be the second ground-up building in its Schuylkill Yards megaproject, the REIT announced in its second-quarter earnings call on Monday.
The demolition began two weeks before Brandywine secured a "global institutional investor" as an equity partner on the project — the same investor it secured for its combination life sciences-and-multifamily project a block away at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd., and for the same terms. The JV partner will commit $55M of equity toward the $307M project in exchange for a 45% ownership share. Brandywine also expects to close a $185M construction loan on the project in the fourth quarter, the company announced in its earnings report, leaving a $26M funding gap. The project is slated to be largely completed in late 2024.
SALES
Colliers has brought a 100K SF distribution center in the town of New Castle, Delaware, to market for lease or sale on behalf of owner LEJ Capital. The vacant facility sits on 6.7 acres of land at 955 River Road, with Colliers brokers Charles Brown and Carl Neilson leading the marketing effort.
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All-boys Main Line prep school The Haverford School has acquired a 43-acre, 10-building campus in Radnor for $19.88M as the winner of a competitive bidding process by the seller, Gemma Services. The campus, which was once a sprawling private residence called the Glencoe Estate and includes offices, classrooms, a gymnasium and former dormitories, began use as a children's center when it was donated in 1960 to the Presbyterian Children's Village by the co-founder of the Acme grocery chain.
After a merger, Presbyterian Children's Village became Gemma Services, and it enlisted David England of the Wayne-Devon branch of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach to find a buyer to fund its next phase of youth-focused nonprofit work. Though the Haverford School has not announced any plans for its new property, the acquisition more than doubles the school's 30-acre footprint.
