This Week's Philadelphia Deal Sheet
Few obvious opportunities for fashionable office-to-residential conversions remain in Philadelphia's Center City after a run of such conversions in the 1990s and 2000s, but one such building traded hands in the past week.
Alterra Property Group acquired 1701 Market St., the 465K SF office building that law firm Morgan Lewis will vacate next year, for an undisclosed price, The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported. When that happens, Alterra will convert the property into 299 apartments and preserve the 14K SF of retail on the ground floor, one unit of which is vacant.
Alterra came close to acquiring the 18-story building early this year from owner LXP Industrial before the deal fell through, but values in the office market dropped enough for the sale to finally close, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports. Morgan Lewis is scheduled to depart early next year for its new build-to-suit by Parkway Corp. at 2222 Market St.
PEOPLE
JLL Capital Markets hired Samantha Kupersmith to its Philadelphia office, where she will serve as senior director and focus on multifamily sales. Kupersmith had been at CBRE for nearly five years, during which time she has been involved in over $300M of transactions.
FINANCING
New Jersey-based Greek Real Estate Partners landed a $44M construction loan from CIT Bank for a 287K SF distribution center at 2121 Wheatsheaf Lane in Lower Northeast Philadelphia. When finished — its completion is projected for Q1 2025 — it will be GREP's first property within Philly's city limits.
GREP acquired the 21-acre property between Port Richmond, Bridesburg and Harrowgate in 2021 for $10.5M, and is in the process of demolishing the 305K SF warehouse that occupied it. The new building will have modern specifications like 40-foot clearance heights and 36 dock doors.
CONSTRUCTION
Montgomery County's Gwynedd Mercy University broke ground on a 65K SF healthcare education facility, which will make it the largest academic building in the Catholic private school's 75-year history. Expected to cost $23M, the Frances M. Maguire Healthcare Innovation Center is getting its biggest financing chunk from the family of its namesake.
The Maguire Foundation, established by the late alumna Maguire and her husband John, donated $10M for the building, which will house classes and programming for nursing, psychology and a new speech pathology program. The project also received a $1.25M grant from the statewide Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, the university announced. Completion is scheduled for 2025.
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The city of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Department of Parks & Recreation and the nonprofit Riverfront North Partnership broke ground on a $10.7M, 10-acre park on the Delaware River in Bridesburg. The first $7M phase will consist mostly of a lawn on the site of a former concrete factory off Orthodox Street, which is currently an expanse of pavement.
The Robert A. Borski Jr. Park is named for the former congressman from Bridesburg and founder of Riverfront North for his fundraising and advocacy for community access to the waterfront. A second, $3.7M phase, which would include an outdoor performance space, has no scheduled start date.
