This Week's Philadelphia Deal Sheet
Hilco Redevelopment Partners has acquired additional industrial property near the former site of the PES refinery it controls in South Philadelphia.
HRP purchased two properties in September near the refinery: an 11.4-acre lot at 1600 Warfield St. and a 1.5-acre lot at 3433 Moore St., both of which contain decades-old warehouses. The combined purchase price was $36.5M, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports. The two sites are within a block of each other, as well as nearly adjacent to the northern edge of the refinery site, which HRP has branded as the Bellwether District for its redevelopment plan.
The latest version of that plan calls for more than 10M SF of industrial construction, likely focused on distribution centers for e-commerce tenants. It didn't include plans for its newly acquired lots on Warfield and Moore streets.
SALES
York-based investment group Triple Bar Properties has acquired a 187K SF grocery-anchored shopping center in the town of Willow Street in Lancaster County. Triple Bar, created in 2020 out of a partnership of York-based J.C. Bar, Triple Crown Corp. and Weathervane Capital Partners, bought the 95% occupied center from Northpath Investments.
Kendig Square has been anchored by Central Pennsylvania-focused grocery chain Weis Markets since the center was built in 1991. A JLL Capital Markets team led by Senior Managing Directors Christopher Munley and Jim Galbally represented Northpath in the sale.
A fund managed by Equus Capital Partners has sold a two-building office campus at 440-460 Swedesford Road in Wayne, part of the King of Prussia office and life sciences submarket, to a private investor at an undisclosed price. The buildings, which total over 150K SF, were 95% occupied at the time of sale, with virtually all of their leases signed in the last three years.
Equus acquired the 1978-built property in 2018 and spent $5M on renovations from 2019 to 2020, including a roof replacement. Since then, it signed tenants to 140K SF. Equus' disposal of the asset returned capital to its $361M fund Equus Investment Partnership X LP.
LEASES
Early stage biopharmaceutical startup Uvax Bio has announced a planned move to office and wet lab space in the Springdale Plaza commercial center in Newark, Delaware. Uvax's expansion will increase its employee headcount from five to 63 on the strength of a $1.3M grant it received from the Delaware Council on Development Finance.
The property at 100 Biddle Ave. will require upgrades to both its lab and office footprint before Uvax can move in, at which point the company will look to start Phase 1 trials of vaccine candidates for the coronavirus and HIV.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Philadelphia-based structural engineering firm O'Donnell & Naccarato has acquired Miami-based Douglas Wood Associates to facilitate its expansion in the region. O'Donnell has also opened its first office in Orlando, adding south and central Florida to its list of offices, which already includes New York, New Jersey and Indianapolis, in addition to its home base in Philly.
