This Week’s Philadelphia Deal Sheet
Wasting no time after a month-old bankruptcy that shrunk its debt by $835M, PREIT has signed a coworking space and five other tenants to leases at the Cherry Hill Mall.
Among the new tenants, coworking hub Signature Workspace is set to open this summer, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. The company will be the mall’s first nonretail tenant.
Signature Workspace will span two floors and take up 28K SF, the company states on its website. The rental space will have private offices, team suites, coworking spaces, meeting rooms, event space, a café and lounge, wellness rooms and other amenities. The site will be the firm’s first New Jersey location.
In addition, Kooma Asian Fusion and Sushi Bar will open its first New Jersey location at the mall by summer.
Two lifestyle stores will open by Black Friday, Alo Yoga and jewelry store Kendra Scott. By next spring, ear piercing company Rowan is set to open its doors. Fashion accessories store Dry Goods has signed for 3.8K SF but has not set an opening date for the location, its first in New Jersey
PREIT owns 13 malls across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.
PEOPLE
PPR Capital Management has named its first-ever chief client officer.
The Berwyn real estate firm promoted Bill O’Brien to innovate changes to the firm’s client model, among other tasks. O’Brien will continue to be part of the senior leadership team, working with the firm’s board.
In this role, he will lead the entire client pipeline, including new technology to curate personalized portfolios.
O’Brien has worked for PPR since April 2022 as the director of investor relations. Prior to joining the firm, O’Brien was an adviser to high net worth families as the regional director of business development from 2019 to 2022 at SEI, a national financial services firm based in Oaks.
PPR Capital Management has $898M in assets under management.
SALES
A SNS Real Estate Investment Group entity has purchased a 30K SF warehouse at 7101 Airport Highway in Pennsauken, New Jersey. Colliers’ Ian Richman handled the sale. The building sold for $3.45M, approximately $115 per SF, according to CoStar.
DEVELOPMENT
The Morgan family behind Morgan Properties has donated $50M to name the next Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia building, now under construction at the intersection of Interstate 95 and South Street.
Set to open by 2025, the future Morgan Center is a 350K SF lab facility that will span 17 floors. Employees of the facility will work in tandem with the neighboring CHOP Roberts Center for Pediatric Research to expand research capabilities for the hospital.
The facility will contain wet labs, where biomedical and molecular studies are done on benches and elsewhere, as well as colocated dry labs, where researchers analyze large data sets, create computational tools and develop new hypotheses for wet lab studies.
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A coalition of several Pennsylvania-based nonprofits held a groundbreaking in Doylestown for a future behavioral health facility.
Named the Bright Path Center, the 22K SF building will open in 2025. It will offer adult and children services for nonvoluntary and voluntary treatment. Specialties include assessment, rehabilitation and withdrawal management.
THIS AND THAT
Apparel chain Gabe's plans to close two stores in southern New Jersey by Aug. 12.
In total, it will lay off 52 staffers after poor sales performance, a corporate executive shared in a notice filed with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The retailer will close locations at 2232 Route 70 in Cherry Hill and 1160 Nixon Drive in Mount Laurel.
