Lubert-Adler To Bring Fishtown To The Waterfront In 2023 With Power Plant Redevelopment

Another major element of Philadelphia’s efforts to reconnect to its waterfront is rapidly approaching completion.

The Battery, Lubert-Adler Real Estate Funds’ redevelopment of the Philadelphia Electric Co.’s former Delaware Generating Station in Fishtown, has been under construction since soon after the company purchased the building from a partnership of Joe Volpe and Bart Blatstein in early 2020. Now, the first phase is set to deliver a mix of uses in less than a year.

The 223K SF building, built in 1920 and designated historic at the city, state and federal levels, has already had its facade renovated and the exterior of the two-story addition to the structure completed. The interior, which is set to include a total of 284 market-rate rental apartments, 49K SF of creative offices and a 25K SF event space operated by rapidly expanding local catering and event company Cescaphe, of which Volpe is the owner and CEO. 

The residential portion will also include a two-floor amenity space that features a roof deck among the massive smokestacks. A historic concert barge designed by local architectural legend Louis Kahn will be permanently docked at the pier that juts out from the rear of the power plant building into the Delaware River.

The Battery will begin moving in tenants in the last few months of this year, with the office portion to be ready for tenants “right around the new year,” Lubert-Adler Vice Chairman Leonard Klehr told Bisnow. The event venue does not have a set opening date, but is coming along on a similar timeline to the office portion. Two more phases, each of them new construction, are planned for vacant land to the north of the former power plant building at the 11-acre site. What uses the phases may contain and when construction would begin is up in the air.

“That will be driven by market demand at the time we’re ready to move forward,” Klehr said of the Battery’s future phases. “We’re not generally spec builders.”

Of the estimated $156M project cost, $21M is being provided through a Federal Historic Tax Credit supported by the National Trust Community Investment Corp., according to NTCIC’s website. The Battery is located within both a federal opportunity zone and a Pennsylvania-specific Keystone Opportunity Zone, both of which provide tax advantages that are central to Lubert-Adler’s recruiting efforts for potential office tenants. Cadence Real Estate Advisors, based in the Main Line suburb of Wayne, is the leasing agent for the office portion, Klehr said.

Though Lubert-Adler CEO Dean Adler announced his general intentions for the property in 2019 while his company’s acquisition was under contract, publicly available city permit documents have been the only source of concrete information on the Battery even as construction has progressed. Its progress was noted by multiple local real estate blogs, but Adler declined to comment to Bisnow multiple times since one of the blogs reported on its zoning permits being pulled in April of last year.

“We’ll crow about [the Battery] in a timely manner when it comes time for the rollout and for the PR and all that,” Klehr said.

There will be much to crow about, and to debate, when Lubert-Adler decides to ramp up publicity. In addition to the indoor event space and outdoor concert venue, the first phase of the Battery will also include an extension of Palmer Street from the heart of Fishtown directly to a promenade on the riverfront — which will itself connect to an extension of the Delaware River Trail that currently ends in neighboring Penn Treaty Park at the fence line of the property. Palmer Street is one of several cross streets in Fishtown interrupted by the Interstate 95 overpass that looms between the neighborhood from Delaware Avenue and the river.

“We expect that Palmer Street and the riverfront will be a magnet for residents of Fishtown and the city,” Klehr said. 

Lubert-Adler will also be hoping the Battery will be a magnet for creative office tenants, as it will be the first new office space of any significant size to be added to the neighborhood in quite some time.

For the last decade at least, the non-medical office inventory of Fishtown has amounted to a few scattered, small offices in low-rise buildings on the Frankford Avenue commercial corridor, an industrial conversion with multiple ground-floor retail tenants owned by Alterra Property Group at 2424 York St., and a 178K SF office building just across Beach Street from the Battery called Penn Treaty Park Place owned by a man named Gus Tornberg, according to city property records.

Penn Treaty Park Place was built in 1911 and has been owned by the Tornberg family since 1989. Labeled a Class-C property by commercial listing sites, the building has been represented since 2012 by CVA Commercial Group, which also lists the building as its headquarters. CVA and Tornberg are evaluating the next steps for the property, which is occupied by several tenants, CVA founder and President Vince Jolly told Bisnow.

Other developers who have secured portions of waterfront real estate in the same area have opted to build suburban-style townhome developments, with wildly varying levels of success. 

Less than a mile to the north is the ongoing construction of Northbank by a development team of The Concordia Group, D3 Real Estate Development and The Resmark Cos., which is planned to contain 358 townhomes and stacked condominiums, 550 rental apartments and up to 25K SF of retail space in a subdivision-type arrangement at full build-out. D3 co-founder and Managing Partner Greg Hill claimed the first portions of the $300M project have been selling rapidly earlier this year.

On the opposite side of Penn Treaty Park is an 18-unit townhome project that developer Gotham Bedrock abandoned after several site issues and the company’s own bankruptcy. Two of the half-completed homes caught fire in October, after which the city’s Department of Licenses & Inspections ordered the project’s immediate demolition. The structures remained standing as of March 3.

Despite their different fates, the two projects both were designed with residential appeal in mind. The Battery, with its historic structure precluding a development similar to Northbank or the Penn Treaty townhomes, is very much an urban project with the pedestrian experience in mind. 

“Clearly, we’re building a much more dense use of the riverfront,” Klehr said. Asked to comment on whether the nearby residential projects and outdated office building help or hurt the Battery’s chances at success, Klehr offered a verbal shrug.

“I haven’t really looked at it from that perspective," he said. "Our view is that if we supply a nice place to live with great views and a great site, that will stand by itself regardless of what people are doing.”