Please enjoy the Halloween edition of Capstone Law’s Philadelphia Real Estate Trends:
- National investors continue to flock to Philadelphia’s multi-family assets. This past summer, Chicago-based The John Buck Company opened its 34-story luxury apartment complex at 2116 Chestnut Street. On the heels of the JBC investment comes word this week that Los Angeles-based Lowe Enterprises Investors acquired the Granary from Philadelphia’s Pearl Properties for approximately $120 million. Pearl recently completed construction of the 229 unit luxury multi-family complex at 20th and Callowhill Streets (complete with the absolutely incredible Pizzeria Vetri). This deal equates to a substantial return on Pearl’s $66 million investment and hopefully energizes increasing national interest in the Philadelphia real estate market.
- The City of Philadelphia is home to tens of thousands of vacant properties. Not only do they contribute virtually nothing to the city’s tax base, but they also degrade the vitality of the neighborhoods surrounding them. City Council will attempt to counter this issue by creating a central clearinghouse (dubbed Land Bank) to acquire and sell these properties to parties hopefully intending to put the properties to more productive uses. If City Council does not stand in its own way by hijacking the process as if often does, the Land Bank could provide an attractive avenue for investors in our area to acquire properties for new developments.
- PREIT continues its transformation of the Moorestown Mall (the ugly stepsister to PREIT’s more popular Cherry Hill Mall) into a restaurant mecca/entertainment complex by bringing in top chefs to lure new customers/shoppers. First up, Marc Vetri’s highly acclaimed restaurant, Osteria, followed by the New Jersey outpost of Iron Chef Jose Garces Distristo. The additional traffic from these hot spots should make the Moorestown Mall more attractive and enable PREIT to raise rents from existing tenants.
As always, please check-out Capstone’s website and the “Llenrock Local”, for the latest news from Philadelphia’s busy commercial real estate sector.
Until next time, have a great week!