Maryland developer to buy 20 acres in KoP for big retail center

JBG Rosenfeld Retail is buying 20 acres next to the Wegman’s in King of Prussia, Pa., and will construct a 200,000-square-foot life-style center.

It will be called the King of Prussia Town Center.

The company wouldn’t disclose how much it is paying for the land at what is known as the Village at Valley Forge but estimates put it at upwards of nearly $10 million. Realen Properties, master developer of the 130-acre development, is the seller.

Though it has looked to do projects in the Philadelphia area, this marks the first time JBG Rosenfeld of Chevy Chase, Md., has ventured beyond the Washington D.C.-Baltimore-Northern Virginia market where it is an active developer of retail and mixed-use projects. The company is an affiliate of JBG Cos.

The site’s location at the confluence of three major highways was one of its big draws and makes the property an excellent site for retailers, said Tom Sebastian, senior vice president at JBG Rosenfeld.

Other aspects of the property, such as it being part of a larger mixed-use project that will eventually include multifamily residential and others uses, also make it an attractive location for retail development.

A 140,000-square-foot Wegmans is currently operating at the Village of Valley Forge. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is constructing a 115,000-square-foot specialty care center on the property that can be expanded to 195,000 square feet.

“We are very excited about the King of Prussia Town Center because we believe that it is a very special development opportunity,” Sebastian said.

The developer aims to make the center a destination where a person would, for example, come to dine at one of its restaurants and then spend the remaining day or evening shopping, he said. The experience would differ from spending a day at the mall. King of Prussia Mall is less than a mile away.

“That’s the kind of experience we are planning,” Sebastian said.

Some details of the project, such as total cost and the number of buildings, are still being worked out. It will be constructed in one phase and completed by 2015. Tenants have already started to show an interest, Sebastian said, declining to disclose any names.

King of Prussia Town Center will be the retail shopping district for the Village at Valley Forge.

Before the recession, Realen Properties was moving forward with the first phase of that development. It was fall 2007 and the initial round of development consisted of 425,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space as well as 400 apartments. Work was scheduled to be completed by 2009. However, the deep economic downturn put a kibosh on moving forward with those plans until now. The project has since been revised and scaled down to what is now planned as the King of Prussia Town Center.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal