In what would transform a bedraggled slice of central
Philadelphia, demolition crews are weeks away from dismantling nearly an entire
side of the 1100 block of Chestnut Street, part of a $60 million to $70 million
redevelopment tapping the soaring apartment market and surging appetites to
shop and live east of Broad Street.
Zoning approvals and permits are in place, additional
property was acquired as recently as Thursday, and a large section of sidewalk
has been closed as lead development partner Brickstone Co. prepares to build a
complex of loft-style apartments above towering, three-story retail spaces.
The development will stretch almost the length of the south
side of Chestnut between 11th and 12th Streets, Brickstone managing partner
John J. Connors said.
Connors would not discuss what tenants are being courted,
but the project could include a supermarket if rumors swirling among civic
activist circles are true.
The project is pushing forward just months after Brickstone
purchased from separate landlords a slew of mismatched storefronts and a
long-decommissioned department store on the two-lane street, a once-thriving
commercial stretch orphaned despite Center City's surrounding redevelopment
boom.
If all goes as planned, by next summer, pedestrians will no
longer pass a blur of concrete facades, vacant storefronts, and discount
merchants that had made this one of the less-traversed, if more intimately
walkable, blocks of Center City. Brickstone's vision is for a Brooklyn-style
six-story redevelopment catering to young, affluent urbanites.
The properties under Brickstone's control as of Thursday -
1116 to 1128 Chestnut - will be refashioned into 96 apartments and 80,000
square feet of retail through new construction as well as restoration of one
large, historically arresting building.
Brickstone was hoping to acquire even more property, which
would make it a $68.5 million project of 115 apartments and 90,000 square feet
of retail, Connors said Thursday.
"What we have is the hole in the doughnut," Connors
said of the block's proximity to Rittenhouse Square a mile to the west, big
changes afoot nearby on Market Street East, redevelopment near Washington
Square, and the blazing 13th Street corridor of Midtown Village.
"I challenge you to find a neighborhood with better
demographics, income, education, age, or otherwise," Connors said.
Connors, who in the late 1980s helped refurbish the old Lit
Bros. department store on the 700 block of Market Street - an example of
meticulous historic restoration, and location of Brickstone's Philadelphia
office - said the company had its eye on 1100 Chestnut for years but had been
thwarted until recently in buying the properties it coveted.
"We've been tracking it for years," Connors said,
even losing a bid in 2012.
A large chunk, however, including the six-story former
Oppenheim Collins & Co. store, hit the market after a lender took
possession of it. Brickstone picked up the batch, 1122 to 1128, last June.
The company then bought 1118 to 1120 in October, and sealed
a deal for 1116 on Thursday, Connors said. One more deal was in the works, he
said.
The project would reimagine the lost luster of Chestnut,
while building on redevelopment at the Gallery, where a major new retailer was
announced Thursday, plus buzz surrounding a proposed casino at Eighth and
Market Streets and other reinvestment east of Broad.
"Chestnut was once the preeminent retail and
residential street in town," Connors said, citing a 2005 report by the
University of Pennsylvania School of Design. "Chestnut Street once had
status, glamour, and allure."
The project, which requires no Historical Commission review,
has been blessed by the Washington Square West Civic Association, said zoning
committee chair Jonathan Broh.
"We thought it was a good development," said Broh,
an architect, who called the loft design unusual and said the block had
"always felt underdeveloped" until now.
Brickstone, whose financing partner is a major Wall Street
investment bank whom Connors declined to name publicly, is pursuing a market of
high returns on leased housing as the market has tightened for first-time home
buyers. A record number of new rentals are flooding Center City.
"People are trying to find opportunities to develop
here," Broh said of Washington Square, whose neighborhood bounded by Broad
and Seventh Streets, and South and Chestnut Streets, had historically been
untouched by such large-scale development.
Brickstone has spent $2.5 million on asbestos removal.
Demolition cranes arrive in a few weeks.
All buildings will come down except for the Oppenheim
building. In their place will rise a single structure that connects to and
emulates the height, architecture, and other features of the Oppenheim
building. In all, there will be four visible storefronts.
No walls will separate the large retail footprints being
crafted from the basement through the second floors. Residential units will
occupy floors three through six and will start at $2,000 a month for a
one-bedroom apartment.
The Oppenheim store, a mid-1920s-era building, has towering
concrete columns and ceilings 21 feet high on street level, 15 feet high on the
second floor, and 14 feet in the basement.
And despite a battered interior, it is in better shape than
was Lits, which had a 35,000-square-foot hole in the roof when work began,
Connors said.
"There were mushrooms in the basement and subbasement
as big as basketballs," Connors said. "There were six-inch
stalagmites. It looked like Village of the Damned."
Each new storefront will be narrow by suburban retailing
standards. But the sales floors will extend hundreds of feet to Sansom Street,
where there will be other entrances and streetscaping.
Larry Steinberg of CBRE|Fameco is representing Brickstone in
courting retailers.
Source: Philly.com
No comments:
Post a Comment