Brickstone Realty Corp. bought 1122-28 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia for $8 million, according to city property records.
The three adjacent buildings total 135,000 square feet. One property, 1122-1124 Chestnut, was constructed as two adjacent structures, one that is five stories and the other four stories and later connected as one big building. The other building, 1126-1128 Chestnut, is six stories with a basement. Jones Lang LaSalle arranged the transaction.
This is the second big transaction in this part of Chestnut Street in recent weeks. The former Beneficial Savings Bank building, 24,000-square-foot structure at 1200-1202 Chestnut St. in Center City was bought by local attorney Thomas R. Kline for $4 million.
These two deals can only bode well for this part of Chestnut Street if the new owners decide to something with the properties rather than just sit on them.
A three-block stretch of Chestnut Street — the 1000, 1100 and 1200 — were victims of the recession. More than a dozen storefronts are vacant, stunting the commercial progress that has taken place on either side of that desolate area. Projects that would have reinvigorated those blocks, which have a history of being downtrodden, had been in the works before the economy soured and financing was readily available. Then that came to an abrupt halt and left projects that had been planned either in limbo or dead.
That’s what happened with 1122-28 Chestnut. CREI, a developer that got hard hit by the recession, had once planned a wild-looking $75 million, 21-story tower on the site that would have totaled nearly 300,000 square feet. A hotel would have taken up a portion of the space and condominiums the remainder. It never happened and the lender took buildings back.
What Brickstone, which owns the Lits building on East Market Street, plans to do with the properties is unknown though some chatter has the developer embarking on its own grand mixed-use project. A company representative couldn’t be reached.
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