New office building in Conshohocken could be first in new frontier

With final approvals secured, Equus Capital Partners is ramping up efforts to land a tenant for a new $100 million building it wants to construct in Conshohocken, Pa.

Equus is striving to be the first developer to construct a new office property in Conshohocken, but there’s a lot of competition.

Six proposed office buildings are in various stages of the approval process and more than $500 million in development is in the works for the borough. Each developer involved in those buildings is jockeying to land an anchor tenant that would allow them to get the structure off the ground.

Equus’ building has other significance for the Conshohocken market.

It is in an area of the borough that is likely to become a new frontier of sorts when a $45 million interchange connecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike with the Lafayette Street Extension is constructed. It will be located between the Valley Forge and Norristown exits.

The interchange is expected to alleviate some of the congestion plaguing Conshohocken and West Conshohocken during rush hours and ease some of the traffic volume at the Valley Forge exit, which is the third busiest in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. Construction could start on it as early as 2018 with completion by 2020.

The interchange has the potential to re-orient Conshohocken’s front door much in the way a new interchange in Malvern shifted Great Valley’s.

The Malvern interchange shortened commuting times, enticed companies to increasingly consider Malvern as a place to establish an office and helped kick off hundreds of millions of dollars in development at that end of Route 29.

Is that on the way for the corner of Conshohocken? There is ample undeveloped land there fronting the river on both sides of the railroad tracks.

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Equus’ 7-story, 340,000-square-foot building called 400 W. Elm St. could be the first to establish a presence in that part of Conshohocken. We’ll have to see if others follow.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal