Signs that the Center of Philadelphia May Be Shifting
“PMC Property Group plans to redevelop the former Marketplace Design Center building at 2400 Market St. into a block-wide 22-story office and residential tower, the latest sign that Philadelphia’s most aggressive development is shifting west.
The company, with real estate investment firm Lubert-Adler, is proposing 450,000 square feet of offices and 350 apartments in a building that uses the former interior design showroom center as its base, PMC executive vice president Jonathan Stavin said Tuesday.
The proposal follows last year’s acquisition of about an acre of nearly adjacent land on a long-fallow stretch of west Market Street by PMC and others. It also comes amid rapid development directly across the Schuylkill around 30th Street Station, where the 47-story FMC Tower is rising.
“You’re not just seeing it with us,” Stavin said. “The Schuylkill . . . is going to become the new center of Philadelphia.”
PMC hopes to capture current high office and apartment rents with the project, which is expected to cost more than $250 million. Asking rents for Class A office space in the west Market Street business district exceeded an average of $30 per square foot during the last three months of 2015, up 3.3 percent from the year-ago period, according to JLL, a commercial real estate services firm.
Residential rents in Center City’s highest-end apartment towers, meanwhile, averaged $2,191 a month last year, a 3.1 percent rise over 2014, according to market tracker Delta Associates.”
Read the full article at Philly.com.
