Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbrook
I'm in the minority here with respect to Old City. I care little about seeing tall buildings built there. In fact I would like to see it keeps it charm with mostly the same scale and the odd mid-rise building. Philly is a big city geographically and there is room and place for skysrcaper and highrise development, which I applaud and cheer wholeheartedly. I don't see why it can't be focused on Center City, University City and a whole host of other areas that lack the charm and history of Old City.
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I agree.
Wow, great pic, thisisforreal!
Stemming the loss of Center City office space
Jacob Adelman, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Posted: Sunday, September 13, 2015, 3:01 AM
PMC Property Group has a novel idea for part of the Center City office building it just bought:
Offices.
The company's practice of buying up tired old office properties and refurbishing them into sleek, high-end apartments has helped make it one of Philadelphia's biggest residential landlords.
It hasn't been working alone: Up to seven million square feet of office space - the equivalent of almost six Comcast Center towers - has left the market over the last 25 years, most of it converted to residential use, according to real estate services firm JLL.
But as a flood of proposed rental properties in central Philadelphia coincides with a shrinking supply of office space, PMC is tweaking its formula at a former U.S. headquarters of drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, which it purchased last month.
The company plans to fill the 24-story building at 200 N. 16th St. with a mix of office and residential units, similar to its plan for the Marketplace Design Center at 2400 Market St., which it purchased earlier this year.
"We feel there is a tremendous amount of multifamily housing in the pipeline, and there's not as much office," PMC executive vice president Jonathan Stavin said. "We're working to identify a level of office that's not being met."
Office vacancies in Center City and University City and at the Navy Yard were at 9.9 percent in the quarter ended June 2015, down from a five-year high of 13.5 percent at the end of 2010, according to JLL.
Meanwhile, the current inventory of multifamily residential units in Center City has ballooned to 17,600 units, said JLL's Philadelphia research director, Lauren Gilchrist, citing data from real estate tracker REIS Inc.
An additional 3,300 residential units are in progress and likely to be delivered over the next two years or so, Gilchrist said, an inventory increase of about 19 percent.
"We've basically been swapping commercial space for residential space now for close to 10 years," said Kevin Gillen, a senior research fellow at Drexel University's Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation and chief economist at Meyers Research L.L.C. "I think we're reaching a point of near-saturation."
Read more at
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20...of_office_space.html#8kSwq3rrZVhJvVB8.99
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