Parking Authority sells Sansom Street property
After eight years of neighborhood opposition, media criticism, and a failed court battle, the Philadelphia Parking Authority said yesterday it has sold a site overlooking Rittenhouse Square that it had long sought to develop for parking and retail.
After eight years of neighborhood opposition, media criticism, and a failed court battle, the Philadelphia Parking Authority said yesterday it has sold a site overlooking Rittenhouse Square that it had long sought to develop for parking and retail.
The authority said it had sold its one-acre site in the 2000 block of Sansom Street for $36.7 million to Castleway Properties of Ireland.
"It was a project we tried to push forward, but the community was not for it," Linda Miller, spokeswoman for the agency, said yesterday. "We were taken to court, went through appeals. It was just a project not going anywhere. We felt the best thing to do was to sell it."
The deal is expected to close next month, according to Miller, who said the authority had decided about two years ago not pursue the project further.
Castleway Properties, which outbid three other firms for acquisition rights, could not be reached yesterday for comment. Three more firms had expressed interest, but two were disqualified and one withdrew.
Castleway has not indicated how it intends to develop the site. City zoning permits a mixture of retail and residential, with building heights in excess of 300 feet.
The authority had spent about $10 million from a bond issue to create the L-shaped parcel, which has 102 feet of frontage on Walnut Street and comprises three storefronts on Sansom Street.
It had sought to build a six-story parking garage, an eight-theater Ritz Cinema, a restaurant and shops.
Although the city Historical Commission approved the project in 2004, a Commonwealth Court judge halted it the next year, calling the plan to demolish the three historic buildings on Sansom Street "incomprehensible."
