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Brandywine plans March groundbreaking for first new high-rise at West Philly’s Schuylkill Yards site

Work is scheduled to start following a deal with a joint venture partner to help finance the apartment, lab and office building.

Brandywine Realty Trust plans to break ground on its "Schuylkill Yards West" tower at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd. in March.
Brandywine Realty Trust plans to break ground on its "Schuylkill Yards West" tower at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd. in March.Read morePAU Architects

Brandywine Realty Trust plans to begin construction of the first new building at its Schuylkill Yards redevelopment site in March after securing a partner to help finance the West Philadelphia project.

Brandywine Realty Trust plans to begin construction of the first new building at its Schuylkill Yards redevelopment site in March after securing a partner to help finance the West Philadelphia project.

The partner, identified only as a “global institutional investor,” has a 45% stake in the planned $287 million office, lab and apartment tower to be built at 3025 John F. Kennedy Blvd., Brandywine chief executive Jerry Sweeney said in a conference call with analysts Wednesday.

The investor asked not to be identified publicly, a Brandywine spokesperson said.

The planned 570,000-square-foot, 28-story building, dubbed Schuylkill Yards West, is to include 326 apartments over 200,000 square feet of labs for life-science tenants and offices, along with 9,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.

The Schuylkill Yards project is expected to eventually include about seven million square feet of office, lab, residential, retail, hotel, and green space over 14 acres west of 30th Street Station at a cost of $3.5 billion.

As part of the Schuylkill Yards plan, Brandywine heavily renovated the former Bulletin newspaper building at 3025 Market St. into a new headquarters for Spark Therapeutics Inc. and is revamping another building across the street at 3000 Market St. for the gene-therapy company.

The Schuylkill Yards West building, scheduled for completion in fall 2023, would be Brandywine’s first ground-up project at the Schuylkill Yards site.

The company is also marketing space at a 451,000-square-foot, 13-story lab and office building it is planning at 3151 Market St. Work could begin on that project this year, as well, if enough tenants can be secured for the building, Sweeney said.