Brandywine buys Phila. garage: $17MM; sells 2 Del. office parks: $51MM
Phila offices still rent in the $20s/low $30s/sf/year
Brandywine Realty Trust says it has paid $17 million for 618 Market St., the parking garage whose first floor is home to cave-like retail stores housing Suit Corner Inc., Jerry Blavat's Geator Gold Radio and others (21% vacant).
Brandywine hasn't announced its intentions for the concrete heap, which is close to both the Washington Square apartment/condo boomlet and the Market St. retail renovation projects at the Gallery and East Market developments. "We are encouraged that capital continues to target Market Street East," developer Bill Glazer, whose Keystone Property Trust is developing retail at the next door former Rohm and Haas building and plans apartments at the nearby Curtis Center, told me.
Separately, Brandywine says it has sold the Delaware Corporate Center -- two buildings in a mostly drive-up retail section of Concord Pike (US 202) between Wilmington and Chadds Ford -- and the Christiana Office Park -- three buildings on Commerce Drive east of Newark, Del. -- totalling 485,182 feet, with occupancy at 66.8%, for a total of $50.75 million.
The two Delaware projects have been acquired by hometown investor Buccini/Pollin Group, which has in recent years built both high-rise and single-family attached housing, a hotel and movie theater on Wilmington's Christiana River waterfront, expanded its hotel operations, taken over and downscaled Brian O'Neill's stalled residential conversion project at the former Bancroft Mills on the Brandywine -- and purchased 2 of DuPont Co.'s 3 Wilmington office buildings plus a nearby parking garage and lot, as Pete Davisson of Jackson Cross LLC reminds me.
Brandywine also posted useful data on its major tenants (besides Philadelphia its principal markets include the Washington, D.C. and Austin, Tex. areas). Its largest single tenant is the U.S. Government (including the IRS at the former 30th St. Post Office), which pays an average $22.26/sf for 34,000 sf/year. Which is about where Philadelphia high-end rents were in the late 1980s and 1990s -- not counting inflatoin -- which means they're less now.
Next largest Brandywine tenant is the Pepper Hamilton law firm, which pay $34.06/sf for its space at Three Logan (and any other Brandywine space it may lease, totalling 240,000 sf). Comcast (also in the Logan complex) pays Brandywine an average $27.35/sf, Dechert (at Cira Center) pays $35.64/sf, Lincoln National (at Radnor Financail Center) pays $34.83, Janney Montgomery Scott (at Commerce Plaza) pays $28.24/sf.
More on Brandywine's plans for sites in Philadelphia, South Jersey and the suburbs, and other cities, here.