New life for skyscraper plan?

Hill International, the giant Marlton construction manager, has replaced Joseph Grasso's Walnut Street Capital as developer of the planned 1,510-foot American Commerce Center office and hotel project at 1800 Arch St. in Center City, in partnership with Garrett Miller.
  "Right now is a tough market. It's going to take several years to build these thing. But it'll be an amazing skyscraper," says David Richter, Hill International's president. Hill has set up a new division, Hill International Real Estate Partners LP, with Miller as president. Richter said the group is considering other Philadelphia-area building projects, too.
  The $7 billion-asset Multi-Employer Property Trust, a building-trades labor union pension fund that funded Miller and Grasso's purchase of the ground last year, agreed to make an equity investment in the tower. But the project still needs bank financing, and it won't get built until the partners have signed some big corporate tenants, Richter said. 
   "We think it would make a great corporate headquarters. We've identified and have been talking to a lot of potential tenants," Richter added. He won't name any. "There's two components to every real estate deal -- the equity and the debt. Once we have sufficient tenants lined up, we'd talk to banks." Hill won't be putting in its own equity, Richter said.
  Hill is an international construction project manager (projects include Liberty Property Trust's recent Comcast tower at 16th and Arch, which American Commerce would eclipse), and it's announced a string of deals in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in recent months. Hill's global contacts may prove useful in fundraising and tenant-luring.
  "Garrett is a dealmaker. He has the vision. We bring to the table an expertise in getting it built," Richter added. He noted Hill was also project manager on Liberty Property Trust's Comcast tower at 16th and Arch.
   The tower would add 2.2 million square feet of office space to Center City, where Class A offices have been close to flat, at around 40 million square feet, since the early 1990s. (New towers like Comcast have only replaced old buildings like part of 2 Liberty Place that have been turned into apartments.)
   Attorney Peter F. Kelsen of Blank Rome LLP, who's been pleading American Commerce Center's case in its attempts to win city zoning variances, said a study done for the partners shows new office space would help attract new tenants to the city. Hill put out a press release -- link here.