PhillyDeals: Massachusetts firm to buy Keating Building

In search of government jobs,

Keating Building Corp.,

of Philadelphia, has agreed to be acquired by a larger builder, Massachusetts-based

Perini Corp.

, for $43 million and a cut of future profit.

"We think it's a good time," Daniel J. Keating 3d told me. "The work we expect to pursue will be mostly public projects, where you have major federal, state or local spending" that takes a lot of capital and insurance.

"Builders like myself who fight every day to get into the world are more limited than the larger companies," Keating added. "Our game plan is to expand" as a division of publicly

traded Perini.

Keating's firm, and his brother Pierce's company, Daniel J. Keating Co., are jointly building the addition to the state-run Convention Center in Philadelphia. Keating Building is also rebuilding the former 30th Street U.S. Post Office for Brandywine Property Trust and its client, the Internal Revenue Service. Daniel is also a partner in the planned $550 million SugarHouse gambling hall in Fishtown.

Perini's recent contracts include U.S. military bases from Guam to Iraq. Chief executive officer Ronald N. Tutor said in a statement that he looked forward to using Keating to win gambling and hotel jobs, as well as government business. Keating expects sales of about $425 million this fiscal year.

If you were starting an investment company now, what would you buy?

FS Investment Corp., the Philadelphia retail-investment fund operated by Campus Apartments Inc. CEO David J. Adelman and lawyer-turned-investor Michael J. Foreman, is going after corporate loans discounted in the credit crunch, it told the Securities and Exchange Commission in a filing.

So far, FS Investment has spent $2.6 million buying senior secured loans, at discounts of 12 percent (SunGard Data Systems Inc.) up to 48 percent (Dex Media West L.L.C.).

The builder that wanted to raise a 257-unit apartment building in the vacant lot at 1919 Market St. in Center City later this year has let go 200 of 1,500 workers nationwide, and 13 of its 31 staff at its Philadelphia regional office in Blue Bell, where

general manager Craig Guers

will be replaced by

Steve Cohen

.

Minneapolis-based Opus Corp. blamed "deteriorating economic conditions." The Philadelphia tower "is on hold," representative Winston Hewett told me. Work continues on Opus' speculative Princeton South and Mercer office centers near Trenton.

The

Philadelphia City Planning Commission

, meeting Tuesday at 1515 Arch St., will weigh these and more:

Expansion by Drexel University into the University City Science Center, so it can use Urban Outfitters Inc. founder Richard Hayne's $25 million donation to put a new design center at 3501 Market St. Longtime tenant Thomson Reuters (the old Institute for Scientific Information) is moving to 1500 Spring Garden St.

Expansion by Urban Outfitters, which wants to enlarge its new headquarters at the old Navy Yard.

Bart Blatstein's Tower Investments' vetting zoning changes for its 11-story, 86-unit Poplar Hotel development at 828 N. Second St., the old Schmidt's Brewery. Financing "is still available," said Blatstein, whose backers include union pension investors. "It's better than in 1990," said Blatstein, "when the S&L debacle happened."

Blatstein's proposed 300 apartments in the state office building, Broad and Spring Garden Streets, and a row of new stores; plus 200 units later, in a neighboring new building. "When the state moves out," later this year, Blatstein said, "we'll start."

U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy

, a Democrat from Bucks County, won 426-0 approval in the U.S. House of Representatives for his amendment to force the

Federal Reserve

to explain how it hired

BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Pimco

and

Wellington Management Co. L.L.P.

to buy $500 billion in mortgage- backed securities in the bank bailout.

"We have no idea how they found those managers. We don't even know how much they're getting paid," Murphy told me, echoing his speech on the House floor. The worst, he said, was when the Fed ignored his requests for details - even though it's legally answerable to Congress. "I taught constitutional law at West Point," he said. "I'm not going to stand for that."