PhillyDeals: Landlord vows to restore fire-damaged bank

Gold leaf, carved wood, marble statuary, and stained glass line the three-story bank office in the tower at 123 S. Broad St., famously featured in the 1983

Eddie Murphy

comedy

Trading Places

as a model of old-time financial glamour.

But on March 15, as Philadelphia police cordoned the block so firefighters could stop a hot and smoky second-floor fire, the scene looked more like Backdraft, the 1991 firefighter drama, says landlord Jeffrey R. Seligsohn, whose SSH Management L.L.C. runs the building and a dozen others in the neighborhood.

Firefighters broke panels from the fancy windows, products of the city's Nicola D'Ascenzio studios, to vent black smoke that stained molded plaster and marble panels.

"They were coming out of the smoke, completely blackened," Seligsohn said of the firefighters. "They were searching for people. They looked like heroes."

Seligsohn praised quick, heavy fire and police response, backed by MaryAnn Tierney, the city emergency management chief, for limiting damage to "several million." Liberty Mutual is working up final estimates.

After three weeks, the bronze doors depicting building tradesmen reopened so customers could return to the ground-floor Wachovia Bank office. (Wachovia is the successor to Fidelity Bank, which built the tower in 1928.)

Their offices gutted, a couple of hundred bank workers have been moved out for now.

Scaffolding rises to the three-story ceiling, surrounding the man-size chandelier, the Piccirilli Brothers stone statue of a life-size naked couple with a clock, and the towering stained-glass images of the Declaration signers on the back windows, as crews test cleaning methods.

Crews from Interstate Restoration L.L.C., of Fort Worth, Texas, did the first cleaning. "At least 200 people worked round the clock" so Wachovia could reopen its branch, said Joseph Eisenstein, senior vice president at SSH.

Hunter Roberts Construction Group L.L.C., of New York, and KSK Architects, based in the building, are overseeing renovation plans, alongside historical-reconstruction specialists from engineers Thornton Tomasetti Inc., of New York.

Specialized firms "are coming out of the woodwork to bid on this job," Eisenstein told me. He hopes to start that work by May 1 and finish by summer's end.

Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner

says the

Philadelphia School District

has ignored his requests for "detailed information regarding its use of swaps, including all costs, commissions, and other fees incurred from active and terminated swaps."

Wagner, who is running for governor, has been questioning the officials of Pennsylvania towns regarding the use of interest-rate swaps and other derivative securities sold by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and other Wall Street firms to schools and school districts across the state under a law approved by Gov. Rendell in his first term.

The swaps enabled towns to trade interest-rate obligations with other investors, so they could bet whether interest rates would rise or fall: I'll give you fixed-rate interest payments from my bonds, for variable-rate interest off your bonds.

The swaps purchased by Philadelphia schools and some other PA towns were supposed to protect them from higher borrowing costs, in case U.S. interest rates rose. But they have lately ended up costing towns millions, as interest rates sit near record lows.

Wagner demanded the information by April 30, he told Michael J. Masch, chief business officer for the district, or "I will assume that the district is refusing to provide the requested information and we will proceed accordingly."

Masch said Wednesday night that the district was in the middle of finalizing a 2010-11 school budget but would soon reply.

"We will comply with his deadline, and we will be happy to do so," Masch told my colleague Kristen Graham. "He will discover that we have done exactly what he wanted us to do."

As I wrote last December, Masch said the district's $1-billion-plus in swaps contracts had earned the schools a net "$12 million since 2004."

But early profits are being canceled by recent losses. In the last two years, the city had to pay the banks an average $8 million a year under terms of the swaps.